such a comparison is most degrading to the King Eternal, and is fitted utterly to pervert the minds of those who contemplate it, as if there was or could be any similitude between such a figure and Him who hath said, "To whom will ye liken God, and what likeness will ye compare unto Him?"

The Papacy has in some of its churches, as, for instance, in the monastery of the so-called Trinitarians of Madrid, an image of the Triune God, with three heads on one body.* The Babylonians had something of the same. Mr. Layard, in his last work, has given a specimen of such a triune divinity, worshipped in ancient Assyriat (Fig. 3). The accompanying cut (Fig. 4) of such another divinity, worshipped among the Pagans of Siberia, is taken from a medal in the Imperial Cabinet of St. Petersburg, and given in Parson's "Japhet." The three heads are differently arranged in Layard's specimen, but both alike are evidently intended to symbolise the same great truth, although all such representations of the Trinity

necessarily and utterly debase the conceptions of those, among whom such images prevail, in regard to that sublime mystery of our faith. In India, the supreme divinity, in like manner, in one of the most

* PARKHURST's Hebrew Lexicon, sub voce, "Cherubim." From the following extract from the Dublin Catholic Layman, a very able Protestant paper, describing a Popish picture of the Trinity, recently published in that city, it will be seen that something akin to this mode of representing the Godhead is appearing nearer home:-"At the top of the picture is a representation of the Holy Trinity. We beg to speak of it with due reverence. God the Father and God the Son are represented as a MAN with two heads, one body, and two arms. One of the heads is like the ordinary pictures of our Saviour. The other is the head of an old man, surmounted by a triangle. Out of the middle of this figure is proceeding the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove. We think it must be painful to any Christian mind, and repugnant to Christian feeling, to look at this figure.”—Catholic Layman, 17th July, 1856.

+ Babylon and Nineveh, p. 160. Some have said that the plural form of the name of God, in the Hebrew of Genesis, affords no argument for the doctrine of plurality of persons in the Godhead, because the same word in the plural is applied to heathen divinities. But if the supreme divinity in almost all ancient heathen nations was triune, the futility of this objection must be manifest.

Japhet, p. 184.

C

ancient cave-temples, is represented with three heads on one body, under the name of "Eko Deva Trimurtti," "One God, three forms."* In Japan, the Buddhists worship their great divinity, Buddha, with three heads, in the very same form, under the name of "San Pao Fuh."+ All these have existed from ancient times. While overlaid with idolatry, the recognition of a Trinity was universal in all the ancient nations of the world, proving how deep-rooted in the human race was the primeval doctrine on this subject, which comes out so distinctly in Genesis. When we look at the symbols in the triune figure of Layard, already referred to, and minutely examine them, they are very instructive. Layard regards the circle in that figure as signifying "Time without bounds." But the hieroglyphic meaning of the circle is evidently different. A circle in Chaldee was zero; § and zero also signified "the seed." Therefore, according to the genius of the mystic system of Chaldea, which was to a large extent founded on double meanings, that which, to the eyes of men in general, was only zero, "a circle," was understood by the initiated to signify zero, "the seed." Now, viewed in this light, the triune emblem of the supreme Assyrian divinity shows clearly what had been the original patriarchal faith. First, there is the head of the old man; next, there is the zero, or circle, for “the seed;" and lastly, the wings and tail of the bird or dove ;] showing, though blasphemously, the unity of Father, Seed, or Son, and

* Col. KENNEDY's Hindu Mythology, p. 211. Col. Kennedy objects to the application of the name "Eko Deva” to the triform image in the cave-temple at Elephanta, on the ground that that name belongs only to the supreme Brahm. But in so doing he is entirely inconsistent, for he admits that Brahmà, the first person in that triform image, is identified with the supreme Brahm; and further, that a curse is pronounced upon all who distinguish between Brahmà, Vishnu, and Seva, the three divinities represented by that image.

+ GILLESPIE's Sinim, p. 60.

The threefold invocation of the sacred name in the blessing of Jacob bestowed on the sons of Joseph is very striking: "And he blessed Joseph, and said, God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads" (Gen. xlviii. 15, 16). If the Angel here referred to had not been God, Jacob could never have invoked him as on an equality with God. In Hosea, xii. 3-5, "The Angel who redeemed" Jacob is expressly called God: "He (Jacob) had power with God: yea, he had power over the Angel, and prevailed; he wept and made supplication unto him he found him in Bethel, and there he spake with us; even the Lord God of Hosts; The Lord is his memorial."

