of Heaven held his court, formed his councils, and received and gave answers to the various petitions that were presented to him by the different parties, who felt deeply interested in that memo. rable siege. The particulars of this siege, and the conduct of the Gods and Goddesses, on the occasion, are they not written in the books of the Iliad, by the hand of the immortal Homer?

And here it was that the amorous Jupiter, in spite of the jealous vigilance of the beautiful and voluptuous Juno, assumed all manner of shapes, under which he carried on all sorts of intrigues, not only with the Goddesses of Heaven, but with the daughters of Earth. These amours lead to the discovery of the origin of a hero, whose name, during the last 1800 years, has struck terror and dismay into the souls of the inhabitants of the Christian world. The original name of this divine hero is Lucifer, which the Christians, by some unaccountable perversion of language, have translated into DEVIL! Nor was the changing of the name all; the Genius of Light was deposed, and the Demon of Darkness set up in its stead.

This Lucifer was the son of Jupiter and Aurora, or in plain language, he was the son of Air and Light, and was known among the ancients as the herald of day, the bright and beautiful harbinger of light.

At what precise period Jupiter was set up as an object of worship, or by whom he was created, I canuot discover, as there are various stories concerning his origin. One of these stories makes him the great grand-son of Acmon, King of the TITANS. -I know not how to reconcile this tale with the circumstances of the case, since the Titans warred against heaven while Jupiter was a god; for he defeated and destroyed the TITAN kingdom for their rebellion against him.

The Titans were a colony from EGYPT, who settled in Greece, and were much superior in knowledge and civilization to the barbarous and idolatrous Greeks: and this warring against heaven was nothing, more or less, than opposing superior intellect to the customs, prejudices, and superstitione of the people of that age, in the same manner as Carlile, Taylor, and others, are warring against heaven at the present period; with this difference: the ancient Titans were destroyed; the modern Titans are likely to be triumphant.

If any thing were yet wanting to prove that Jupiter was originally nothing but Air personified, the circumstance of his being called the thunderer, the god of thunder, &c. would add considerable weight to the evidence already adduced, as it is well known, now, that air is the sole cause of thunder, and is, therefore, the true god of thunder, the real thunderer.

Many ignorant and superstitious people still retain the idea, that thunder is the immediate voice of God, and that he is always angry, or in a passion, whenever thunder is heard. These ideas

could never have got into the people's minds, had it not been the interest of their spiritual guides to obscure, and to distort the laws of nature, instead of investigating and explaining the motions and operations of matter which produce such phenomena as thunder, lightning, &c. Had the millionth part of the money which has been lavished on theologians, for misleading and bewildering the human mind with metaphysical phantasms, been spent in instructing the people in useful knowledge, knowledge, which must be acquired before either body or mind can be free, the meanest clown would have known, now, that thunder is not the voice of an intelligent god, nor lightning the fire of indignation! He would have known, that when two clouds, fraught with an un> equal portion of electrical fluid, come near to each other, the cloud containing the greater quantity will discharge its superabundance into the other cloud, and with a flash of lightning restore the equilibrium; the environing air then violently rushing into the vacuum of the discharged cloud, causes that loud and sublime noise which is called thunder. He would have known, also, that the thunder of Mount Olympus was the same as the thunder of Mount Sinai; and that the thunder of Mount Sinai was the same as the thunder of Primrose Hill.

The same argument which I have made use of in the case of Jupiter Primus, may be used in the case of Jupiter Secundus, or Neptune. In this case, the water was personified; the personification was exalted to a Deity, the God of the Sea became an object of divine worship and temples were dedicated to the hohour of his marble representative. If we examiue all the mythological systems of the heathens, we shall find nothing but personifications and deifications in the objects of their worship. The ancients not only deified the elements, the sun, the moon, the stars, and their heroes, but almost every virtue, vice, passion, and sentiment, were personified into gods, goddesses, nymphs, or some other object of adoration. When I consider all these things as merely poetical inventions, I cannot withhold my admiration of the men who could create, give name, character, habitation, and assign offices to such an innumerable host of ideal beings, not one of which ever had an existence, but whose names shall be remembered as long as the arts of poetry, painting, and sculpture, shall continue to be cultivated.

My principal object, in taking up the pen to write this essay, was to endeavour to prove that matter in its elements existed be fore the most ancient of the gods, and that they proceeded from matter, instead of matter proceeding from them. This I have done, to my own satisfaction, as far as regards the heathen gods; I will now proceed to examine the great Jehovah, the God of the Jews, who is said to have created every thing out of nothing, instead of being part and parcel of matter as were his predecessors; but I contend, that even Jehovah is a being of human invention,

or rather an imitation of other gods. The exact time that he was set up as an object of worship it is difficult to discover: some writers have placed the event about 1491 years before the Christian era, or about 500 years after the Titans warred against heaven, and were defeated by Jupiter.

Upon the introduction of this new god, a mighty revolution took place in the laws of nature, every thing was attempted to be reversed; the gods, that were worshipped before Jehovah, had bodies, parts, and passions, and made a very active use of them, especially in their wars and amours; but the new god, the God of Moses, had neither arms, legs, tongue, eyes, mouth, ears, nor any kind of organization, yet he could speak more eloquently, write more correctly, and wield the sword more powerfully than any of the other gods, although they are represented to have enjoyed every necessary organ. This circumstance, as it well might, filled the world with wonder and admiration, and the people hailed, with acclamations of joy, the news of this grand spiritual phenomenon!

A new system of morals was now formed to correspond with the doctrines and revelations of this incomprehensible god! Every thing underwent a change; the persons who were ranked as sages and philosophers, before this spiritual revolution, were now considered idiots and fools; and those who were esteemed idiots and fools before were now exalted to the rank of doctors and metaphysicians! As the great Jehovah, or pater nil, created everything out of nothing, the shadow was made to command and to control the substance; positive evil was pronounced positive good; and war, rapine, and murder, became the leading features of the new religion!

