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false hopes and shameful fears, and supply their place by a love that never tires, and a courage that never fails; then, and not till then, will there be morality and peace on earth. Take away from the people false and delusive hopes and fears, and false religion will be annihilated; for never are men more falsely religious than when they are poor, sick, miserable, and degraded; let it be remembered that it is weakness and fear, not strength and courage, that has raised altars to the gods. For the true philosophers, life has many charms-but death no terrors; they may desire to live, but cannot fear to die,—the basis of their virtue is love of man, not fear of God.

That many readers will admit the force of our arguments when applied to the heroes of the ancient religion, and yet persist that Jesus Christ was a man, or even a god, none can doubt; though if the reason be sought into, it will be found that it is simply this, that such readers had formed that idea before they read this book, and found it difficult to get rid of their first impressions and long cherished opinions, while others are so badly organized, that they will receive as sacred and divine, all, save that which is dictated by good sense and sound reason, and who seem to be as much on their guard against philosophy as though they had a natural innate antipathy to it: such unfortunate creatures are as much horrified by truth as mad dogs by water, or turkeycocks by a scarlet mantle. We need hardly add, that with such men, their first opinions are their only opinions; and besides, as the habit of thinking enables us to think with precision and accuracy, so slothfulness corrupts the mind-destroys its force, elasticity, and power to separate truth from falsehood. Yes, it is thought which improves the mind, strengthens its powers, and renders it impervious to sophistry; but the majority of mankind do not think, but pay others handsomely to do that business for them; so that thinking has been erected into a profession,-the people seeming to forget the saying of Locke, "That a man could no more think through another man's thoughts than he could see through another man's eyes." To decide between a possibility and an impossibility is the talent of all but the most grossly ignorant; but to separate truth from the errors with which it may be associated, to decide with precision and accuracy the degree of force in different kinds of opposing evidence, is a rare talent, belonging only to the few who have long laboured and meditated with the anxious desire to know the truth and act upon it. Men of these two orders of mind have

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been noticed by Fontenelle, who observes, that "Clocks, the most common, and made with least of art, suffice to mark the hours; but it is only those made with more of art which indicate time to the minute. In the same manner, ordinary minds understand very well the difference between a simple likelihood and an entire certainty; but it is only fine and delicate minds who catch at once the more or less of likelihood or certainty, and can mark, so to speak, the minutes of their sentiments." The gross and ill thinking, it is not expected, will read these Letters, all who do so will surely think a little; and, we may say without vanity, that no human being could read attentively, and examine patiently the evidence adduced, and the arguments enforced, in the Letters already written, without his faith in the existence, even as a man, of Jesus Christ, being much unsettled and greatly shaken. It is not pretended that the evidence already offered is so complete, that it is either full or sufficient to destroy the historical character of Jesus Christ— this evidence has yet to be furnished; and all we have attempted to do, up to the present moment, is to shew that all religions have one common source, which source is nature; that the Sun, being to human beings one of its most brilliant agents, has been the object of adoration and worship from the earliest recorded periods of history. That the force, grandeur, and the effects produced by the Sun, were the subjects of the songs or chants of the ancient priests and poets, and that what is foolishly called idol worship, was not at first, at least, the worship of the stock or the stone, the gold or the silver, as a real deity or deities; but these were borrowed only as emblems, symbols, or as mere signs of natural objects. The symbols of the Sun were placed in the religious temples as symbols, not as real gods; and though the common people did commit the egregious error of mistaking the sign for the thing, and even now, in some parts of the globe, worship idols of brass and of wood as real deities, the priests of those nations, although they find it expedient to nurse the delusion, are not themselves very often deluded; but it does however, sometimes happen, that priests become the victims of their own arts. As for the people, ancient or modern, whose kingdom is not of this world—that is, the world of reasonthese remarks will produce little effect upon them, but then, they are told for their satisfaction, that the blessed are the poor in spirit, and that the kingdom of heaven is for those who believe; and it would indeed be a pity if they should be deprived of their expectations of a future happy life, when they suffer so much misery in this,

