lophane, were at Heliopolis, or the town of the Sun, when he saw an eclipse of the Sun when the moon was at full!--that is contrary to the nature of things,--and that the eclipse happened at the death of Christ, or the Sun! He affirms that he distinctly saw the moon place itself under the Sun, where it remained three hours, and when satisfied with its visit, travelled back again to the east, or point of opposition, where it should have been fourteen days after! When such trashy stuff as this is fabricated, and a market found for it, it is a pretty good proof that there are a number of simpletons ready to purchase such folly; and from our experience of human nature, we are warranted in saying that where fools are, there will knaves be-"where carcases are, there will eagles be gathered together." Printing has been called the art preservative of all others; four centuries have elapsed since men received so valuable an auxiliary in the acquisition of knowledge, but even now we may only print that which is orthodox, and deemed right and true by ghost-seers who hold the power of the state. Those who write in defiance of the phantom orthodoxy, must do it at some risk; but when the press shall be free, and men permitted to speak and write all they think and know, it is impossible that the Christian superstition can maintain its ground. Christian preachers dread inquiry, because inquiry must sooner or later destroy error. What people, aided by a free press and illumined by knowledge, could believe the ridiculous fictions above related, or the miracles said to have been performed by Christ and his disciples? Who, save a wretched fanatic, would pride himself upon the abandonment of reason, or have faith in idle tales that even well-instructed children laugh at, and despise ? Pope Leo X. is reported to have said " This fable of Christ maketh us rich." Aye, truly does it! and if the divinity of a religion is best proved by the fatness of those who teach, and the leanness of the taught—if the luxury of the dupers, and the squalid wretchedness of the duped, prove that a religion is of God, then is Christianity of God. The prodigies said to have been performed by Simon the magician, and the full faith the people seemed to have in that tissue of imposture, shews clearly that in those times the people believed all they were told to believe. If we read with attention the mar tyrology of the three first centuries, and the history of the miracles of Christianity, we shall have good cause to crimson with shame, that by imposture on the one hand, and blind credulity on the other, the human race should have been so foully dishonored !— and is it upon such a basis that any will now have the boldness to support the existence and history of a god, or man divine, of whom no writer of sense-no writer strange to his sect—has spoken-in times too when his miracles, had they been performed, would have astonished the Universe when we are actually compelled to search in a book written a hundred years after by Tacitus, a Pagan historian, for the etymology of the word Christian, in order to prove the existence of Christ; or, to interpret by a pious fraud a passage in Josephus,long since known to have been an interpolation? When we shall have sufficiently explained the legend-when we shall have shewn that its authors have collected different marvellous fictions, which lay scattered up and down in the works of the adorers of the Sun-that Atys, Adonis, Hercules, and Christ, were only different names for the same personification, and nothing more than the Sun, worshipped under different names—when we shall have compared their characters, the points in which they agree, noting at the same time any disagreements, and trace them to their causes, the fallacy of relying upon bold lying records of spiritual imposters, in opposition to such a mass of proofs, will at once appear ridiculous and vain. To explain the fable of the death and resurrection of Christ, by collecting and bringing under one head, legends of different religions, which, born in the East, have been propogated in the West about the time of the first Christians, will be the first great division of our subject. Should we be successful thus far, and prove beyond the reach of cavil, that the theology of the Christians is founded upon the same basis as that of the Indians, the Egyptians, and the Greeks, we shall then enter more at large upon the second grand division of the subject, which we have simply touched upon in this Letter, with a view to remove some misconceptions that many of our readers, we are told, have fallen into. London: H. Hetherington, Strand; A. Heywood, Manchester; and all Booksellers. J. Taylor, Printer, 29, Smallbrook Street, Birmingham.' EXISTENCE OF CHRIST AS A HUMAN BEING, DISPROVED! BY IRRESISTIBLE EVIDENCE, IN A SERIES OF LETTERS, FROM A GERMAN JEW, ADDRESSED TO CHRISTIANS OF ALL DENOMINATIONS. LETTER 6. WEEKLY. ONE PENNY. "I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One of Israel. Before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me. I, even I, am the Lord, and besides me there is no Saviour."-ISAIAH XLIII. 3, 10, 11. "And they brought forth the images out of the house of Baal, and burned them."