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REVELATION. Besides the exhibitions of divine agency in the works of nature, and the inward disclosures of divinity in the human mind, we find among almost all nations traditions of an immediate 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 faculties, 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 possesses 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 revelation 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 age, were common to the progenitors 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 acquainted under the name of prophets, from Moses to Malachi. God finally completed his revelations through Christ. Thus has revelation educated the human race from infancy to manhood, and man, dismissed 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; also the Table of European States. (The early copies of this work have an improved form of this table after the index of vol. v.) See also the article Taxes.

REVERBERATION, in physics; the act of a body repelling or reflecting another after its impinging on it. Echoes are occasioned by the reverberation of sounds from arched surfaces.-In glass furnaces, the flame reverberates, 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