The Catholics have been much abused as the worshippers of idols; and we are told, that Catholics worship images, as did the Pagans of old, and that like them, they give the glory of God the Eternal to the works of men's hands; but the Catholic denies this, and the Catholic Bishop of Siga, in a sermon preached at the consècration of the Catholic chapel at Bradford, in the county of York, on Wednesday, July 27th, 1825, said, "I know how common these charges are (that is, that the Catholics worshipped images as did the Pagans of old), and how otherwise respectable are the sources from whence they spring, or I should fear to insult your understandings, by supposing that any of you are capable of believing them; for, is it possible that in any age and country which claims to be so learned and enlightened, men should be found capable of believing that the majority of the Christian world-the great, the good, the learned of almost every civilized nation under heaven, are so ignorant, so debased, so stupid, so wicked, as to give divine honours to a likeness and senseless image? Is it possible that any of you should persuade yourselves that the most ignorant Catholic here present should be capable of adoring, for instance, the ivory image which you see upon that altar? But why, it may be inquired, if the image of Christ is not worshipped, is it there? Ah, my Christian brethren, look at that image and tell me, what impression does it make on your minds? It represents your Redeemer nailed to the cross, and dying for your sins. Can you behold such objects, unmoved? Can you fix upon it a vacant eye ? Can you gaze upon it, and not reflect how great was his goodness who thus suffered !—how criminal were those sins which caused those sufferings,-how sincere ought to be your sorrow in having participated in the commission of them? It is to excite such emotions that the image is placed there; and let me ask you, could a more appropriate object stand upon a Christian altar, or be placed before the eyes of a Christian assembly, when they meet to pay their worship to their divine Redeemer-when every mind should be impressed, and every heart penetrated with the remembrance of his sufferingsthe source of all our happiness, and all our hope?" This is the answer of the Catholic divine to the charge of idolatry, and he justly says "it is to excite emotions that the image is placed there -not that it may be worshipped as a real living God." The people require images and pictures; their eyes must be fed by sights and shams; for, as to spiritual deities, the people can have no notion

of them; and however it may be that no image could be more appropriate to excite superstitious, or as the worthy divine would call them, religious emotions, as that of a man-god nailed upon the cross, such representations can only excite the ignorant multitude, who are ever the dupes of appearances! But surely the Catholic divine must be a bold man who would answer that the most ignorant Catholic can and does distinguish between symbols, or signs of The worship of images was things, and the things themselves. prescribed and rigorously enforced by the first Christian councils,-and we read, "that the seventh general council, or the second of Nice, was assembled in 787, by Constantine, son of Leo and Irene, to re-establish the worship of images. The reader must know, that two councils of Constantinople, the first in 730, under the emperor Leo, the other twenty-four years after, under Constantine Copronymus, had thought proper to proscribe images, conformably to the Mosaic law and to the usage of the early ages of Christianity. So also the Nicene decree, in which it is said, that whosoever shall not render service and adoration to the images of the saints as to the Trinity, shall be deemed anathematised,' at first encountered some opposition. The bishops who introduced it, in a council of Constantinople held in 789, were turned out by soldiers."

It has been shewn that from time immemorial men have symbolized their ideas of Deity-that in ancient times the notion was that the universe itself was a great god, got of itself, born of itself, and subsisting of itself; but as it was a great whole, consisting of many parts, it was supposed that there were as many intelligences, angels, deities, or geniuses, as there were parts in nature. In the Greek mythology, more especially, all was personified, or symbolized; the rivers, the mountains, the forests, the stars, the elements; and all know that in Greece as well as in Egypt, the land was covered with statues erected in honor of the gods.

In our next we shall proceed to another branch of our subject, and consider the doctrine of the Trinity as a preparatory step to a right understanding of the collaterial circumstances touching the religion of the Christians; after which, nothing will remain for us to do than to shew, by an appeal to history, that what is said about Christ in the four gospels is a fiction, and, that the evidence set forth in proof of his existence, just proves the reverse.

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 15.

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 no Saviour."-ISAIAH XLIII. 3, 10, 11.

CHRISTIANS,

The doctrine of the Trinity, observes Dr. Drummond, informs us that the Godhead consists of "three persons, of one substance, power, and eternity;" "God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost." Now, any man, under the influence of such vulgar principles as "" reason and common sense," would conclude that three persons must mean three distinct beings, and consequently that there are three Gods! This, Dr. Sherlock candidly admits, and says, "it is plain the persons are perfectly distinct. A person is an intelligent being, and to say there are three divine persons and not three distinct infinite minds, is both heresy and nonsense." Here then is palpable polytheism, from which, thus fairly exhibited, even orthodoxy recoils astounded. Doctor South, scandalized by such an admission, from a Doctor of his own church, showers down upon him a torrent of theological vituperation; and alleges that there is only "one infinite mind, with three modes, attributes, or offices, manifested under the different states or relations of father, son, and spirit." Thus the meaning of the word person is explained away; and after the most painful struggles against the conviction of their own minds, that God is one, the most eminent divines are reduced to the necessity of maintaining that the three