Whenever, and wherever the armies of Israel assembled for war, whether in a just or unjust cause, Jehovah was always placed at the head, to issue out the order of the day. The orders, the decrees, and proclamations, are they not written in Numbers, chap. xxxi., and other parts of the Holy Bible? He was a military sovereign, and a conjuror, in every sense of the word. The camp of Israel was his throne; her sword his sceptre, and his march was on the wind. If we consider him in the character of a legislator, are his laws perfect? Are they superior to human enactments? If they are, why are human legislators necessary? Why do Parliaments meet annually to improve, or to repeal the laws of God! To discover the imperfections of an inspired legislator we have only to refer to Exodus, chap. xviii,, beginning at the 13th verse, for there we may clearly perceive human reason triumph over divine inspiration.

If we consider Jehovah, in the character of a chief magistrate, what power does he possess to enforce the observance of his laws, and to punish crime according to its desert? To this question, the religious will reply, that he is both able to save

and to destroy; but the divine wisdom chooses sometimes to suffer the innocent to perish, that the cause of religion might triumph! On the other hand, the wicked are permitted to prosper for a reason that their fall might be the greater, and what shall I say? That the cause of hell might prevail?

Frightful policy! Detestable doctrine! This is upon a par with the conduct of the worst part of our police officers, who permit, and thereby encourage, petty thieves to go on their depredations, till they snap that link in the chain of the law which ensures to them the price of the blood of their victims! Did Vaughan, Brock, Pelham, and Powers, endeavour to draw innocent men into crime, and consequently into destruction, that justice might triumph? Horrible! If we consider the omnipotent in the character of a military chieftain the thing appears still more absurd, for how could armies be necessary to revenge the wrongs received by omnipotence? How could he, who could måke worlds out of nothing, as fast as we could blow bubbles from soapsuds, need the aid of earthly powers? The fact is, the Jews were ashamed of their infamous atrocities, they, therefore, I created a god to father their monstrous barbarities.*

But why do I dwell on these metaphysical absurdities, sinc whenever such principles are attempted to be established on earth they excite universal horror, and are universally condemned. The grand object of the priest of every religion is to conceal the weakness, and to exaggerate the power of his god; and nothing can effect the latter part of the object so effectually as making him a worker of miracles. This makes him superior to the operations annd revolutions of matter which were constantly referred to by Jove, under the title of Fate; so that the ancient Jove was as much a fatalist as the modern Jupiter, Napoleon Buonaparte, a persuasion which is now attempted to be established by inferior mortals under the name of the doctrine of necessity.

Jove was not only governed by fate, but, on one occasion, and that a very brilliant one, even Juno, his wife, out-counselled him, turned his own thunder against his peculiar people (the Trojans), for Jove, like Jehovah, had his favourites, snatched from his hand the glories of Troy, and reduced to ashes the heavenbuilt city.

If Jove, who it is allowed was a material God, could be rendered so powerless when his desire must have been so strong, how can Jehovah, who is an immaterial god, be omnipotent? The alternate weakness and power of Jove are further proofs that he was what I have stated him to be, personified air. Just so is the action of the wind: sometimes it has power to tear up trees by the roots, force down the strongest buildings, and dis

This is saying rather too much for the Jews. They have nothing original or distinct about them as a nation, or a people.-R. C.

perse and destroy the most powerful navies; and, at other times, it is found to be too weak to bear up a paper kite. And are not the same qualities observable in the character of Jehovah himself? When an earthquake swallows up a whole city, however innocent its inhabitants may be, do not his worshippers give the event the character of a judgment, and believe that it was achieved by the hand of their Almighty God? And yet this same Almighty God, at other times, is too weak, or too regardless, to save the poor devoted wretch, who is about to perish at the stake in the defence of the empire of the laws of heaven!.

Having described and compared the qualities of the gods, let us now enquire a little about their names: first, let us see how the Latin word Deus is rendered into English. Deus, like almost every other word that alludes to any thing supernatural, is derived from the Greek language, and is defined as follows:-A god, a goddess, a genius, an oracle, an angel, a saint, a patron, a benefactor: so that, according to the Latin name, in plain language, God is any thing, and any thing is God. To support this any thing, or no-thing, during the last 4000 years, not less, but perhaps much more, than £400,000,000,000. in money, and other property, have heen wrung from the sweat and blood of the labouring part of mankind! Beside the numberless tortures that have been inflicted on the human race: because they could not believe all that was set down in their creed, and were too honest to tell a lie! Millions upon milllons of men, women, and children, during the above period, have been murdered in religious wars, to gratify the ambition and cupidity of successive and rapacious priesthoods, who carry humanity on their lips, and robbery and murder on their hearts.

Religion, now, is become a real speculative concern—a com-plete joint stock business. Half-a-dozen cunning, lazy fellows, get together set on foot a subscription; dupes from all quarters come forward, a church, or a chapel springs up; the firm commeuces, and the congregation pay all, aud receive nothing, whilst the half-dozen lazy fellows receive all and pay nothing. Göd, even in the minds of the religious, stands for nothing; or a man would not dare to do that in the sight of a God, which he would be ashamed to do in the presence of a baby.

From all these considerations, may we not hope, in the language of the prophet, and quoted by Mr. Wm. Allen, in his Lecture to the Students at Guy's Hospital, that the era is advancing, when "the knowedge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the sea." Little did Mr. Allen think when he was delivering his lecture, that his knowledge of god would so soon be put to the test by the question

WHAT IS GOD?

He is silent. I will speak for him. And the best way I can