are denounced as haters of truth--unbelieving Jews-perilous innovators, who wish to overthrow religion, and loosen the moral bonds of society; but then, it has been by those who, "born as the wild ass's colt," are moreover, not likely to be tamed by reason and common sense, who have sagely denounced our opinions without taking the pains to read what we have written, and farther, protest that they will not examine anything we do write-so that if they know our opinions to be subversive of religion and morality, their knowledge must be intuitive. In this they imitate the Pharisees, who, we are told, contemptously asked-" Can any good thing come out of Nazareth ?" Saying in scorn, "Look and see! for out of Galilee ariseth a prophet." They have passed to the silent tomb, but their spirit remains. The lapse of eighteen hundred years has made little improvement in the character of spiritual teachers. The Pharisee of to-day is the Pharisee of all time; he is still the "whitened wall" who makes the credulity and misery of the people the ladder by which he mounts to power and fortune-blowing the trumpet of his own renown and publishing his own sanctity at the corners of our streets, as in olden time and, as then, making all those not so hypocritical as themselves, feel their galling yoke and the sharp edge of their authority! Priests of former ages are said to have crucified Jesus, and would willingly have crucified all those who believed in him; now-oh strange difference! they would willingly crucify those who do not believe that he, who has been called by Luciana a "crucified sophist," was a God in human shape. Bitter, and never to be forgotten, were the persections suffered by the Jewish people, through ages of Christian bigotry and intolerance, because they laughed to scorn the idle, but to Christians profitable tale, that a man called Jesus Christ, whose very existence we deny, was the temporal Messiah promised by Jehovah to come in power and might to resuscitate the fallen glories of the children of Israel! We may be taunted, despised, and rejected-Christians may still spit upon our Jewish gaberdine-they may accuse us to the judges of the land as stubborn heretics, desirous to undermine the sacred foundations of their holy faith-but in the words of the poet we may exclaim-"Oh! father Abraham, what these Christians are! whose own hard dealings teaches them to suspect the thoughts of others!"

Our opinion that the character of Christ is a Mythos, if founded upon the rock of truth, cannot perish, but may safely defy the waves

of error, which will dash over it in vain; we prophecy that ere long it will be received by all as a matter of common knowledge, when this opinion will have reached its final stage, and the wonder will be great that any people upon whom God had not sent a strong delusion that they might believe a lie," should, for a single hour, have credited the monstrous fiction! The stars fought against Sisera; and surely the heavens will fight against the depravers of the human mind, and put them to flight, when it shall be known that Christ was but a personification of the Sun-and no more existed either as man or God, in divine or human shape, than Adonis,. Atys, Bacchus, Osiris, or any other heathen personifications of the Sun.

It is now past doubt, that what we read about Adonis and Venus is mere fiction, as that of Osiris, Bacchus, and Atys, which in all essential particulars are precisely the same-all having no other object than to represent by a sign or symbol in human shape, the Sun's apparent motions through the twelve signs of the zodiac; but we shall presently prove that Hercules and his twelve works related to the Sun and the twelve signs as we shall also shew that Christ and his twelve apostles relate to the same phenomena.

We do not deny that many men called Christ, may in former times, have existed in Jerusalem and elsewhere, any more than we deny that such a person or persons as Hercules once existed in Greece-but we do distinctly deny that either Christ or Hercules were gods, demi-gods, or prophets, or performed the works commonly attributed to them. Christ no more foretold the destruction of Jerusalem than did Hercules conquer the Nemean lion. Christ no more performed the miracles, Testament-makers have ascribed to him, than did Prince Hohenloe the miracles ascribed to him! To destroy the divine and prophetic character of Jesus, is to destroy all that which renders him sacred in the eyes of Christians, and at once strips his character of that gaudy plumage which dazzles the eyes of his worshippers. When this is done, it will be time enough to consider whether one or fifty Jesus Christs walked about the streets of Jerusalem eighteen hundred years ago; and really, of no more practical consequence than it would be to inquire whether certain men called Bacchus once lived in Thebes.

In periods very remote, the phenomena, so extraordinary to the eyes of uninstructed mortals, the rising and setting of the Sun, and its apparent motion from east to west, was alternately a subject of

the most doleful lamentations and wild rejoicings-when the god Sun was worshipped in the religious temples. Adonis is represented by the poets as lying on a superb bed by the side of the goddess of generation and of spring, the mother of love and of the graces. His adorers prepared for him flowers, essences, the firstfruits of the earth; he was invited by prayers, sometimes dolorous --sometimes full of joy, that he might be induced to remain with them; for, having personified their deity, they attributed to him feelings and passions-supposing, as ignorant devotees ever do, that the gods are much moved by human prayers, and love to be thus addressed. Before he returned to life-for, during the winter, the Sun was said to be asleep by the priests, while the god was said to be dead by the uninstructed multitude-fêtes were celebrated in honour of his resurrection. This fête, according to Corsini, was held on the 25th of March, on the 8th day before the kalends of April. The women of Argos-who, like the women everywhere, are the great supporters of superstition-went, just as we are told that Martha and Mary did to the sepulchre of Christ, to weep over the remains of Adonis; and that doleful ceremony was performed in a temple dedicated to the Saviour god, or god Lamb. The funeral of Adonis was annually celebrated at Alexandria with much pomp, when his image was carried in procession to the tomb. The like took place in Athens, if we may credit Plutarchus, who, in his Life of Alcibiades, informs us that upon one occasion, at the moment of the celebration of the death of Adonis, the Athenean fleet was fully equipped for the unfortunate expedition to Sicily—when nought was to be seen in the streets but the image of Adonis surrounded by a throng of women-tearing their hair, beating their breasts-playing off all those mad antics common among crazy fanatics.

