By the Rev. J. L. Ross. 189 
bills, into the tombs of their dead, and /etters which they had full 
time to deliver to those to whom they were addressed.” 
discovery, with the names of witnesses attached. The key which is very rusty 
and of an antique form, with three plain lateral prongs, bears every appearance 
of having been interred with the body beneath which it is said to have been found. 
With a salutary dread of such resolute scoffers at antiquarian speculations as 
Edie Ochiltree in Scott’s celebrated Romance,* there seems in the present in- 
stance to be little doubt that this key was interred at a very remote period and 
formed one of the moveables which were sometimes placed in the sepulchres of 
the Druids. No clue can, however, be obtained in either the Classical writers 
or Druidical accounts of keys being ever, much less customarily interred with a 
body or Cinerary urn: still it may have been an occasional practice. The key 
in Seripture was the official symbol of authority and distinction, and as the 
badge of St. Peter, still adopted by the head of the Romish Communion, and even 
as a badge or attendant on royalty, the key still retains its place as an emblem 
of office; witness the gold and silver keys assigned to different members of our 
own Royal Court. In Holy Scripture, hell and the grave, and death itself are 
described as being locked, to which admission and release from its power belongs 
to none other than He who brought life and immortality to light. ‘‘I am the 
first and the last,’”’ said the Son of God; ‘‘I am he that liveth, and was dead; 
and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of 
death.”+ ‘‘These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the 
key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man 
openeth.”{ Hence we learn that our Lord is the author and giver of life, that 
He is the resurrection and the life, of which the key is represented as the emblem 
in opening and shutting, that is restoring or taking away life. Again the place 
of torment is represented in the same book as being locked and opened by a key: 
“« And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw astar fall from heaven unto the earth: 
and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottom- 
less pit.”§ ‘‘ And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of 
the bottomless pit and a great chain in hishand. And he laid hold on the 
DRAGON, that OLD SERPENT, which is the Devil, and Satan, and bound him a 
thousand years, and cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set 
a seal upon him, that he should deceive the nations no more, till the thousand 
years should be fulfilled: and after that he must be loosed a little season.’’|| 
Among the heathen deities, Mercury who conducted the dead to Hades, or the 
state of departed spirits, is represented as having a key as his badge of office, and 
Pluto who presided over the realms of the departed is also usually represented 
with two keys, intimating his power of “‘ opening and shutting,” of admitting 
and allowing the departure of the dead. Now there is at least some probability, 
that such a ‘‘moveable” as a key may have been intended to intimate the belief 
of the occupant of the sepulchre in a future state, and that the key buried along 
with his body or ashes indicated an expectation of the way in which his release 
was to be effected, by unlocking his tomb and the ‘gates of death,” and 
opening or admitting him into a future state. Indeed, in connexion with the 
* Antiquary, vol. i. ch. iv. pp. 47, 51. 
+Rey. i. 17, 18. + Rev. iii. 7. ? Rev. ix. 1. || Rev. xx. 1, 2, 8. 
