and the ancient deities had been expelled by Jupiter.  But contrary to this pagan instinct, the Cumaean Sibyl stretched forward to a distant heaven of her aspirations and hopes—­to a nobler future of the world, not sentimental and idyllic, but epic and heroic.  She pictured the blessing or restoration of this earth itself as distinct from an invisible world of happiness.  And in this respect she is more in sympathy with the Jewish and Christian religions than with her own.  The golden age of the Hebrews was in the future, and was connected with the coming of the Messiah, who should restore the kingdom again unto Israel.  And the characteristic of the Christian religion is hope, the expectation of the times of the restitution of all things, and the realisation of the “one far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves.”  It is this hopeful element pervading them that gives to the lively oracles of Holy Scripture the triumphant tone which distinguishes them so markedly from the desponding spirit of all false religions, ancient and modern.

The subject of the Sibyl brings us to the vexed question of the connection between pagan and Hebrew prophecy.  How are we to regard the vaticinations of the heathen oracle?  That the great mass of the Sibylline books is spurious is glaringly obvious.  But there is a primitive residuum which seems to remind us that the spirit of early prophecy still retained its hold over human nature amid all the corruptions of heathendom, and secured for the Sibyl a sacred rank and authority.  We have seen with what reverence the greatest fathers of the Christian Church regarded her.  While there was undoubtedly much delusion and deception, conscious or unconscious, mixed up with it, we are constrained at the same time to acknowledge that there was some reality in this prophetic element of paganism, which cannot be explained away as the result of mere political or intellectual foresight or accidental coincidence.  It was not all imposture.  As a ray of light is contained in all that shines, so a ray of God’s truth was reflected in what was best in this pagan prophecy.  The fulfilment of many of the ancient oracles cannot be denied without a perversion of all history.  There was no doubt an immense difference between the Hebrew prophets and the pagan Sibyl.  The predictions of the Sibyl were accompanied by strange fantastic circumstances, and wore the appearance of a blind caprice or arbitrary fate; whereas the announcements of the Hebrew prophets, founded upon the denunciation of moral evil and the reign of sacred and peremptory principles of righteousness in the world, were calm, dignified, and self-consistent.  But we cannot, notwithstanding, deny to pagan prophecy some share in the higher influence which inspired and moulded Hebrew prophecy.  The apostle of the Gentiles took this view when he called Epimenides the Cretan a prophet.  The Bible recognises the existence of true prophets outside the pale of the Jewish Church.