Thus appealed to, the unfortunate Sibbi related his whole story; upon which the wali's countenance assumed a terrible expression, and he exclaimed: "Verily, the wickedness of mankind is great! I took you to be an honest man, whereas it seems you are a shameless impostor. Produce the gem instantly, or prepare for a dungeon, the bastinado, and the bow-string." In spite of his protestations, Sibbi was dragged to prison, and the jeweler, with all his friends, was invited to witness his torture and execution on the following day: engraver had interwoven, as it were, the | shall befall you on account of your confiletters of the Great Name. Sibbi, though dence." no proficient in physiognomy, yet saw enough in the jeweler's face to warn him of his danger, and while he turned round and loudly gave orders to a slave to fetch the wall, or police magistrate, the poor Arab snatched the opal from the jeweler's hand, and rushed forth into the street, followed by the wicked master of the shop, and a whole posse of slaves, shouting "Thief, thief!" Sibbi's worst fears now presented themselves to his mind, and lent wings to his feet. Dashing along without looking before him, he overthrew three donkeys, two blind men, and an old female cake-seller, who called him a pig and an infidel, and preferred sundry accusations against his innocent mother, now in her grave. Sibbi heeded her not, but plunging into the crowd, he found himself in the midst of a procession of dervishes who struck him with the palms of their hands for interrupting their public devotions. Escaping from these ostentatious penitents, he slipped into a dark passage, but upon emerging at its further extremity into the street, he found himself face to face with the jeweler, who was in the very act of laying his complaint before the wali. "Ha!" exclaimed the wretch, "behold, there is the thief; seize him, and you will find the gem upon his person." An aged dervish, with long white beard and majestic countenance, stood by chance close to Sibbi as the words of this accusation were uttered. He did not speak, but giving the Arab a look, unperceived of the bystanders, held his hand half-open by his side. Understanding his meaning, Sibbi put the opal into his hand, upon which, calm and unperturbed, the dervish passed on. Reduced to his original penury, Sibbi felt his courage revive. "Are you mad?" he exclaimed, addressing the jeweler with a fearless countenance. "What do you talk of? Gems! I am an Arab so poor as not even to possess an asper. Search me," he continued, to the wali," and you will immediately perceive the truth of my statement. The worthy magistrate had learned, in the course of his dealings with mankind, to distinguish an honest face from a false one. "I be lieve your words," he said to Sibbi; "but be frank with me: something has passed between you and this jeweler; explain what it was, and you have the assurance of a believer in the Book that no harm Meanwhile the dervish, who lived at the college of the Mosque of Flowers, shut himself up in his oratory, and placed the opal before him on a table of black jasper. Never had he beheld any thing so magnificent. Nature, when making this stone, seems to have chosen as a pattern one of those pearly clouds which, filled with soft light, hover about the rising moon, veined, streaked, and fretted with the pale glimmer of the dawn. It has upon the sight the effect of a section of the sky when beauty is filling it to overflowing. But in the estimation of the dervish, the loveliness it had received from the hand of the great Archetype was nothing compared with the charm derived from that great Archetype's name, composed of four letters-the tetragrammaton of the western world-by pronouncing which, with suitable rites, man may command the services of all spirits. The dervish, as might be supposed, was no connoisseur in precious stones, but being possessed by a strong sense of beauty, his admiration increased as he placed the opal in various lights, and held it up be tween his finger and thumb towards the sun. Sparks of crimson, purple, and violet appeared to flash from it as he gazed, till they were concentrated and lost in a ruby-colored flame, which glanced and coruscated into all the hues of the rainbow as he changed the position of the stone. Quitting the Medresi, the dervish proceeded to the house of an honest jeweler with whom he had long been acquainted, and showing him the opal, demanded to know its value. "It is worth the revenues of a pachalic," replied the lapidary; "but there is no jeweler in Cairo sufficiently wealthy to purchase it." "Supposing · What became of the opal? The merchant who had purchased it was killed near Alexandria, among the ruins of which the gem was lost; some years later it was picked up by a fellah, who sold it for two or three piasters to Roboly, the dragoman of the French consulate. This man, who understood nothing of its value, asked Hasselquist, the Swedish traveler, how much it might be worth, but received no satisfactory answer. It afterwards passed into the hands of Lirancourt, French consul at Cairo, who carried it to Constantinople, where it seems to have been bought by the French ambassador. Lastly, some time before the Great Revolution, it became the property of the famous Duc de Nivernois, who used to exhibit it to admiring visitors at his gorgeous soirées in London. According to some, it afterwards passed into Russia; but we are altogether unable to trace its fortunes beyond the troubles which broke out in France after the storming of the Bastile. it