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a man leave his father and mother, and should cleave unto his wife, and they should be one flesh." The difficulty which besets all this is greatly increased when we reflect that Adam could not then have known any thing about a man's leaving his father and his mother, and clinging unto his wife, any more than an Exeter-change ourang-outang can know what is passing at this moment in the planet Jupiter!

As we proceed with our examination of the book of Genesis, the necessity of rationalizing the Bible,-in other words, giving as far as possible the true explanation of its contents, will be admitted by all; and it is idle for sectarians to say, that they scout all mere opinions, all creeds of human invention, and take the Bible for their guide; for when they speak of the Bible, they cannot mean a certain number of leaves, with a certain number of characters marked thereon, bound in calf and gold; no, they must mean (if they mean any thing) the truths that it contains, the dogmas it enforces, in short, the sum total of its history, its morality, and its dogmas; but if no two of those who read the Bible, attach the same meaning to its contents, a thousand individuals, each interpreting the Scripture in his own manner, might all proclaim that they took the Bible for their guide, and yet their opinions be wide as the poles asunder-the very antipodes of each. And this right of private interpretation, is what must be granted to the improved and improving spirit of the age-it demands that, and will be content with nothing less; any thing short of the full right of all individuals to interpret, as best they may, the Bible, or any other books, is a most unjust and irrational interference with liberty of conscience, and that right of private judgment so strenuously insisted upon by the first Protestants and the Dissenters of the present day,-those among them, more especially, who have as yet obtained little political power. The Protestants cry aloud "The Bible, the Bible-we say the Bible only is the religion of Protestants :" perhaps so; and if the Protestants can find their religious sentiments and feelings embodied and proclaimed in the Bible, they act but consistently if they make their lives and actions harmonize with its injunctions; but let not those who do find their religion in the Bible hate and persecute those who do not; nor should those who give one reading, or one interpretation to its contents, fine or throw into a dungeon those who give an unfashionable reading, or interpret disagreeably to the great monster called public orthodoxy."

London: H. Hetherington; 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 19.

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.

CHRISTIANS,

Before proceeding further with our explication of the book of Genesis, it may be useful to correct an error which has been going the round of the press. The error to which we allude is an important one; and seems to have arisen out of an observation made by us to the effect, that we did not deny that one or fifty Christs may have walked about the streets of Jerusalem, any more than we deny that one or fifty Herculeses may have existed in Phenecia, Egypt, or Greece, which observation has been strangely enough construed into an admission that Jesus Christ actually existed, as contended by ecclesiastical and other historians; which is certainly a most extraordinary conclusion for any intelligent reader to arrive at, as the slightest reflection must convince all, that in disproving the existence of Jesus Christ as a human being, it was not the existence of a Christ that we offered to disprove, but the Jesus Christ conceived by the power of the holy-ghost, born of a virgin in Judea, who, after having performed many miracles and wonders, was crucified by Pontius Pilate, and according to the fable, or history, suffered a glorious resurrection, in the same way that when proving that the grand Hercules, worshipped by the Greeks as the son of Jupiter and Alcemene, was but a mere personification of the Sun; we do not deny (indeed it would be most foolish to do so) that a

man or men called Hercules once existed in Greece. The object of these Letters is to disprove the belief in the Jesus Christ worshipped by Christians; and when that is accomplished, few will care whether any men in former times bore the name of Christ. Dozens of men called Adonis may have lived in Phenecia, but then, Adonis was no less a personification of the Sun, that is, the Adonis whom fabulists have told us was beloved of Venus, &c. It may be useful here to re-state that we have not, nor do we intend to examine whether the Christian religion is or is not a revealed religion,-for the philosophy of these times has progressed too far, and taken too firm a hold upon the mind of men, to permit that they should longer dream or dispute about the communications of Deity with man-save only those which result from the light of reason and the contemplation of nature; nor shall we yet examine whether an impostor or philosopher called Christ established the religion called Christian,- all this will be considered in due time; but we may observe that even though this last article should be accorded, that a man of consummate ability, prudence, and determination, played a part among the Jewish people, more or less in harmony with the received history, yet Christians would not be satisfied therewith, for they worship a man-god, a divine incarnation, a real flesh-and-blood-deity, in the image of man, who descended from the heavens to bear our iniquities!" a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief;" but we are far from being so condescending as to admit, for the sake of conciliating the favour of Christian theologians, that such things were: and as to those who will be content that we should destroy the divine character of Christ, and make of him simply a philosopher, or a man, without attaching to him a divine character,-that question we candidly invite them to consider when our Analysis of the Christian Mythos is brought to a close,-no matter when or by whom it was established-whether, as before remarked, it owe its origin to one or many men-whether its origin date from the reign of Augustus or Tiberius, as the modern legend seems to indicate, and as is vulgarly believed, or whether it may boast a much higher antiquity for its source, namely, the Mithriac worship, established in Persia, in Armenia, in Cappadocia, and even at Rome, as we think. The point is, however, not very important, but it is important to know thoroughly the nature of the Christian worship, whoever may have been its author, and wherever it may have first taken root.

