REVELATION REVIEWS 



853 



which he was a member (Reflexions sur le Culte, 

 Irs Ceremonies Civile*, et les Fetes Rationales), 

 recommended some religious ceremonies and prin- 

 ciples which resembled those of the theophilanthro- 

 pists ^q. v.), he was, by his enemies, represented 

 as the founder and high-priest of that sect. He 

 refused to take the oath of allegiance to the em- 

 peror, and still later to accept the oft'er of a pen- 

 sion, on condition of his making application for it. 

 He died in 1824, leaving Memoires to be published 

 after a given time. 



REVELATION. Besides the exhibitions of 

 divine agency in the works of nature, and the in- 

 ward disclosures of divinity in the human mind, we 

 find among almost all nations traditions of an imme- 

 diate revelation of the will of God, communicated 

 by words or works of supernatural significance or 

 power. The nations of antiquity traced the origin 

 of their religions, and even of their civilization, to 

 the instructions of the gods, who, in their opinion, 

 taught their ancestors as men teach children. As 

 a child, without the assistance of others, would be 

 incapable of acquiring knowledge, so the human 

 race, in its infancy, could not have made the first 

 step in the arts and sciences without a guide ; and 

 even if external nature, in its various objects and 

 phenomena, were a sufficient guide to that kind of 

 knowledge and skill which is necessary to provide 

 for the bodily wants of man, can it be supposed 

 that this nature could set in action his moral facul- 

 ties, and open to his view the world of spiritual 

 being ? To reason, which derives its knowledge 

 from sensual experience, the world is a riddle: the 

 solution of this riddle a knowledge of God and his 

 relation to the world could have been given only 

 by God himself. Whatever knowledge man pos- 

 sesses of this subject must have been received 

 directly, by oral communication, from the Deity, 

 without which he could never, or at least not so 

 soon nor so surely, have acquired it. In this reve- 

 lation of himself, God adapted his communications 

 to the comprehension of the beings for whose 

 instruction it was intended ; and we may distinguish 

 three periods in this education of the human race 

 in divine things. The earliest revelations, made 

 in the patriarchal nge, were common to the pro- 

 genitors of all people ; and their light shines 

 through the darkness of all the heathen mythologies, 

 which, on closer examination, plainly appear to 

 have been built up on the simple religious notions 

 of the primitive age, confirming the declaration of 

 Scripture, that God has never left himself without 

 a witness in the world. These earlier notions were 

 preserved pure, and gradually enlarged during the 

 Mosaic period, by successive revelations to chosen 

 individuals, with whom the Bible makes us ac- 

 quainted under the name of prophets, from Moses 

 to Malachi. God finally completed his revelations 

 through Christ. Thus has revelation educated the hu- 

 man race from infancy to manhood, and man, dismiss- 

 ed from this school eighteen centuries ago, has now 

 only to make the light, thus received, known and 

 healing to all. The evidences of this divine plan 

 of the education of the human race, proclaimed 

 and accomplished in the Bible, are exhibited in the 

 history of the world. See Christianity. 

 REVELATION. See Apocalypse. 

 REVENUE. For the revenue of the different 

 states of Europe and America, see the articles on 

 the respective countries. See also the article 



REVERBERATION, in physics ; the act of a 

 body repelling or reflecting another after its im- 

 pinging on it. Echoes are occasioned by the re- 

 verberation of sounds from arched surfaces. 



In glass furnaces, the flame reuerlerates, or bends 

 back again, to burn the matter on all sides. 



In chemistry, reverberation denotes a circulation 

 of flame, or its return from the top to the bottom 

 of the furnace, to produce an intense heat, when 

 calcination is required. 



REVEREND; a title of respect given to eccle- 

 siastics. The religious, in Catholic countries, are 

 styled reverend fathers, and the abbesses, prioresses, 

 &c., reverend mothers. In England, bishops are 

 right reverend, archbishops most reverend, and the 

 lower clergy reverend. 



REVERSION ; the residue of an estate left iii 

 the grantor, to commence in possession after the 

 determination of the particular estate granted. Tfae 

 estate returns to the grantor or his heirs after the 

 grant is over. 



REVIEWS. The French were the first to estab- 

 lish critical journals. The Bibliographia Parisina 

 of Jacob (1645) was merely a yearly catalogue of 

 new books, without remarks of any kind ; but it i* 

 said to have suggested the idea of the Journalde& 

 Savans, a weekly journal, instituted in 1665, by M. 

 de Sallo, which contained analyses and critical 

 judgments of new works. It was afterwards edited 

 by the abbes Gallois and De la Roque, and presi- 

 dent Cousin. From 1715 to 1792, it was conducted 

 by a society of scholars, and appeared in monthly 

 numbers. In 1792, it was discontinued, and revived, 

 in 1816, under the patronage of the crown. The 

 collaborators since its revival have been De Sacy, 

 Langles, Raynouard, Raoul-Rochette, Remusat, 

 Dacier, Quatremere de Quincy, Letronne, Biot, 

 Cuvier, &c. The collection from 1665 to 1792 

 forms 111 vols., 4to, reprinted Amsterdam (1684 

 seq.), 381 vols., 12mo. The Mercure de France, 

 begun in 1672, under the title of Mercure Galunt, 

 and still continued, was originally designed for the 

 amusement of the court, and men of the world, and 

 was very miscellaneous in its contents. The edi- 

 torship, which was bestowed as an act of court 

 favour, was sometimes in good hands, as, for ex- 

 ample, Marmontel's. The Annee litteraire (1754 

 76) acquired celebrity under the management of 

 Fre'ron (q. v.) The Journal Stranger (1754 62) 

 and the Journal encyclopedique (1756 91) contained 

 dissertations and papers of various kinds, as well 

 as reviews. The Revue (originally Decade] philos- 

 ophique, litteraire et politique (17941807), was for 

 a time edited by Ginguene, and was distinguished 

 for consistency of principle during a succession of 

 most agitated periods. Millin's Annales (originally 

 Magazin) encyclopediques (17951818), together 

 with critical reviews, contains a valuable mass of 

 original essays, and a great variety of inter- 

 esting intelligence relating to all countries. It 

 has been succeeded by the Revue encyclopedique, 

 which still appears in monthly numbers, on a simi- 

 lar but more extended plan. The Revue was edited 

 till the close of 1831 by Jullien,and was afterwards 

 conducted by M. Hippolyte Carnot. The Bulletin 

 universel (q. v.), conducted by baron Ferussac, has 

 appeared since 1824, and contains, as its name 

 imports, information on every subject in literature, 

 science, and the arts. The Revue Fran^aise was 

 established in 1828, and has been conducted witli 

 great ability in the hands of Guizot and the duke 

 de Broglie. The Revue Briiannique (1825), Re- 

 vue Germanique (1829), and Revue Europeenne 

 (1831), are monthly journals, devoted, as their titles 

 indicate, to foreign literature. In most of the 

 French journals, the names of the authors are at- 

 tached to each article. 



The freedom of the press in Holland led to the 

 establishment, in that country, by learned foreign- 



