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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.

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"I am the Lord thy God, the Holy One God formed, neither shall there be after me.

ONE PENNY.

of Israel. Before me there was no 1, even I, am the Lord, and besides

me there is no Saviour."-ISAIAH XLIII. 3, 10, 11.

"He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made for unto these days the children of Israel did burn incense to it: and he called it Nehushtan."2 KINGS XVIII. 4.

CHRISTIANS,

Our bare assertion—that the worship of the ancient world was Pantheistical-that the people of all climes, and every part of the globe, adored as gods, angels, or fiends, the Universe, and the parts thereof-will have little weight, unless supported by well defined evidence, which we now propose to furnish. This position must be made good before we proceed to occupy another; and though it would undoubtedly be far easier to gallop over the course by contenting ourselves with mere assertion-such haste would not be speed; and all lovers of truth will agree that it is wiser to proceed slowly but surely, than to go ever so fast out of the right road; and certainly no man of liberal mind-none, save the narrow and contracted intellect—will grudge us a fair opportunity to prove the absurdity and ignorance of those who believe in Christ, and think to wash out their sins in the blood of the Lamb!

Could a goodly array of names, ranged in support of error, make that error respectable-could eloquence and learning make black appear green, or some other colour, according to the taste of the

expounder-or, if the truth or falsehood of a doctrine is in anywise determinable by the number of books written in support of it, or the confidence and self-sufficiency of those who teach—then are the dogmas held by Christians sublime and heavenly. Thousands of volumes have been written to prove the reality of Christ's mission, and with very many, the notion holds that where quantity is there quality must be; so that, with such, big books carry with them their own justification. Now, we freely declare, that if any parties expect a big book from us, they will be disappointed; for our study is to concentrate-not to diffuse,-to collect the scattered rays of truth into one small focus, and as a moral Archimedes, burn up the vessels of error. Multum in parro—a great deal in a small compass is what we desire to give. The worshipper of old authorities, merely because they are old, will not follow in our train; for no authority, ancient or modern, will be here acknowledged save that consonant with right reason, and wearing upon it the seal or mark of experience. If the sanction of names, eminent in the Christian world, is to prevail against the teachings of history, sacred and profane, our little work will be beaten "all the world to nothing," and it will remain undoubted that Christ did live and was a god incarnate—was born of a virgin-and a real bona fide descendant of Abraham-conversed with the doctors of the Jewish temples—was crucified three times in three different places, as stated in Scripture, and of course ascended into heaven, at least an equal number of times, as such authority might equally decide, and make it believed too, that upon a certain occasion it was broad day at full midnight! To our evidence.

We read that at periods very remote, the Blemmyes, situated apon the confines of Ethiopia, immolated to the god Sun, human victims The Island of Nasala, near the territory of Ichtyopages," was consecrated to that star; and so superstitiously was it reverenced, that none dared to approach so awful a place, or profane by their footsteps that holy ground.

The Carthaginians invoked the Sun as a witness in their treaty with Phillip, son of Demetrius,-the Sun, the Moon, the Earth, the rivers, the meadows, and the waters were their divinities. Massisnassi, when thanking the gods that Scipio had arrived in his empire, addressed himself to the Sun, as Agamemnon in Homer sacrifices to the Sun and to the Earth.

All the inhabitants of the immense African continent revered the

Sun and the Moon as the two grand divinities. The inhabitants of Congo, Angola, the Peak of Teneriffe—all joined in one worship—the worship of Nature. We have this on the authority of the Spaniards, who first visited them.

The Caabah, before the coming of Mahomet, was a magnificent temple, consecrated to the Moon; and the black stone, so fervently kissed by Musselmen at the present day, is pretended to have been part of an ancient statue of Saturn. This most ancient of all the gods was symbolized by a serpent with its tail in its mouth, signifying that time neither had beginning nor end,-an idea aptly typified by a circle. The god was represented with a scythe in his right hand; for that time, while itself ever the same, "without change or shadow of turning," mows down all things else. The fable relates that Saturn devoured his own offspring-by which is meant, that time swallows all things, though nothing is added, nothing diminished, from the sum total of matter, by the different forms and existences such matter assumes.

The worship of the Arabs was Sabism-a worship universally spread in the East, the Sky and Stars were the great objects of adoration. The Moon was an object of special worship. By the Saracens it was called Cabar, or great; and the crescent yet ornaments the religious temples of the Turks.