-2 KINGS X. 26. CHRISTIANS, It seems reasonable to suppose that human beings observed the operations of matter upon matter the action and re-action of the particles of the universe, long ere they had the power by abstraction to arrive at a conception, however rude, of Deity. They adored the world they saw, before they had any distinct idea of a Creator they did not see; the worship, therefore, of the Universe and its parts, seemed to have preceded, nay, it is past doubt, was the origin or root of all others-giving birth to certain religious sentiments, when men were rude, uncivilized, or in what is commonly, though erroneously, understood by the terms, natural state; such religion was called natural religion. The turf was then men's fragrant shrine, Of all the phenomena which bewildered and astonished the halfsavage beholder, none could have been so suggestive and inspiring as the machinery of the heavens, the secret springs of which, baffle the ingenuity of the curious, and are an eternal record of human ignorance: for if the heavens declare the glory of God they equally publish the ignorance of man, who has gazed till his sight aches at them; but while feeding his eyes, his understanding hath not been fed; and if men have conceived of the causes of these wonders, they have done so at the expense of the Deity-inasmuch as presumptous philosophers have degraded God by reducing him to the level of their own conceptions-instead of elevating their conceptions up to God! To see the minutest insect made sensible to sight by the microscope, is to behold a wonder; but what words can describe the mingled feelings of awe and delight, which seem as struggling for mastery in the mind of the true man, when he sees the morning Star of day, as it seems to rise majestically in the east-dissipating the shadows of night-sailing above the horizon-infusing joy and life and gladness by its presence-heralding in the day, and arousing Nature herself from her drowsiness! Who, not hooped about by a heart-chilling stoicism, corrupted by affectation, or degraded by fanaticism, but must feel a thrill of ecstacy, and long to know how such things can be! Great is the vanity of that man who struggles to free himself from the shackles which bind his body and soul, though in his efforts to do so, they eat into his flesh, making him suffer the torments fabled of the damned! Vain are all strugglings against the nature of things-which is one and eternal-giving birth to folly and its hideous train of falsehood, treachery, racking doubts and fears-making the garden earth a thorny wilderness ! Darkness to the mentally blind, was and is a mystery; the witching time of night was a time of terrors to the uninitiated into the causes thereof, for the phenomena we know not the cause of, we instinctively fear; hence the science of causation is that which would tend more than ought else to disabuse us of vain alarms,-as wise men fear no darkness, save that of ignorance, but rather woo and love it, when they would enjoy negative bliss, "the balm of hurt minds," compose themselves to sleep, and shut out for a season the remembrance of their toils and anxieties. If, to the superstitious, darkness and dread came hand in hand, like twin fiends, light must have been welcomed as the harbinger of exceeding joy; and the Sun being the never-failing source of light and heat, which is the principle of life, how can we wonder that the splendid luminary should have been hailed as a deliverer!-chanted by the poets as the generator and preserver of all things, and by the common people as a living god-eternally occupied in combating with and chasing away the spirits of evil or darkness-those destructive foes of the human race! The Sun neither rises nor sets in reality-nor does it move from east to west, but merely appears to do so. No! the Sun is ever the same, and like to itself; to our eyes, it carries an air of perpetuity and unchangeableness-seeming to bear upon it the seal of eternity! Our first fathers have not seen its beginning-our remotest posterity will not see its end! Were it annihilated, or did its rays no longer penetrate, as now they do, the very innermost recesses of matter, all would be a stiffened heap-without form, and void! Generations rise from the earth-strut and fret their hour upon the stage of human affairs, and pass again to that earth from whence they sprang. Thus does matter, the common mother of all-most unnaturally, as to some it seems--devour her own offspring. We are born and die; scarcely are we born-hardly do we spring from the common womb, than we return to it all entire ; and when decomposed, our bodies' wreck furnishes material for new existences!-and so short is the span of mortal bliss, or woe-so quickly does death tread upon the heels of life-that the wonder only is, that men should not long since have shaken off fear, and learned to endure the grim monster, which "must come when it will come." But if death be the common lot of all that is on earth-not so with heavenly things, which give no indication of progress or decay, improvement or deterioration. The Sun seems as bright-grand-imposing now, as in any former times!-redolent of beauty, strength, and majesty that to the imaginative and ardent mind it may to-day appear as to the first mortals who beheld its lustre, and were dazzled by its brightness !—the fierychariot of an Eternal God, who chaseth before him through the etherial vault, the demons of night and of evil! The basis of all natural religion is, and ever was, the Universe, or great whole, which in former ages, was worshipped as one being made up of many parts, under names and forms innumerable; and not, as now, considered as distinct from the Deity. To suppose a Deity distinct from the Universe, capable of creating it, was an effort of the mind which, as before noted, benighted heathens were not equal to; accordingly, we find that the worship of the material world was the first worship, which, however unreasonable and absurd, was of a tangible character; and though injurious, was but nega |