place to fiction, would be the fact, that as a people they are pursued by the judgments of heaven for a former abandonment of the only living and true God. It is morally impossible they should become idolaters, so long as they exist away from the land of their fathers, because it is morally impossible they should ever forget, that this is the reason of their banishment. Even when reduced so low and become so debased and brutish, as not to be able themselves to define the reason, the infliction of the stroke of their chastisement is written so deep and so indelibly on their hearts, that it cannot be effaced. Hence, if the moral philosophy of human kind halts at the spectacle of aboriginal Americans in this particular, as we think it must, the reason turns up, and the mysterious exception is solved. Admitting, that they are the children of Abraham, they should not, they I could not be idolaters.

That the ten tribes should have degenerated so much more than the Jews,* is obvious. From the time of the revolt of the ten tribes and the dissolution of the empire under Rehoboam, and

The Jews are Hebrews and so are the ten tribes. But the latter are not Jews-this name being appropriated to designate the descendants of the two tribes, incorporated under the kingdom of Judah.

the assumption of the sceptre of Israel by Jeroboam, until their final captivity, a period of two centuries and a half nearly, they were the subjects of many political, social, and religious disadvantages. They deteriorated rapidly, while the kingdom of Judah, established at Jerusalem, enjoying the superior privileges of the temple worship, and of that magnificent metropolis, maintained substantially that high degree of civilization and refinement, to which they had been raised under the administrations of David and Solomon. And besides, the throne of Judah was filled by a succession of kings for more than a hundred years after the kingdom of Israel was totally annihilated. In addition to this, Judah was reduced by the king of Babylon, and carried captive, and planted in the heart of the greatest empire and of the most refined people of the world. The Jews were afterwards restored, and rebuilt their city, and flourished again in their own land, till after the Crucifixion. And since the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans, the dispersion and wanderings of the Jews have been for the most part among the most civilized nations. Whereas the ten tribes went directly into the regions of comparative barbarism, themselves greatly degenerate, when they were carried away. Depressed and maltreated, they could

not rise, but would naturally sink lower and lower. Every century and every age may reasonably be supposed to have been to them an age and a century of a retrograde march, in regard to civilization. Wandering among barbarous nations, themselves became barbarous. But though civilization is lost, when a people are broken up, and commence a migratory existence, religion and its rites in some form will always be retained. Man is naturally a religious being; and his dispositions being depraved, he is always inclined to corrupt the true religion, or to adopt a false one. The ten tribes, as is well known, had greatly corrupted their religion, before their dispersion. The sum of its imposing and solemn rites they could never maintain in their captivity, even while at rest; and generally among the heathen they would not be permitted to do it. Much less could they maintain them in a wandering state. But certain things they could and would naturally retain.

Suppose, then, that the wandering and hunting tribes of North America are in fact a portion, or the main body of the lost tribes of Israel, deteriorated into barbarism by a long and painful succession of calamitous vicissitudes. What rite, or rites of their ancient religion would they be most likely to retain? Obviously the sacrifice of

the lamb, and of other victims found in pastoral life-the bleeding and the smoking altar would be the last religious ceremony to be abandoned. But as their wandering life, on the present assumed hypothesis of their origin, has obliged them to leave their flocks and herds for ever behind, they must have a substitute. And what would be the natural and most convenient substitute for the hunter?-The answer is at once anticipated. Every finger is pointed to the dog, the only and the cherished domestic brute of the American Indian. The dog is the Indian's bullock, and heifer, and goat, and lamb. And so far as we have been able to learn, there has never been found a tribe of Indians in North America to this day, who, in their wild condition, are not accustomed statedly to make a most solemn and most religious solemnity in the bloody and burning sacrifice of this animal.

The lamb, offered to make atonement for sin, was required by Moses to be "without spot and without blemish." Although the Indians offer dogs, which are not white, yet the victims must have been well fed and the choicest. But on certain occasions, altogether the most solemn, supposed to be the times of burnt-offering for atonement, the victim must not only be white, but a single coloured hair, or a blemish of any

sort, would be sufficient to condemn it! Whence these religious and indomitable scruples? And all around the fire, while its blaze consumes the offering, and sends up to heaven the smoke of its incense, they sing and dance, and run the circle, crying with one united and simultaneous voice, ee-ee-oo-oo-yeh-yeh-wah-wah. And then with one utterance of each syllable: ee-oo-yeh-wah. Also: yah-ho-he-wah, with a most powerful aspirate, when that element comes in. And who does not see in these examples the Hebrew sacred name: Je-ho-vah? They have also the Hebrew A-lohheem in substantial forms, applicable to the Great Spirit. In this dance their feet keep time with the deliberate enunciation of each syllable, making a solemn pause between. Nearly the exact forms of the original combination of the alphabetic elements of the Hebrew names of God, may be distinctly recognized in the religious solemnities of very many of the American tribes. In their sacred songs Hal-le-lu-yah is often heard as perfectly in any Christian choir.

as

The American Indians have their feasts of the first-fruits, of the harvest, the hunter's-feast-all religious solemnities. They have the daily sacrifice, often done to be sure in a very simple and cheap way, viz. that the woman, when she cooks her meat, will cut off and throw a piece of the