were shown to the governor," inquired | pronounced a righteous judgment in a the dervish," might he not, since he is difficult cause, he was stabbed by the unextremely rich, be inclined to buy it at successful suitor, and was soon followed its full value?" "I would not be the to the grave by the old dervish. The man," whispered the lapidary, "to manage bags of dinars became the property of the the negotiation-he would certainly seize Mosque of Flowers, and were employed upon the gem, and bastinado me to in building that beautiful oratory at the death." "What, then, is to be done?" door of which two hundred poor persons said the dervish in perplexity. The jew- still receive a loaf daily by the posthumous eler mused awhile, and then exclaimed: charity of Sibbi. "There is here in Cairo a rich merchant from India, who leaves to-night with the caravan for Syria: he will buy the opal, and enrich its owner with fifty thousand dinars of gold." "It would endow a college," exclaimed the dervish. "It would purchase a pachalic," rejoined the lapidary. These suggestions were merely parenthetical. The jeweler carried the opal to the merchant, who gave for it a still larger sum than had been named. The dervish, when he had received the money, offered to reward the lapidary for his trouble; but unless he could purchase the office of a pacha, he was already sufficiently opulent to be regardless of gain: he therefore refused the dervish's offer. The latter, causing the gold to be tied up in two leathern bags, had it borne before him by slaves to his apartment in the college, where he carefully locked it up. He then proceeded to the house of the wali, who was asleep, and his slaves, apprehensive of his severity, refused to wake him. Being questioned, however, they informed him that their master had left with his lieutenant orders respecting the Arab, who, according to the best of their belief, was to be strangled in the morning. Having received this cheering information, the dervish hastened to the lieutenant's house, and found him surrounded by spies and executioners, and furiously intoxicated with beng. With such a man he perceived there was nothing to be done; so he repaired to the prison, and through the influence of his sacred character, easily obtained admittance. Having consulted with Sibbi, it was agreed that escape from injustice should be purchased with money. The jailers were bribed; and the Arab found himself at liberty with a fortune larger than that of any other man in Cairo. Leaving the bulk of his property in the hands of the dervish, he proceeded to Constantinople, where he purchased from the sultan the office of cadi, and returned to reform the manners of his native country. He received his reward. Having Two other opals have obtained some celebrity one, which belonged to the Emperor Leopold II., for its extraordinary size and beauty, it being said to have been an inch in diameter; the other, for the singular adventures with which it was connected. When the great Afghan conqueror, Nadir Shah, made his descent upon India, stormed Delhi, and rendered himself master of the Peacock Throne, he is said to have entered a Hindoo temple, where he was inspired with admiration by the jewels that blazed on the great idol. Its eyes were made of gems of different colors, and one of them was an opal of rare splendor and brilliance. Even in the best days of antiquity, sculptors, when fabricating statues of the gods, sometimes formed the eyes of precious stones; but they were in these cases artistically made, the pupil being of black jasper, the iris of turquoise, and the white of diamond; the face, neck, and bosom were of the finest ivory, which appeared to acquire additional fairness by contrast with the robes of gold in which they were folded, and which in one instance were valued at a quarter of a million sterling. The idols of India have been chiefly remarkable for their ugliness and grotesque magnificence. The Mohammedans abhor these symbols of a rude superstition, and it has always been one of their chief claims to be regarded as reformers to make war upon the gods of India through their images and fanes; but Nadir Shah was instigated much less by piety than by cupidity. Like a true Oriental, he would have ravaged a whole continent in order to render himself master of what the Asiatics denominate the gem of gems-a milky opal. On his return to Persia, the conqueror was careful always to have his jewel-caskets with him in his tent; and it has been said by some of his eastern biographers, that after cutting off the population of a whole city, he would sit down peacefully in the cool of the morning to gaze on the ensanguined ruby, the deep vinous yellow of the beryl, the mimic flame of the carbuncle, or the soft sweet green of the emerald. In the opinion of most men, there is a mystery in the interior structure of these stones, which, when one set of rays strike upon them, appear serene and calm to their greatest depths, whereas, when viewed by the aid of others, they flash and sparkle, and seem to flood the surrounding air with emitted splendors. Nadir was fully sensible of the charms of this kind of poetry, the only thing, perhaps, except power and carnage, that could strongly move his soul. Charles I. of England was, it is well known, distinguished as a virtuoso, and laid out immense sums in collecting works of art. Among his curiosities there was an engraved diamond, the rarest ever known, which was probably transported to the continent by Henrietta Maria, to purchase powder and great