Plutarchus tells us that the Egyptians thought that Hercules had his seat in the Sun, and that he sailed round the world in that star. The hymns attributed to Orpheus treat of the relation, or rather, the identity of Hercules with the Sun, by whom he is called "the god generator of time, of whom the forms are various, the father of all things, and who destroys them all. He is the god who by turns gives us the dawn and dark midnight, and runs through the career of the twelve signs; valorous Titan, thou god unrivalled and all-powerful, who destroyeth all maladies, and delivereth us from the evils which afflict us." Bacchus, son of Semele, born in Thebes, according to the Greeks, was an ancient hero who was raised to

the rank of the gods because of his conquests; but it is no less a fact, whatever the Greeks or Egyptians might have thought that Bacchus was not born in Thebes any more than Hercules was, or Jesus Christ in Judea, that he was not placed among the gods after his resurrection, any more than were Hercules, Adonis, Osiris, Atys, or Christ-it is no less a fact, that these personages were nothing more than personifications of the Sun. Here, however, is the difficulty-Christians will be incredulous, but let them reflect that the Romans would have believed-nay did believe, that the Egyptians were idolators; and the Egyptians in like manner complimented their ancestors, who probably did not fail to do the same to all who in former times worshipped any but the true lath and plaster divinities, each people being far-seeing as the vulture with regard to the superstition of their neighbours--but blind as bats and stupid as owls with respect to their own.

We know that all our readers will disclaim being superstitiousthey would shrink with horror from the idea of worshipping idols, having read the command, "Thou shalt not make thee any graven image, or any likeness that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the waters under the earth;" but we shall presently see, when we have proceeded a few steps further, that all Christians are idolators—that is, worshippers of symbols, or signs of things, which worship has not even the poor merit of originality. This bold assertion may startle but the many must be startled if we desire ultimately to benefit them. Old prejudices, like old diseases, must be shaken out of the system, or the patient dies; it is mere murder to flatter and dally with the sufferer, when by a little vigorous treatment he might be thoroughly cured,--but then, the treatment, though vigorous and firm, should not be cruel. The surgeon who finds it necessary to amputate a withered limb, should use sharp instruments, with a steady and determined hand; but none but Tyros or bunglers will inflict unnecessary torment.

The necessity there is that human beings should be shocked, and thus aroused from their present state of stupor, will appear from a consideration of their utter helplessness as regards the fulfilment of the highest and noblest duties a helplessness born of habit and confirmed by it, like that acquired by the animal nick-named the Sloth, by ignorant naturalists, who had only seen the creature when confined in the cages of our menageries, where its natural powers are deteriorated for the want of that healthful exeroise necessary

for the developement of its energies; but when ranging the trees of his native forests-he is slothful no longer; his idleness and stupidity vanish when the restraints which produced them are removed; nor shall we be wide of the mark in saying, that caging human beings in theological menageries is most destructive and pernicious to their physical and mental faculties, and moreover, as in the case of the sloth, led philosophers to make sad blunders as to the nature of man-judging him by what he was, and overlooking, or not knowing what he might become when his cage should be broken to pieces, and he permitted to breathe the pure air of Nature, and exercise those divine energies which now lie dormant within him. Men would then no longer need keepers-but gather stores of knowledge from the great garner of Nature herself-her book, the "Elder Scripture," would be ever open to them—which is written in a language intelligible to all, and convincing as intelligible.

Let, therefore, no sincere Christian be deterred from examining his religion, and thereby be convinced in his own mind that what he has hitherto strained to his breast as religion, is not the viper superstition, which poisons while it fascinates its victims! We hold that the worshippers of Jesus Christ are superstitionists-mere idolaters, who have raised temples, and offered up their incense therein to a borrowed symbol-instead of using them for the purposes of knowledge and holiness. Altars are raised, and the divine worship, instead of being full of charity, peace, and affection, like the ox offered up by Prometheus to Jupiter, contains nothing more than dry bones. Thus is the worship of deity one of empty rites and barren ceremonies, with which human beings stuff out their sacrifices-leaving no room for love, peace and charity, which should be as its bowels. Nor is this the only effect which deifying idols produces-but makes sincere idolaters hate those who will not "bow the knee to Baal." How far the early Christians were infected with the spirit of idolatry, may be seen at large in the books of the holy fathers; and never did the degenerate Jews lust after the flesh-pots of Egypt more shamefully than did the early Christians lust after the false Pagan deities! In the Life of Gregory, surnamed Thaumaturgus,* we read that " When Gregory saw the simple and unskilled multitude persisted in the worship of images, he granted them permission to indulge in like pleasures in celebrating the memory of the holy martyrs." This may have been

As quoted by Mosheim the Ecclesiastical historian, vol. 1, p. 202