§ In our own language we have evidence that Zero had signified a circle among the Chaldeans; for what is Zero, the name of the cypher, but just a circle? And whence can we have derived this term but from the Arabians, as they, without doubt, had themselves derived it from the Chaldees, the grand original cultivators at once of arithmetic, geometry, and idolatry? Zero, in this sense, had evidently come from the Chaldee, zer, to encompass," from which, also, no doubt, was derived the Babylonian name for a great cycle of time, called a "saros.”—(BUNSEN, vol. i. pp. 711, 712.) As he, who by the Chaldeans was regarded as the great "Seed," was looked upon as the sun incarnate (see chap. iii. sect. i.), and as the emblem of the sun was a circle (BUNSEN, vol. i. p. 335, and p. 537, No. 4), the hieroglyphical relation between zero, "the circle," and zero, "the seed," was easily established.

|| From the statement in Gen. i. 2, that "the Spirit of God fluttered on the face of the deep" (for that is the expression in the original), it is evident that the dove had very early been a Divine emblem for the Holy Spirit.

Holy Ghost. While this had been the original way in which Pagan idolatry had represented the Triune God, and though this kind of representation had survived to Sennacherib's time, yet there is evidence that, at a very early period, an important change had taken place in the Babylonian notions in regard to the divinity; and that the three persons had come to be, the eternal Father, the Spirit of God incarnate in a human mother, and a Divine Son, the fruit of that incarnation.

SECTION II.-THE MOTHER AND CHILD, AND THE ORIGINAL

OF THE CHILD.

While this was the theory, the first person in the Godhead was practically overlooked. As the Great Invisible, taking no immediate

concern in human affairs, he was "to be worshipped through silence alone," that is, in point of fact, he was not worshipped by the multitude at all. The same thing is strikingly illustrated in India at this day. Though Brahmà, according to the sacred books, is

*From KITTO's Illustrated Commentary, vol. iv. p. 31.

+ Indrani, the wife of the Indian god Indra, from Asiatic Researches, vol. vi. p. 393.

JAMBLICHUS, On the Mysteries, sect. viii. chap. iii.

the first person of the Hindoo Triad, and the religion of Hindostan is called by his name, yet he is never worshipped, and there is scarcely a single Temple in all India now in existence of those that were formerly erected to his honour.* So also is it in those countries of Europe where the Papal system is most completely developed. In Papal Italy, as travellers universally admit (except where the Gospel has recently entered), all appearance of worshipping the King Eternal and Invisible is almost extinct, while the Mother and the Child are the grand objects of worship. Exactly so, in this latter respect, also was it in ancient Babylon. The Babylonians, in their popular religion, supremely worshipped a Goddess Mother and a Son, who was represented in pictures and in images as an infant or child in his mother's arms (Figs. 5 and 6). From Babylon, this worship of the Mother and the Child spread to the ends of the earth. In Egypt, the Mother and the Child were worshipped under the names of Isis and Osiris.† In India, even to this day, as Isi and Iswara; ‡ in Asia, as Cybele and Deōius;§ in Pagan Rome, as Fortuna and Jupiter-puer, or Jupiter, the boy; || in Greece, as Ceres, the great Mother, with the babe at her breast,¶ or as Irene, the goddess of Peace, with the boy Plutus in her arms; ** and even in Thibet, in China, and Japan, the Jesuit missionaries were astonished to find the counterpart of Madonna†† and her child as devoutly *WARD's View of the Hindus, apud KENNEDY's Researches into Ancient and Modern Mythology, p. 196.

Osiris, as the child called most frequently Horus. BUNSEN, vol. i. p. 438, compared with pp. 433, 434.

KENNEDY'S Hindoo Mythology, p. 49. Though Iswara is the husband of Isi, he is also represented as an infant at her breast. Ibid. p. 338, Note.

$ DYMOCK's Classical Dictionary, "Cybele" and "Deōius." CICERO'S Works, De Divinatione, lib. ii. cap. 41, vol. iii. p. 77. TSOPHOCLES, Antigone, v. 1133.