guns. There it fell into the hands of a French traveler, who carried it with him into Persia, and there sold it for a large sum of money to the shah. When the House of Sefi was subverted by Nadir, this exquisite jewel became his property, and, in all likelihood, was in his tent with the great opal on the morning of his assassination. Many of the crown jewels of Persia then disappeared, having no doubt been stolen by the soldiers. We now lose sight of the opal till it reäppears in Russi, as the proper ty of Prince Potemkin, who enriched himself by the plunder of whole provinces. In ancient times, the opal occupied the place now conceded to the diamond, though far more numerous specimens of it than are now to be found existed. It was a special favorite among the Romans, and the senator Nonnius, during the proscriptions, was offered exemption from exile if he would relinquish his celebrated opal to Mark Antony. He preferred banishment with his gem, to Rome without it; and no wonder, when we consider into whose hands supremacy over the Eternal City had fallen. Nonnius probably chose Egypt for his place of exile, and there lost the jewel, which, after more than seventeen hundred years, was found in the reservoir of Achoris, if we may, in truth, venture to identify that stone with the one shortly afterwards discovered in the rubbish-mounds of Alexandria. However, it is only by conjecture that we can attribute the opal of Roboly to the senator Nonnius. The descriptions left us of the ancient gem do not exactly correspond with those given of the modern stone. It had an olive hue, they say, when exposed to the sun's direct beams, but became opaque when contemplated in its slanting rays. Placed between the eye and the light, it assumed a deep ruby tinge, throwing off sparks of fire in parallel lines. Many of these peculiarities may perhaps be attributed to the force of imagination, which transforms to its own likeness every object in nature. The flaming opal, which rivals the carbuncle, the ruby, and the chrysolite, was once found in various parts of the world, but is now so rare that it has been doubt ed by some lapidaries whether it ever existed at all. We ourselves, however, have seen it amid a collection of gems in Itely, where it occupied the chief place. Most of its neighbors had been engraved, and owed their principal value to the skill of some ancient artist of Corinth, Rhodes, or Sicyon; but the flaming opal lay enshrined in its own beauty, having no facets, but simply long slab-like planes on the side, and converging into a crown above. The light played through it as through the intricacies of a labyrinth, reflected, refracted, ascending, descending, and glit tering through a thousand diminutive channels, assuming every instant new tints and hues which again became confused with each other. An extremely well-informed traveler its beauty, and he was about to cast it returning from the East brought with him into the censer, when he heard a gentle what he conceived to be an inimitable knock at the door. On throwing it open, treasure. This was a flaming opal of the he beheld before him a man in a leathern largest size and richest brilliance, but on garment, begrimed with smoke and soot. showing it to a jeweler at Florence, he "I bring you," said the stranger, "a welwas informed that it was only the imita- come piece of news-your gem is no tion of an opal in glass. He had embark-counterfeit; I heard my master say so ed nearly his whole fortune in this ven- after you left his shop this morning. I am ture, and, in the extremity of his irritation an admirer of precious stones; and have and disappointment, determined to des- brought you this intelligence, lest the troy both the false gem and himself. Late despair which I saw in your countenance in the evening, he shut himself up in his should induce you to inflict some injury apartment, where he kindled a strong fire on the noblest opal in the world." The of charcoal, into which he resolved to cast traveler, in raptures, would have forced the glass, and then to choke himself with on him a handsome reward. "No," exthe burning embers. He took the beauti- claimed the workman; "I only desire to ful imposture into his hands, which, as the behold the gem once more; to take it in light of the lamp fell upon it, threw off my hands, to press it to my lips, as the into the air so many gorgeous tints that most precious of nature's works." He it seemed to swim in a sea of splendor. then took his leave; and the traveler, As he turned it round and held it up be- proceeding to Vienna, sold the gem to fore his eyes, its loveliness increased-now the Emperor. This was the famous opal a bright flame played in its center, and of Leopold II., whose large size we have now a white incandescence shot along its mentioned above. surface. But his heart was steeled against THE production of man upon the earth is the greatest witness for the action of the supernatural upon nature. It is admitted on all hands, that he is the latest, or one of the latest animals. How he came, science knows not; but that he did not come in the ordinary way, is absolutely certain. If he came full grown, then there was a miracle. If he did not come fullgrown, but as a baby, then his nursing must have been miraculous; for we have never heard of a beast that could be safely intrusted with the care of a human infant: and if such a beast did exist, it was itself a miracle; for it stands out contrary to all the known laws of the nature of such creatures. But why waste time with this? Only the most egregious half-knowledge *Concluded from page 82. MIRACLES.