spect to Moses, when he demanded submission to his laws on the ground that he had received them from a god called Iao-but we, as believers in the Mosaic dispensation, cannot admit that the doctrines of a Mohammed and a Moses rest on the same authority— to do this would be to overturn the Bible. No!-we claim for Moses a higher rank than can be claimed for any other human legislator-as one endowed by the Creator of all things with more of his divine spirit than ever fell to the lot of any other mortal. Our authority for saying this-is the Scripture and no higher authority can a Christian desire, where we find it written, " And God said unto Moses I am that I am; and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I am hath sent me unto you ;" and that Moses was valued more than any who had preceded him, must appear, when God spake unto him and said "I am the Lord. And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob by the name of God Almighty; but by my name Jehovah was I not known to them." And yet it is past contradiction that the books written by Moses cannot, without the grossest absurdity, be taken literally, or as any other than figurative expressions-which are, and ever have been, a riddle or enigma to the vulgar-nor have we any evidence that Moses desired them to be understood by the Jewish people— for it is contrary to reason and common sense to suppose that if he desired them to understand, he was deficient in the power to make them do so. We need hardly insist that the pretended God called Jesus Christ, is inseparably connected with and dependent upon the literal interpretation of the first chapters of the book of Genesis, where we read of the fall of man, and the great disorder introduced into the world by a serpent, which invites a woman (Eve) to pluck the forbidden fruit in a garden eastward of Eden, where the Lord put the man that he had formed, and then commanded the man, saying "Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it; for the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." The consequence of the fault said then to have been committed by our first parents, has been the knowledge of good and evil: "And the Lord God said-Behold the man is become as one of us to know good and evil; and now lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live for ever. Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the Garden of Eden

to till the ground from whence he was taken." And unto the wo man he said "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth thy children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." The dullest will see that as Christ came into the world to repair the sins of the world, had man not fallen into sin there could have been no atonement for sin, unless we can suppose atonement for a sin that had never been committed. These two dogmas cannot be separatedthey must stand or fall together. Without sinfulness practised by our first parents in the Garden of Paradise, Christ would not have appeared to bear our iniquities. Let us, then, examine the story about the fall of man, or that supposition of the double state of man, first created by the good principle or God, and afterwards passing under the dominion of the bad principle or Devil-and if we show that neither Moses, nor the learned among the Jews, at a subsequent period, considered it any otherwise than a cosmogoniqué fable-an ingenious allegory-through the veil of which the vulgar could not penetrate-precisely of the same nature as those made by the Magi or Persian priests respecting Ormusd and Ahrimanes and by the Egyptians upon Osiris and Typhon-at least one half of the work we have undertaken will be accomplished. Zoroastre, the reputed author of the Genesis of the Magi, thus expresses himself when speaking of the successive action of the two principles in the world: "Ormusd, he observes, God of light and good principle, learns to Zoroastre that he has given to man a place of delights and abundance. If I had not given to my creatures that place of abundance, no other power could have given it. That place is Eiren, which at the commencement was finer than the whole world be sides, and only exists by my will. Nothing can equal the beauty of that place of delights that I have given. I have acted first, and then Petiare (that is Ahrimanes, or the bad principle). That Ahrimanes full of death, makes in the waters the great serpent, mother of winter, which spreads cold in the waters, in the earth, and in the trees. In another part of the same work we find the following: "Ahrimanes or the principle of evil and of darkness, that by which evil comes into the world, appears in the sky under the form of a great serpent, accompanied by dews or bad geniuses, carrying everywhere death and destruction."

The above are specimens of the eastern or allegorical style of

writing and it must be at once evident to the most superficial reader that Ormusd is but a Mythos, or personification of the principle of good, whilst Ahrimanes is a personification of the principle of evil. The remark applies in like manner to the tales about Osiris and Typhon, Mithra, Hercules, Isis, Adonis, and all the deities of which we read in fabulous histories. The similarity between the tale told by Zoroastre about the garden of delights called Eiren, and that told by Moses about Eden, cannot fail to strike our readers—the causes of which similarity will be seen in future Letters-where it will also be shewn that the most fatal, as well as the most general, of all errors have had their origin in the mistakes of the ignorant, who could not distinguish between a poetical personification and a real existence-which fatal mistakes the ancient priests cared not to correct. We may add, that the reason why in the one case the garden is called Eiren and in the other Eden, is that the Hebrew copyists, instead of Eiren have put Eden-which will not appear wonderful to those who know that the two letters r and d in the Hebrew language, are very much alike in their form. Maimonide (one of the most learned of the Jewish writers) observes, when speaking of the books of Genesis, "We ought not to take literally that which is written in the Books of the Creation, nor to have the same ideas of them as are common with the vulgar. Were it otherwise our ancient sages would not have taken so much pains to conceal the sense, and keep before the eyes of the uninstructed the veil of allegory which conceals the truths it contains. Taken literally, that work contains ideas of the divinity the most extravagant and absurd. Whoever can guess at the true sense of these should take care not to divulge it. It is a maxim taught us by our sages, above all, in connection with the work of the six days. It is possible that by our own intelligence, or by assistance from the lights of others, some may come at the true meaning-then they should be silent respecting it; or, if they do speak of it, they should do so obscurely, as I myself do, leaving the rest to be divined or guessed by those who have the ability to comprehend me." It is also observed by this learned Jew, that "the love of allegory and enigma was by no means peculiar to Moses and the ancient Jewish writers, but common to all the sages of antiquity." Philo (another Jewish writer of great reputation) held precisely the same opinions with regard to the character of the