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Sabism was the system of the Chaldeans; and all the orientals pretend that Ibrahim, or Abraham, was educated in that doctrine; thus runs the story; whereas Ibrahim, or Abraham, is a purely fabulous character, and all that is related in Genesis thereupon, is allegory. Let the reader remember what is said by Saint Paul, that "God quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not, as, though they were." This we know was the case "when all were children and were in bondage under the elements of the world." Vain are the attempts to conciliate such fables with the facts of history, and barren of good results, producing only a moral abortion in the shape of a romantic fictitious philosophy. St. Augustine fell into this error, and most inconsistently maintained the existence of Christ as a real personage-acknowledging his mission as Saviour of the world at the very moment he declared the two first chapters of the book of Genesis were allegorical!--but what reader, not blinded by fanaticism, can fail to see that the two first chapters of the book of Genesis are the fundamentals upon which the belief in Christ rests. To give up the literal meaning of those chapters,

to declare as Augustine did, that all was fabulous-pure romance -is at once to give up the literal history of Christ, which is based upon it.

verse.

Well might Beausobre say that Augustine abandoned the Old Testament to the Manicheans, by declaring that it would be impossible to believe the Scripture as it is written, without wounding true piety, and attributing to God acts that would be held disgraceful in men, and yet more unworthy in a Creator or Ruler of the UniThe story about Abraham was first told and first believed in the East—the very fountain of allegory; and if we dwell upon it, it is with a view that all may know the true spirit of the gospel ; besides, the history of Adam and Eve, Abraham and Christ, must all stand or fall together; for if Adam did not fall from a state of innocence, as is generally supposed, Christ's death upon the cross, as an expiation or atonement, rendered necessary by the fall, is clearly absurd. If Abraham never existed, how can Christ have been his son ?—and yet we read in the new Testament“ The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham." For the honour of Moses, and the sake of right reason, we must recur to allegory. In the 12th chapter of Genesis we read, "And the Lord appeared unto Abram and said, unto thy seed will I give this land; and there builded he an altar unto the Lord, who appeared unto him." "And the Lord plagued Pharaoh and his house with great plagues, because of Sarai, Abram's wife." The idea of the Lord God of the Heavens and the Earth, who can measure the waters of the globe in the hollow of his hand, plaguing Pharaoh about Abram's wife, is preposterous and absurd! In the chapter which precedes this, there is a ridiculous story about Babel, in which we are told that in those times the whole earth was of one language and of one speech! "And they (the people) said, go to, let us build us a city, and a tower whose top may reach up unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the earth. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded."- The idea of an omnipresent God "coming down to see," is comical enough a God that is everywhere, taking a trip from the clouds, to see a tower that, ten miles from the earth, to ordinary optics, would have looked like an ant hill, or a dust heap,-besides there are neither tops nor bottoms in Nature-ups nor downs; but nothing is difficult with believers, who, while they one moment declare that the

heaven of heavens cannot contain their God, the next moment represent him, not exactly like Plato's man-an animal without feathers, but with two wings growing out of his shoulders, flapping between earth and heaven, bearing, as some one has observed, a most scandalous, profane, and impious likeness to the old Pagan Jupiter. "Go to, (said the Lord) let us go down and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech." Now, we ask any sensible reader, whether it is not enough to shock all sense of propriety to interpret such language literally? There was some magnificence in the conception of Jupiter hurling his thunderbolt, and Neptune with his trident, exciting and calming by his will, the immense occean of waters; but a literal interpretation of the book of Genesis is horrid blasphemy, if anything can be blasphemy. The metamorphosis of Jupiter with the Greeks, as that of Vishnou with the Indians, are ridiculous enough, but are certainly entertaining but who can be entertained by stories which degrade human conceptions of the Deity? Well might the apostle say, "there is none that understandeth-there is none that seeketh after God!"

The idea of a Deity, "who covereth the heaven with clouds, who prepareth rain for the earth, who maketh grass to grow upon the mountains"—the uncreated-the eternal-the Holy one of Israel ! promenading in a garden, crying out to Adam-the man whom he had made" Where art thou!" as though omnipresence needed such information! and after Adam was found, and had called Eve (the mother of all), "Unto Adam also, and to his wife, did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them!" Strange employment for Deity; but the truth is, all shocks and offends when read as matter of fact,-all is pleasant and ingenious enough as an allegory. The hidden meaning of the sacred books is worth searching for; but to believe chapter and verse, according to the letter-to suppose that "the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden, to dress it and to keep it ;" that he, the Lord God, caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept, and he took one of his ribs and he closed up the flesh instead thereof; " And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto man;" that these beings were organized to reproduce, and yet destined to be immortal! to produce an infinity of other beings, who would again go on peopling to all eternity,-all to be nourished by the fruits of a great garden, some

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