* and vacuity combined have ever resorted to such suppositions; and unless they are true, the supernatural has been. Science is found to acknowledge it; and we only ask: "Why not confess that it might appear again, and assume other forms?" A favorite form of illustrating the occurrence of the miraculous according to some higher law of nature, is that brought into notice by Mr. Babbage, founded upon his calculating engine. This instrument is so arranged, that it will count by successive units until it has reached the vast number of one hundred millions and one, when a new law comes into operation, which continues for a lengthened series, and finally gives place to another and another. Now if this is meant simply to illustrate the fact that variations may occur without permanently disturbing the action upon the processes of nature, from without and from above, he can therefore perform a miracle. We agree with Dr. Bushnell, that man acts supernaturally on nature; and we have used his action as an illustration, but without the most remote intention of regarding his power as | miraculous. As to the close of our definition, that a miracle witnesses to a messenger or his message, and in character harmonizes with the message, we have it also from the Scriptures. When Moses was commanded to appear before Pharaoh, he expressed his doubt whether Pharaoh would believe; and God gave him a sign by changing his rod into a serpent, which he should repeat before the King. (Exod. 4: 1-3.) Pha sequences of nature, we may accept it for what it is worth. But if it is intended (as it is sometimes employed) to illustrate the manner in which the universe is arranged from the beginning for the production of so-called miracles, then we affirm, that a more strangely destructive illustration has never been used; for it can not be shown that any such thing has ever taken place in God's economy, as Mr. Babbage shows to take place in his engine. So far as we can know, the same laws are still in operation which existed from the beginning-there is no change. But the movement of Mr. Babbage's machine produces a change of lawa change so far permanent that the old never returns; and if the new fails, it is for some law still more distant from the raoh demanded a miracle as evidence that old. In fact, the only law which per- he had a Divine commission, and he manently governs it is a law of change. worked it. (Exod. 7 9, 10.) Miracles Surely no maintainer of miracles as against were the expected accompaniments of a natural law has ever thought of any thing messenger of God; and hence we find in so destructive to science, or so revolu- Deut. 13: 1-5, and 18: 20-22, God spetionary of law, as this. But we altogether cifies the criteria by which such works protest against this mechanical view. It should be judged. Elijah placed the is a piece of the old Naturalism, which great controversy between God and Baal makes God no more than a skillful ma- upon the issue of a miracle. (1 Kings 18: chinist, who constructs a very large and in- 21-39.) And a greater than all these, genious engine, and, having set it in mo- the Lord Jesus himself, rests his claims tion, stands aside to see it grind out or- to our belief upon the same ground. dinary occurrences and occasional mira- When John's disciples came to him to cles. This theory will not satisfy either inquire, "Art thou he that should come, our judgment or our affections. Our or look we for another?" his reply was hearts cry out for "the living God;" for in deeds. "And in the same hour he a God who is not less but more than His cured many of their infirmities and own creature; for a Ruler whose adminis- plagues, and of evil spirits; and unto tration is a present power, and who can many that were blind he gave sight. suspend, adapt, or modify at will that Then Jesus answering said unto them, Go constitution of nature which He has been your way, and tell John what things ye have pleased to give. This view does not dis- seen and heard; how that the blind see, turb the order of the world; it does not the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, interfere in permanence with the beauti- the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the ful and harmonious adjustment of forces poor the gospel is preached. And blessand laws; while at the same time it pre-ed is he, whosoever shall not be offended serves us from the other error of binding in me." (Luke 7: 21-23.) And when up the Divine Being in the chains of his own subsequently addressing the unbelieving stereotyped unalterable system-a system Jews on a critical occasion: he said: "If in which there is no place reserved for I do not the works of my Father, believe himself, no sphere for the further and con- me not. me not. But if I do, though ye believe stant operation of his character and will. not me, believe the works: that ye may know, and believe, that the Father is in me, and I in him." (John 10: 37, 38.) It has lately become fashionable in certain quarters to say, that Christ himself made no account of miracles, nay, even made light of them, and rather directed men's minds to spiritual truths. This belongs to that class of misrepresentations which We come now to the third distinction: a miracle is superhuman. This does not require much elaboration; as, whether we admit the existence of a miracle or not, we agree that it must be something beyond human power to effect. But we make the remark lest any should fancy that, because man can come in with his |