created to err? Deny human will, and the whole is not only perfectly unintelligible to Reason, but unintelligible to Faith. Unless man has some will of his own, unless human will exists, no original sin can exist. Admit human will, and the mystery is a matter of Faith in Divine Power, and Wisdom, and Goodness. Deny human will, and Faith has not wherewith to act upon. As to the creation of Man in a state of innocence, evidently it must have been so, but at the same time the seeds of Evil existed, and sprung up. But the creation of Man as perfect cannot be, for the very fact of committing evil is contrary to man's perfection. But in our conception of God revealed as the Almighty, it is Trust in Him, it is Faith alone that is the umpire. The doctrine of Grace is a theological conception, it is a kind of reasoning upon the nature of God. Faith is quite sufficient; for the doctrine of Grace admits of the validity of human reason in matters above her competence, and furthermore is useless, as it cannot do without Faith in God. The upshot of such reasonings has ever been the two extremes farthest from Faith in the Almighty, i. e., Pantheism and Fatalism. Man undoubtedly has a right to reason upon the nature of the Supreme Being made known to him in a manner so peculiar; for indeed the notion of the existence of the Almighty thus revealed is and has ever been a kind of ferment for the human mind. It is impossible that he should not reason upon a subject of such a nature, but as the first measure to be taken in all questions of whatsoever nature they may be, is to begin by precising the fact about which the investigation is to be pursued, and as the result cannot be any other than either intuitive faith or positive Faith (rational), else Faith in the Almighty as distinct from the two others, so the matter on that one point (the primary

source of the knowledge of God) can be brought to a ready issue. If intuition, Reason can add nothing; if Reason, it must by its very nature be constantly varying; but if revealed, it is a matter of Trust in the Attributes revealed: those attributes announce Supreme Perfection, and in that we repose our Faith. The Calvinist has as much right to believe his own reasonings on a matter which he owns to be perfectly above all human comprehension; he has as much right to do so, as others have to deny his conclusions, or, as men have not to believe in any thing if they can so form their mind. Free will is a gift of God, and the inconsistency which the human view of Grace attempts to alleviate, can only be done by means of the sacrifice of that high privilege, where Reason finds herself so completely benighted, i. e., the right of acting wrong.

Our purpose being limited here to the results furnished by Tradition aided by Ethnology, we can proceed no farther on this subject without encroaching upon another order of argument. However deep the abyss of Tradition, it cannot prevent one fact from rising above its dark and troubled waters, and that fact is, that with a very great portion of the human race, it is the very name of God that constitutes all symbolism and all myths. The symbol and the myth may be rejected, but the notion of God yet remains unimpaired and a matter of fact, into the nature of the source of which fact we shall proceed to investigate. Among many philological facts having reference to the question at issue is one more which cannot be passed over in silence. It is the use in the Sanscrit and Zend of a superlative preposition, UT, in the first and us in the second. The UT is clearly the same as the at, ait, ad, and het of many composed terms to which this particle imparts a notion of superiority. The same may

be said of the particle ak, or ek, which has the signification of highness, superiority. It is for eka (one) and is sometimes written ag. Thus AT-AL signifies the High or great God: Ac man, Het man, the high chief.

ASSYRIA: PHENICIA.

Before we proceed to investigate more closely the myths of Egyptian idolatry, it may be requisite to say a few words of Assyria, and of Phenicia. In Assyria, as in Egypt, the remark of Damascius, the neo-platonician philosopher, stands good, who says their religion consisted in dividing that which was united. Sabeism, in Assyria, evidently preceded the worship of Fire, but it appears that the Sun was figured or personified at Babylon by a two-winged human figure, representing the creating and nourishing principles. The figures

were male and female, Baal: Baaltis or Mylitta. The leading idea was that of the Brahmins and other idolaters,—the notion of the incarnation or descent of the god represented by the idol. Layard considers one of the figures, the four-horned one, on a basso relievo to represent Belus. Lucian agrees with Diodorus Siculus in admitting that the Assyrians had borrowed the art of the statuary from the Egyptians. The Persians, it is well known, put an end to the idolatry of the Babylonians, and to the immense statues covered with plates of beaten gold weighing in that of Zeus (Djeus) a thousand talents, as also that of Hera. In Phrygia, the great goddess or female divinity was especially worshipped, and Strabo mentions the Goddess Aggdistis as being from time immemorial in veneration. The term variously worded by Casaubon is susceptible of a Teutonic interpretation, if not indeed a Grecian: Hoch