The impiety and gross irrationality of interpreting literally the

book of Genesis was dwelt upon in our last; and in insisting that the letter of the Scripture kills, and the spirit vivifies, we only followed in the footsteps of the most eminent Jewish and Christian writers, who were too learned not to see the absurdity, and therefore impiety, of such an interpretation. Origine, the great champion of the Christians, attributed to the Scripture a triple sense, as it appears in conformity with his notion of a triple division in human nature,—the first sense literal, and answering to the body; the second moral, answering to the soul; the third mystical, and answering to the spirit or mind: but, as observed by STRAUSS, in his Life of Christ, "Nevertheless, he left generally these three kinds of sense, to subsister the one by the side of the other, although he gave to them different values; but in particular cases he pretends that the literal explication either gives no sense or one that is outrageously absurd, so that the reader may be pricked or excited to discover the mystical or hidden sense. We must, without doubt, understand that the literal sense is far inferior, and therefore less useful, than that which is concealed, and more profound, if, as Origine repeats in many parts of his works, that the Biblical recitals, when understood, teach not old fables, but admirable advice how to live in justice and in truth, when he sustains that the purely literal sense will lead to the ruin of the Christian religion." Here, then, is a serious dilemma, upon one or other of the horns of which the Christians must be placed, which they will prefer being gored and tossed by, it is not for us to determine,-but most serious is their position! The literal interpretation, according to Origine, will lead to the ruin of the Christian religion, and we insist that any other than a literal interpretation will equally ruin the Christian religion! so that, ruined, theological Christian professors must be, whichever course they may choose to take,-we say, Christian professors will be ruined-who support any religion that will support them; and as to the people, they will be far more religious when there shall be no professors of religion in existence; but the Christian scheme has no other foundation no other conceivable basis-than a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis,-to allegorize that book-to make of it a tissue of fables, is to allegorize and make fabulous all that is written about a redemption from sin and misery through the blood of Christ, and to show there has been no fall, no redemption, no real garden of Paradise, no birth, death, and resurrection of Christ. The tree of Christianity has its root in the soil of Paradise, or no where. Now, a tree without a root would be an odd tree-such

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a kind of tree would be the tree of Christianity, if what is related of the garden of Paradise be not true to rue to the letter letter; and if it be cons tended that to talk about a tree without a root is an absurdity, we» reply by asking, whether to talk about a redemption without a fall is not equally a que id Sinde97) ? Christ, we e are told, came to redeem thế? world. From what? Why sin and misery, which sin and misery was a consequence of the fall, according to Genesis, chapter 1st, 39209 where we read, that " After God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created be them.> And God saw every thing that he had made; and behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day!! Afterwards we find, in the second chapter, if we literally interpret the text, that though all was good, "The Lord God said,T is not good that the man should be alone; I will make an help meet for him." Then comes the tale, worthy to find a place in the Arabian tales of the thousand and one nights, about a great disorder introduced into the world by a serpent, who invites the woman Eve to gather the forbidden fruit; but it will be better to give it as it stands in chapter third, "Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? And the woman said unto the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons."

eat.

The grievous fault of our first parents, according to the text, as interpreted, was punished by all the evils inseparable from a knowledge of good and evil; for before the commission of this fatal act, the knowledge of Adam and Eve must have been purely negative, -they only knew that they did not know, though how they came at even that kind of knowledge it is difficult, if not impossible, for us to determine. One of the greatest philosophers that ever lived,

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