sacred books of the Hebrews.

"It is confessed by all who know anything of the Scripture, that all is there enveloped under the veil of enigma and parable," said Origen (a doctor of great reputation with the Christians) who regarded the history of Adam and Eve, the serpent, and the waters of Paradise as an allegory. St. Augustine, in his work called the "City of God," acknowledges that "all wise men agree that the adventure of Eve in plucking the fatal apple and giving it to her husband, together with the tète-àtête said to have taken place between her and the serpent, is a mere fiction." If we compare the allegory concerning Mithra, the great divinity of the Persians, with the history of Jesus Christ, we shall be at once struck with the remarkable coincidence in all the essential particulars. Thus, Mithra, we are told, was born on the same day as Christ-and that Mithra, it is well known, was but a personification of the sun-or the great luminary which seems to be the parent or cause of life and vegetation. Mithra was called the sun, and Christ was called the light which enlightens every man coming into the world. Mithra was born in a grotto-Christ in a stable— Bacchus and Jupiter in a cave, which St. Justin has remarked. We are told that Christ reposed in a grotto, when the magi, or wise men, came to adore him. But who were these wise men ? The adorers of Mithra or the sun. What presents did they carry

to the rising god? Three sorts of presents consecrated to the sun by the worship of the Arabs, of the Chaldeans, and other Eastern people. By whom were they informed of his birth? By astrology, their favourite science. What were their dogmas? They believed (according to Chardin) the eternity of the first being-which is light. How are they said to occupy themselves in that fable? In fulfilling the first duty of their religion-which commanded them to worship the rising Sun. What name was given by the prophets to Christ? That of East-The East, said they, is his name. Did space permit, we might pursue the parallel, but must content ourselves for the present in calling the attention of all Christians to such striking coincidences.

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There are few, even among the most unthinking of our readers, who will not laugh at the strange remark of Firmicus (a Christian doctor) who, when vigorously attacking the ancient religions, or, as he called them, degrading superstitions, has taken great pains to compare the characters of Mithra and Christ-noting the traits

peculiar to each-not forgetting to dwell on the astonishing resemblance between the Persian or Mithriaque mysteries and the European or Christian mysteries, however, explains this remarkable similarity between these mysteries and gods by observing (as did Tertullian and Justin) that long before any Christians existed the devil took great pleasure in copying their mysteries and ceremonies, that were to be-so that he might enjoy a laugh at the Christians' expense. e! For ourselves, who are not in the devil's secrets, (as some philosophers seem to be), we freely confess that to us it appears that the religion of Christ, borrowed from that of the ancient Persians, which was itself but the worship of the Sun, has conserved the same dogmas-the same practises-the same mysteries or nearly so that the accessories may have been more or less different-but the basis was precisely the same.

It is undoubtedly true that Tertullian, Firmicus, Justin, and others, call the devil to their aid in order to explain this wonderful resemblance-but as without the intervention of the devil, it is easy to perceive that when two religions resemble each other so perfectly, the most ancient is the mother, and the youngest is the daughter-it seems beyond dispute, that since the worship of Mithra is infinitely more ancient than that of Christ, and his ceremonies practised long before Christ was in existence, that the Christians are incontestably either a sect-or mere copyists of the religion of the magi or priests of Mithra-unless we are prepared to invert the order of things and prove to the satisfaction of all parties (which, perhaps, expert sophists may do) that new religions do not grow or spring out of old ones, but on the contrary, old religions spring out of new ones—but always aided by the accoucheury of the devil, who, according to the above-mentioned saints and fathers of the Christian Church, overreaches God by anticipating and making common to many nations that faith which he had intended for his chosen people. All that we insist upon is, that the most learned apologists of the Christian faith admit that the religion of Mithra had its sacraments, its baptisms, its eucharists, its consecrations by mystical words-in short, all that paraphernalia which ill-informed theologians, and their equally ill-informed disciples, have supposed were first introduced at what they term the coming of Christ! London: H. Hetherington, Strand; A. Heywood, Manchester; and all Booksellers.-J. Taylor, Printer, 29, Smallbrook Street, Birmingham.