liever in what is called the immaculate conception, or a disbeliever, a man of seven sacraments, or of two sacraments, or of none. The word christian describes what a man is not, but not what he is.

The word Theology, from Theos, the Greek word for God, and meaning the study and knowledge ef God, is a word, that strictly speaking, belongs to Theists or Deists, and not to the christians. The head of the christian church is the person called Christ-but the head of the church of the Theists or Deists, as they are more commonly called, from Deus, the latin word for God, is God himself, and therefore the word Theology belongs to that church which has Theos, or God, for its head, and not to the Christian church which has the person called Christ for its head. Their technical word is Christianity, and they cannot agree what Christianity is.

The words revealed religion, and natural religion, require also explanation. They are both invented terms, contrived by the church for the support of priestcraft. With respect to the first, there is no evidence of any such thing, except in the universal revelation that God has made of his power, his wisdom, his goodness, in the structure of the universe, and in all the works of creation. We have no cause or ground from any thing we behold in those works, to suppose God would deal partially by mankind, and reveal knowledge to one nation and withhold it from another, and then damn them for not knowing it. The sun shines an equal quantity of light all over the world-and mankind in all ages and countries are endued with reason, and blessed with sight, to read the visible works of God in the creation, and so intelligent is this book that he that runs may read. We admire the wisdom of the ancients, yet they had no bibles, nor books, called revelation. They cultivated the reason that God gave them, studied him in his works, and arose to eminence.

As to the Bible, whether true or fabulous, it is a history, and history is not revelation. If Solomon had seven hundred wives, and three hundred concubines, and if Samson slept in Delilah's lap, and she cut his hair off, the relation of those things is mere history, that needed no revelation from heaven to tell it; neither does it need any revelation to tell us that Samson was a fool for his pains, and Solomon too.

As to the expressions so often used in the Bible, that the word of the Lord came to such an one, or such an one, it was

the fashion of speaking in those times, like the expression used by a Quaker, that the spirit moveth him, or that used by priests, that they have a call. We ought not to be deceived by phrases because they are ancient. But if we admit the supposition that God would condescend to reveal himself in words we ought not to believe it would be in such idle and profligate stories as are in the Bible, and it is for this reason, among others which our reverence to God inspires, that the Deists deny that the book called the Bible is the word of God, or that it is revealed religion.

With respect to the term natural religion, it is, upon the face of it, the opposite of artificial religion, and it is impossible for any man to be certain that what is called revealed religion is not artificial. Man has the power of making books, inventing stories of God, and calling them revelation, or the word of God. The Koran exists as an instance that this can be done, and we must be credulous indeed to suppose that this is the only instance, and Mahomet the only impostor. The Jews could match him, and the church of Rome could overmatch the Jews. The Mahometans believe the Koran, the Christians believe the Bible, and it is education makes all the difference.

Books, whether Bibles or Korans, carry no evidence of being the work of any other power than man. It is only that which man cannot do that carries the evidence of being the work of a superior power. Man could not invent and make a universehe could not invent nature, for nature is of divine origin. It is the laws by which the universe is governed. When, therefore, we look through nature up to nature's God, we are in the right road of happiness, but when we trust to books as the word of God, and confide in them as revealed religion, we are afloat on the ocean of uncertainty, and shatter into contending factions. The term, therefore, natural religion, explains itself to be divine religion, and the term revealed religion involves in it the suspicion of being artificial.

To show the necessity of understanding the meaning of words, I will mention an instance of a minister, I believe of the Episcopalian church of Newark, in Jersey. He wrote and published a book, and entitled it, "An Antidote to Deism." An antidote to Deism must be Atheism. It has no other antidote-for what can be an antidote to the belief of a God, but the disbelief of God. Under the tuition of such pastors, what but ignorance and false information can be expected,

T. P.

OF CAIN AND ABEL.

THE story of Cain and Abel is told in the fourth chapter of Genesis; Cain was the elder brother, and Abel the younger, and Cain killed Abel. The Egyptian story of Typhon and Osiris, and the Jewish story, in Genesis, of Cain and Abel, have the appearance of being the same story differently told, and that it came originally from Egypt.

In the Egyptian story, Typhon and Osiris are brothers; Typhon is the elder, and Osiris the younger, and Typhon kills Osiris. The story is an allegory on darkness and light; Typhon, the elder brother, is darkness, because darkness was supposed to be more ancient than light; Osiris is the good light who rules during the summer months, and brings forth the fruits of the earth, and is the favorite, as Abel is said to have been, for which Typhon hates him; and when the winter comes, and cold and darkness overspread the earth, Typhon is represented as having killed Osiris out of malice, as Cain is said to have killed Abel.

The two stories are alike in their circumstances and their event, and are probably but the same story; what corroborates this opinion is that the fifth chapter of Genesis historically contradicts the reality of the story of Cain and Abel in the fourth chapter, for though the name of Seth, a son of Adam, is mentioned in the fourth chapter, he is spoken of in the fifth chapter as if he was the first born of Adam. The chapter begins thus:

"This is the book of the generations of Adam. In the day that God created man, in the likeness of God created he him. Male and female created he them, and blessed them, and called their name Adam in the day when they were created. And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years and begat a son, in his own likeness and after his own image, and called his name Seth." The rest of the chapter goes on with the genealogy.

Anybody reading this chapter, cannot suppose there were any sons born before Seth. The chapter begins with what is

called the creation of Adam, and calls itself the book of the generations of Adam, yet no mention is made of such persons as Cain and Abel; one thing, however, is evident on the face of these two chapters, which is, that the same person is not the writer of both; the most blundering historian could not have committed himself in such a manner.

Though I look on everything in the first ten chapters of Genesis to be fiction, yet.fiction historically told should be consistent, whereas these two chapters are not. The Cain and Abel

of Genesis appear to be no other than the ancient Egyptian story of Typhon and Osiris, the darkness and the light, which answered very well as an allegory without being believed as a fact.

20

THE TOWER OF BABEL.

THE story of the tower of Babel is told in the eleventh chapter of Genesis. It begins thus:-"And the whole earth (it was but a very little part of it they knew) was of one language and of one speech.-And it came to pass as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick and burn them thoroughly, and they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.—And they said, go to, let us build a city, and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven, and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.-And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower which the children of men builded. And the Lord said, behold the people is one, and they have all one language, and this they begin to do, and now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do.-Go to, let us go down and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech. So (that is, by that means) the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city."

This is the story, and a very foolish inconsistent story it is. In the first place, the familiar and irreverent manner in which the Almighty is spoken of in this chapter, is offensive to a serious mind. As to the project of building a tower whose top should reach to heaven, there never could be a people so foolish as to have such a notion; but to represent the Almighty as jealous of the attempt, as the writer of the story has done, is adding profanation to folly. "Go to," say the builders, "let us build us a tower whose top shall reach to heaven." "Go to," says God, "let us go down and confound their language." This quaintness is indecent, and the reason given for it is worse, for, " now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do." This is representing the Almighty as jealous of their getting into heaven. The story is too ridiculous, even as a fable,