** PAUSANIAS, lib. i. ATTICA, cap. 8.

The very name by which the Italians commonly designate the Virgin, is just the translation of one of the titles of the Babylonian goddess. As Baal or Belus was the name of the great male divinity of Babylon, so the female divinity was called Beltis.-(HESYCHIUS, Lexicon, p. 188.) This name has been found in Nineveh applied to the "Mother of the gods "-(Vaux's Nineveh and Persepolis, p. 459); and in a speech attributed to Nebuchadnezzar, preserved in EUSEBII Præparatio Evangelii, lib. ix. cap. 41, both titles "Belus and Beltis," are conjoined as the titles of the great Babylonian god and goddess. The Greek Belus, as representing the highest title of the Babylonian god, was undoubtedly Baal, "The Lord." Beltis, therefore, as the title of the female divinity, was equivalent to "Baalti," which, in English, is "My Lady," in Latin, "Mea Domina," and, in Italian, is corrupted into the well-known "Madonna." In connection with this, it may be observed, that the name of Juno, the classical "Queen of Heaven," which, in Greek, was Hēra, also signified "The Lady; and that the peculiar title of Cybele or Rhea at Rome, was Domina or "The Lady." (OVID, Fasti, lib. iv. v. 340.) Further, there is strong reason to believe, that Athena, the well-known name of Minerva at Athens, had the very same meaning. The Hebrew Adon, "The Lord," is, with the points, pronounced Athon. We have evidence that this name was known to the Asiatic Greeks, from whom idolatry, in a large measure, came into European Greece, as a name of God, under the form of "Athan." Eustathius, in a note on the Periergesis of Dionysius (v. 915, apud BRYANT, vol. iii. p. 140), speaking of local names in the district of Laodicea, says that "Athan is god." The feminine of Athan, "The

worshipped as in Papal Rome itself; Shing Moo, the Holy Mother in China, being represented with a child in her arms, and a glory around her, exactly as if a Roman Catholic artist had been employed to set her up.

*

SUB-SECTION I. -THE CHILD IN ASSYRIA.

The original of that mother, so widely worshipped, there is reason to believe, was Semiramis, † already referred to, who, it is well known, was worshipped by the Babylonians, ‡ and other eastern nations,§ and that under the name of Rhea,|| the great Goddess Mother."

It was from the son, however, that she derived all her glory and her claims to deification. That son, though represented as a child in his mother's arms, was a person of great stature and immense bodily powers, as well as most fascinating manners. In Scripture he is referred to (Ezek. viii. 14) under the name of Tammuz, but he is commonly known among classical writers under the name of Bacchus, that is, "The Lamented one." To the ordinary reader Lord," is Athāna, "The Lady," which in the Attic dialect, is Athēna. No doubt, Minerva is commonly represented as a virgin; but, for all that, we learn from Strabo (Lib. x. cap. 3, p. 405. Paris, 1853), that at Hierapytna in Crete (the coins of which city, says Müller, Dorians, vol. i. p. 413, have the Athenian symbols of Minerva upon them), she was said to be the mother of the Corybantes by Helius, or "The Sun." It is certain that the Egyptian Minerva, who was the prototype of the Athenian goddess, was a mother, and was styled "Goddess Mother," or "Mother of the Gods."-See WILKINSON, vol. iv. p. 285.

* CRABB'S Mythology, p. 150. Gutzlaff thought that Shing Moo must have been borrowed from a Popish source; and there can be no doubt, that in the individual case to which he refers, the Pagan and the Christian stories had been amalgamated. But Sir J. F. Davis shows that the Chinese of Canton find such an analogy between their own Pagan goddess Kuanyin and the Popish Madonna, that, in conversing with Europeans, they frequently call either of them indifferently by the same titles.-DAVIS's China, vol. ii. p. 56. The first Jesuit missionaries to China also wrote home to Europe, that they found mention in the Chinese sacred books-books unequivocally Pagan-of a mother and child, very similar to their own Madonna and child at home.--See LE PERE LAFITAN, Les Mœurs des Sauvages Ameriquains, vol. i. p. 235, Note.

One of the names of the Chinese Holy Mother is Ma Tsoopo; in regard to which, see Appendix, Note C.

Sir H. Rawlinson having found evidence at Nineveh, of the existence of a Semiramis about six or seven centuries before the Christian era, seems inclined to regard her as the only Semiramis that ever existed. But this is subversive of all history. The fact that there was a Semiramis in the primeval ages of the world, is beyond all doubt (see JUSTIN, Historia, p. 615, and the historian CASTOR in Cory's Fragments, p. 65), although some of the exploits of the latter queen have evidently been attributed to her predecessor. Mr. Layard dissents from Sir H. Rawlinson's opinion.

See DIODORUS SICULUS, lib. ii. p. 76. § ATHENAGORAS, Legatio, pp. 178, 179. || PASCHAL, Chronicle, vol. i. p. 65.

T From Bakhah 66 to weep or

"lament." Among the Phenicians, says

Hesychius, "Bacchos means weeping," p. 179. As the women wept for Tammuz,

so did they for Bacchus.