VOL. II.-11

göttin, Actheia, or Agstheia. The great diversity of the orthography of this word may serve to display the difficulty which is met with in explaining such terms; it is found written Aggidistin, Aggisthei, Angidistin, Acdestis, Agdistin, which latter Casaubon tells us stands for Aicstin (Strabo, Lib. x., Galatia). This circumstance is merely mentioned with respect to the ethnological difficulty, for, as regards our aim, it is sufficient to know that the goddess worshipped was the great goddess, the female divinity, the mother of the gods, that corresponds with the Assyrian Tana and Hera, and appears to have been the same as Astarte (Ast-art-a), and also Mylitta or Melissa, the & and the t being equally used in Assyria, which latter term in Strabo is replaced in general by the word Aturia. In such instances the difficulty occasioned by such differences is very slight, but when quite different names appear for divinities and persons admitted to be the same, it is only the general meaning that can prove the identity, leaving the discrepancy to be accounted for by the diversity of the idiom. Thus after the Persian conquest of Babylon when names such as Cyrus, Xerxes, Artaxerxes, &c. appear in history; such names, though very different from Sar-dan-phal or Czar-Haddon, Assar-Haddon, have much the same meaning, for in high antiquity Sar, Tar, Her also meant victorious and conqueror. But when the same individual, such as the reputed father of Sardanapalus, is named by Usher, Phul; by Africanus, Acracarnes; by Eusebius, Ocraz cipes; by Stephanus of Byzantium, Kyndaraxes; by Strabo, Arrien and Suidas Anakyndaraxes, and the same is found in Atheneus, written Anabaxares, it is evident that various titles and various idioms are united to express one and the same person. Still the high bearings of the various syllables forming such names

always stand good. The term Sar-dan, besides bearing evident marks of being the same as Tsar-Than, is well known to have meant great chief or great king, and although the Greeks rendered it by Carcinos, or Cancer, or Scorpion, such an interpretation is now no longer admissible. The identical value of the letters Land R, now well authenticated, explain the identity of Ar, Er, and Ur with Al, El, and Ul. Idolatry, in Assyria, from the earliest times, consisted in the worship of Kings and Queens, who had adopted the names of the heavenly bodies and other natural phenomena, which names themselves were derivations of the name of God. The difficulties of Assyrian history, therefore, do not prevent it from being very evident that the Zeus, the Tana, and Hera mentioned by Diodorus Siculus as having enormous statues erected in their honor, are names which find in ancient language, of which the Zend and Sanscrit are remnants, a ready solution, for they refer to names of the Almighty, but debased by Idolatry. Of this Sir Isaac Newton was perfectly aware when he tells us in his Chronology that the names of the Assyrian kings were those of their gods, such as Bel, or Baal, or Pal, or Phul; Chaddon, Haddon, Ed-don, Adon, Adonis, Melec, Moloch: Atsur, Assur; Atra or Adra-Melec. Sar-Assar-Shar-Assar: Assur-haddon or Esar-hadon. Sar-danapal or EsarHaddon-Pul. Bel-Adon; Chiniladon or Chan-ElAdon: Nabonassar, or Nabo-Adon-Asur. Nebo-PulAssar: Nebo-Chaddon-Assur: Nebuzaradon or NeboAssur-Adon: Rab-Saris, or Rab-Assur; Nebo-ShashBan: Mardocempad or Mero-dachempad.

We have not here to unravel that Gordian knot of historians, Assyrian antiquity; the number of kings having borne the name of Esar-dan-Pal does not prevent the value of the term being the same whether