golden age, _Virgil_ says, _Ecl._ iv. 21 sqq.; v. 60: _Occidet et serpens et fallax herba veneni occidet._--_Nec magnos metuent armenta leones._--_Nec lupus insidias pecori._ _Horat. Epod._ xiv. 53: _Nec vespertinus circumgemit ursus ovile nec intumescit alta viperis humus._--_Theocrit. Idyll._ xxiv. 84. Utterances such as these show how unnatural the present condition of the earth is. They are, however, not so much to be regarded as the remains of some outward tradition (against such a supposition it is decisive that they occur chiefly with _poets_), but rather as utterances of an indestructible longing in man, which, being so deeply rooted in human nature, contains in itself the guarantee of being gratified at some future period. But, with all this, we must do justice to the objection drawn from the evident parallelism of passages such as chap. xxxv. 9, and to another objection advanced by _Vitringa_, that it is strange that there is so much spoken of animals, and so little of men. This we shall do by remarking that, in the description of the glorious effects which the government of Christ shall produce on the earth, the Prophet at once proceeds to the utmost limit of [Pg 122] them; and that the removal of hostility and destruction from the irrational creation implies that all that will be removed which, in the rational creation, proceeds from the principle of hatred, inasmuch as it is certain that the former is only a reflection of the latter, and that the Prophet speaks with a distinct reference to this supposition which he afterwards, in ver. 9, distinctly expresses. Hence, to a certain degree, a double sense takes place; and, in the main, _J. H. Michaelis_ has hit the right by comparing, first, Gen. i. and Rom. viii., and then continuing: "Parabolically, however, by the wild beasts, wild and cruel nations are understood, which are to be converted to Christ; or violent men who, by the Spirit of Christ, are rendered meek and gentle, just as Paul, from a wolf, was changed into a lamb." We are the less permitted to lose sight of the reference to the lions and bears on the spiritual territory, that ver. 6 is, in the first instance, connected with vers. 4 and 5, in which the all-powerful sway of Christ's justice on earth is described, of which the consequences must, in the first instance, appear in the _human territory_; and, farther, that the point from which the prophecy started, is the raging of the wolf and bear of the world's power against the poor defenceless flock of the Lord. Ver. 6. "_And the wolf dwelleth with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf, and, the lion and the fatling together, and a little child leads them._" Ver. 7. "_The cow and bear go to the pasture; their young ones lie down together; and the lion shall eat straw like the ox._" (The going to pasture of the bear corresponds with the lion's eating straw [comp. Gen. i. 30], and we are not allowed to supply the "together" in the first clause.)