years younger than he. Suppose, therefore, that he, or any other eminent philosopher at that time, had gone to that country, led by the fame of the great individual then teaching and performing miracles there; he would not probably, like the self-sufficient Greeks, have at once reckoned the gospel foolishness. He would have applied his mind to it with impartiality and candour, and considered it with the profoundest attention; and various matters closely connected with it must have appeared to him as well deserving of notice.

Among the most remarkable of those may have been the circumstance, that there had existed at Rome, from its earliest ages, the books of the ancient sybils, containing more sublime tenets of religion, and a purer morality, than the popular belief afforded; as well as predictions of some universal deliverer, under whom all men were to be happy. But he would remember, too, that such wonderful writings had not been peculiar to ancient Rome, for that a hundred years before his time, the Sybilline volumes having been accidentally destroyed by the burning of a temple in the capitol, and it having been reported that similar books were in other countries, on enquiry they were found in Africa, Sicily, and the islands of the Archipelago. He would recollect, also, that commissioners from the Senate having been sent abroad, they were collected, as the poems of Homer had been by Lycur

gus; and that from those materials the sacred volumes were restored by the most learned men of Rome.*

But he would probably have further remembered, that the recording of the important truths had not been confined even to such extensive ranges as those, for that the expectation of some deliverer was common also in the East; and that Brama himself was there expected to avenge and bless mankind. Nor would he forget that the penetrating minds of Socrates and Plato in Greece had, centuries before, induced them to look for a teacher from heaven.

With such recollections as these, our enquirer would next have adverted to the interesting truth, that in Palestine there had long existed that people, among whom he then was; that among them-even the most unlearned of them-there had ever been ideas of deity much more sublime than his own, (philosopher though he was);-that, in the sacred books of that people, far more distinct prophecies were said to be found, of some great deliverer, than all those which abounded elsewhere; and further, that at that very time a wonderful person had appeared among them, teaching a morality purer than had ever been known before, combining it with sublime conceptions of God, and confirming his assertion of being sent from heaven by the

* This historical fact is mentioned by Tacitus, (Annals, lib. vi. 12,) and by Lactantius.

working of great miracles, some of which he himself had seen. The idea of a divine person appearing upon earth for the good of mankind, might not seem to our philosopher to be extraordinary; for, according to his own mythology, Ceres had descended from heaven to teach men to cultivate the ground; and Esculapius to instruct them in the healing art. Why, then, might he not suppose one still greater than they to come down upon a far more important errand? and may he not have conjectured that he who thus appeared in Judea might be that very teacher and deliverer, who, in so many nations, had been so long looked for, and so anxiously expected?

CHAPTER II.

WITH his mind full of such reflections as these, let us suppose our great enquirer to have set himself more seriously about the object of his visit. When a person of a philosophical turn goes into a strange country, his attention is drawn, not merely to its fine scenery and physical peculiarities: the religion of its natives, their rites and ceremonies, the progress of their intelligence and moral feelings, all likewise form to him subjects of curious and careful investigation. This must have been peculiarly the case with any one like our enquirer, who, as we suppose, had gone to that country, attracted not only by the fame of the won

derful teacher who had appeared in it, but also by the report which he had heard, of a religion having long existed there widely different from that which he had been accustomed to see at Athens or Rome, and much more consonant to reason.

With this view, he would resort to the SCRIPTURES of the Jews, and he could not fail to be struck with the charming simplicity of their narrative of the patriarchal ages, and of the story of Joseph, the delight of every youthful reader; with the extreme interest produced by the sufferings of the Israelites in Egypt, and the strong interposition of the Deity to extricate them from their oppressors; with the wisdom of the sayings of their enlightened king; with the sublimity of the prophets and the psalmist; the pathetic mourning of David for Jonathan; the expression of his impassioned grief for his beautiful, but unfortunate Absalom; and with the plaintive sorrow which runs so melodiously through the Lamentations of Jeremiah. In reading these, he could not but in his mind compare them with the noted classics of Greece and Rome, which had been the source of so much of his admiration and pleasure; nor would they suffer by the contrast. In the scripture histories, he would find narration that was not excelled, either for simplicity or perspicuity, by even the Father of History. In the admirable collections of Solomon, he would see maxims for the regulation of conduct and manners, to which all the sayings of the Grecian sages were not equal; and (as

their themes were so far inferior) he would find even the sublimity of Homer, and the majestic beauty of Virgil, to hide their diminished heads when compared with the Song of Moses, the seraphic fire of Isaiah, and those melodious strains which glided so sweetly on the ancient Zion.

CHAPTER III.

THESE must have been his observations upon the Scriptures as a scholar; but his chief aim would be to examine them as a philosopher; and his greatest object would naturally be the THEOLOGY to be found in them, and the ideas of God which they contained.

In those enquiries, various circumstances must have strongly arrested his attention. The Jews were re

garded by the ancients as a colony which came originally from Egypt; and the difference between the colonists and the mother country, as to these important subjects, must have appeared to him not a little extraordinary. His wonder would not be diminished. on his enquiring more particularly into their earlier history; for the Israelites were a small tribe, who had migrated from a distant land, and being driven by famine into Egypt, had been there subjected to bondage; yet, amid the gross superstitions of their mas