church to follow; and I wish my feeble recommendation might be the cause of adding this little book to every Christian lady's library, where it has not yet found a place. In these latter days of much profession on the one hand, and rebuke and blasphemy on the other, Satan is very busy with all who name the name of Christ, and especially with those who bear rule in the church. While, then, we mourn over some who are misled into divers heresies, let us not omit to pray for them; let those who really value their ministry set apart a portion of their time for private devotion, for this particular duty, and if they have a dear intimate friend, or a brother or sister, who agrees with them in this matter, let them also unite in their prayers on behalf of the watchmen of Israel. If I might suggest a plan of my own, I would say, let our Sabbath morning devotions have a particular bearing on this subject-for our own minister; for those in the town and neighbourhood wherein we dwell; for the church in our own country; for that in our own sister island, and where shall our supplications stop? They will only be bounded by the limits of the world itself, for the wings of prayer will flee away far from this country of privileges, even to those distant lands where the missionary is engaged in proclaiming to his little band of half civilized, half savage hearers, the wonders of redemption. What a field for a supplicating, wrestling, Jacob-like spirit is this! Our beloved church sets us the example, when she directs us to pray that it may please God "to illuminate all priests and deacons with the true knowledge and understanding of his holy word," or "that God would send down upon our bishops and curates, and all congregations committed to their

charge, the healthful spirit of his grace," and we may well model at least the substance of our private petitions upon the pattern given us by the holy men who compiled our Common Prayer Book.

་་

The present season is one which, perhaps, of all the year round is most calculated to stir up our praying as well as thanksgiving energies. Who that is on the Lord's side" is not animated with a holy excitement, while listening to the heart-stirring appeals made during the progress of what are called 'the May meetings?' And while we thank God that the glory is not yet totally departed from our land, that there are still many among the highly-talented, not only of the clergy but of the aristocracy of our country, who lift their voices, constrained by the love of Christ, in behalf of those various associations for the glory of God in which English Protestants may yet rejoice; let us not retire from the arena of their glowing eloquence as those who listen "to the very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice, and can play well on an instrument;" (Ezek. xxxiii. 32.) but let our redoubled efforts and more earnest intercessory prayer shew that we have not heard in vain!

In pleading the cause of the ministry, I have entered on a wide sphere, for it is also pleading that of my country and my God; and though I am but a weak advocate, there is a strong one who intercedes at his Father's right hand, and whose plea cannot be resisted. May he, by his Spirit, impress us with earnestness in behalf of that holy cause, and then it cannot but be blest.

'For he is safe and must succeed

For whom the Lord vouchsafes to plead.'-COWPER.

W. M.

THE RELIGION OF NATURE.

No. II.-MYSTERIES.

A FRIEND has objected that, in my last paper, I have spoken of Christianity before Christ. The charge is correct: Christianity and revelation are synonymous terms; for, from the first promise of Christ in Eden, the whole Bible is Christianity. Spearman briefly says, Christianity was the first religion.'

Let us now proceed to the archbishop's first proposition. 'The world,' he says,' especially the heathen world, was much given to admire mysteries in religion; the Jews had theirs-the heathen likewise had theirs; so that almost every nation had their peculiar and celebrated mysteries, most of which were either very odd and fantastical, or very lewd and impure, or very inhuman and cruel, and every way unworthy of the Deity. But the great mystery of the Christian religion, the incarnation of the Son of God, or, as the apostle calls it, God manifest in the flesh, was such a mystery, as for the greatness and wonderfulness, for the infinite mercy and condescension of it, did obscure and swallow up all other mysteries.

For which reason, the apostle, in allusion to the heathen mysteries, and in contempt of them, speaking of the great mystery of the Christian religion, says, Without controversy, great is the mystery of godliness, God was manifest in the flesh," &c.

66

Since

the world had such an admiration of mysteries, he instanceth in that which was a mystery, indeed; a mystery beyond all dispute, and all comparison.'

That the nations of antiquity had mysteries in their forms of worship is as well-known as any fact of history. They were celebrated with the utmost pomp, under circumstances of awe, and amid darkness and silence, well-calculated to subdue the minds of those who were initiated. They were divided into the greater and lesser mysteries, of which the latter seem to have been the most ancient and the most general; the knowledge of the greater initiations was confined to a few persons, and was supposed to contain ineffable truths. The system of mysteries appears to have had its birth in the east, in very early ages, and thence to have travelled into Egypt, where it became celebrated by its union with the worship of Isis. It was also introduced into Persia and Thrace, and, subsequently to the era of Homer, into Greece, where it was established in its greatest splendour at Eleusis.

That great truths were taught to the Epopta (or those initiated into the greater mysteries), cannot be doubted. Bishop Warburton says, that the unity of God, and the doctrine of a Providence, were taught in these celebrations: others have supposed that the principal doctrine inculcated was that all the heathen gods were only deified men. A doctrine, by the way, for teaching which Plutarch calls Euhemerus an impostor, who wrote a book full of incredible fables, and diffused every sort of impiety through the world.

Plato says that the object of initiation was to restore the soul to its native state of perfection, whence it had fallen; an idea amplified by M. Orwaroff, in

his learned and elegant treatise on the Eleusinian mysteries. There seems indeed little doubt that the fall of man, the divine interposition, the promised Redeemer, and the future combat between the good and evil deities, ending in the death, yet victory, of the former, were generally taught under the various fables of Pagan antiquity.

We will not now enter at length into the origin of the ancient mythologies: I will only state my firm belief that they were corrupt traditions from revelation; with the sole exception of those portions which are derived from early historic facts, or which have their birth only from the wild loose fancy of the poets who narrate them. Plato himself declares that he and the other Greeks derived their fablesfrom certain barbarians more ancient than themselves,' and he also says that by mythos (a fable), he means a mythologic tradition received from elsewhere.

But Plato, though in himself a host, is not my only authority; Pausanias says, I know that the Chaldeans and the magi of the Indians are the first who pronounced the soul to be immortal; from them the Greeks learned their doctrine, and above all Plato the son of Aristo.' Zonaras also confirms the statement.

It is quite improbable that doctrines taught in fabulous disguise, by the poets and sages of the early world, should have been omitted in the most solemn of antiquity's religious rites, the mysteries: though it is very possible that they were confined to the greater initiations; the lesser ones being perhaps only signs and symbols, without interpretation. We know that in the Egyptian mysteries of Isis, there were scenic representations, setting forth the death of