a Redpath or a Rush to the bench? Is it rational to suppose he would be severe upon his own caste? If the matter be left in the hands of such a monitor, the out-look for vile sinners does not seem so very appalling after all. His ideas of justice must be of the most questionable complexion. It is more probable that he would rejoice to see a sinner offend against God, than desire to get him in his grip to punish him for so doing. Why should he be the arch-enemy of sinful souls, seeing that he himself is the chiefest sinner? If his profession is to ensnare souls, why should he have a preference for those of believers? Are they not all of one make? To say, as Cruden does, that the devil especially prefers believers' souls, implies that he does not care so much about the souls of unbelievers; and if so, he would not, it may be imagined, inflict his heaviest penalties upon them, which would be clearly a miscarriage of justice; yes, and of divine justice too; for Cruden tells us that God employs the devil. Besides, we should judge that he could not entrap the soul of a believer while he was a believer; then how much more desirable from the devil's point of view would be such a soul, than one that had never believed at all? The divinity of the schools gives rise to these queries, and its partizans ought not to take umbrage at the perplexity in which they are logically placed thereby. After the apostolic injunction to prove all things, even to test the apostles' teachings by Scripture, the clergy-who can work no miracle-must not expect an independent thinker to receive their ipse dixit.

CHAPTER IV.-PLUTO, PAN, AND NOX.

I shall here introduce a brief account of Pluto, Pan, and Nox, and the attentive reader will at once detect the points of similarity between them and the devil preached by "Christian ministers."

Pluto, according to mythologists, was the son of Saturn and Ops. He had a statue at Athens, in the shape of an infant in the arms of Peace, who was his nurse. His regions being supposed by the ancients to be under ground, and he being the first that taught men to bury their dead, and that instituted funeral solemnities; he was thought to be the ruler of the dead, and that all their souls descended to him. He was therefore called the terrestrial or infernal Jupiter, and oblations were made to him by the living for the souls of their deceased friends. What is this but the purgatory of Romanism? He is said to tremble when there is any earthquake, lest the earth should open and let in the light which he abominates. This agrees with the belief that Hell is inside the earth. The keys were the ensigns of his authority, because there is no possibility that anyone should return thence when he has once locked the gates of his palace. The poets from his qualities gave him the epithets of unmerciful, implacable, unconquerable, and most hateful-the very terms Cruden employs in describing the devil-he is surnamed Agelastus, because all laughter is banished out of Hell. He is called Hades, as sitting in darkness

and not to be seen. Here is the Christian devil, whom none-though some assert it can prove they have seen. He is also called Simmanus, as being chief of the ghosts, or rather the infernal deities. This is the Christian Prince of the powers of darkness. The history of his dog Cerberus, the three Furies, and the Harpies, demonstrate him to be none other than Milton's Satan, who is manifestly the devil of all our pulpits. What follows, I ask, from these premisses? This, beyond all confutation, that our popular Christianity, in this branch of it, is but paganism under another title. I forgot to mention that Pluto is pictured armed with a long two-pronged fork.

Pan. Every child would be able to identify the devil of its tales and stories with the following description of the god Pan. He is pictured with a smiling ruddy face and two horns that reach as high as heaven, and a beard that covers all his breast, with hairy legs and thighs, nose, tail, and feet of a goat. A few touches by our 'divine' tailors-the ritualists—and 'doctors,' have not radically altered the mountain god of paganism. While they have shortened his horns, they have lengthened his tail. As to his beard, that may possibly have been singed. To make him perhaps more human or even respectable in his general aspect, doctors of divine anatomy have substituted on one side the leg of a man for that of a goat; and probably to render his countenance terrible, instead of permitting him to retain the ruddiness promoted by the fresh air of the hills, they have grimed his face all over. Howbeit, his general hue is made more clerical by these artistic touches.

Nox. This goddess was had in great honour among the ancients, who thought her the eldest of all the gods, since she possessed all space.—The devil is thought to be omnipresent. Her garments were black, and she wore a black veil. Her daughters were Madness, Contention, Evil Fate, Black Destiny, Death, Sleep, and a multitude of Dreams, Deceit, Fear, Emulation, Old Age, Death, Darkness, Misery, Complaint, Partiality, Cheating, Obstinacy, False Hopes, Wants, Cares, Diseases, Hunger, and War.

Is it possible for the candid reader not to be struck with the marked resemblance in the tout ensemble of the popular devil and his crew to the gods Pluto, Pan, and the goddess Nox and her progeny? The plagiarism is undeniable, for in the Bible no such description exists. No room is left to imagine that the parsons are ignorant of this lying invention.

CHAPTER V.-HEATHEN & CHRISTIAN IDEAS CONCERNING HELL.

It will now be in order to invite the attention of the reader to certain traditions and opinions touching the residence of the devil.

"Tartarus, or Barathrum as the Mythologists style Hell, is the place of punishment, which never enjoys any light, and from which there is no deliverance, whither the condemned are carried and cast head-long by the Furies. Tartarus was born of the confused matter called chaos, and wa

of the same age with Nox. There is the same distance between the earth and Tartarus as there is between heaven and earth, for if a weight were let down from heaven it would be nine days in falling to the earth, and the same space of time from thence to Tartarus. It is a vast pit, the sides and pavement of which are of brass, having gates and barriers of the same metal." The reader is to suppose that this is a peculiar kind of brass not fusible by heat. Milton portrays the Christian Hell as

"A dungeon horrible on all sides round,

As one great furnace flam'd; yet from those flames

No light."

In the Pagan Hell, there are several large rivers, whose waters, however, are not designed to cool the parching tongue of Dives and his wretched associates, being of such a singular nature that they cannot be contained in any vessel, but dissolve all they touch immediately. Our great poet gives their names and peculiar virtues in the following lines.

"Abhorred Styx, the flood of deadly hate;

Sad Acheron, of sorrow black and deep;
Cocytus, nam'd of lamentation loud

Heard on the rueful stream; fierce Phlegethon,
Whose waves of torrent fire inflame with rage."

Extreme conceptions have been formed of Hell. It was not enough to paint it in colours of hottest hue; it must be pictured as a region of bitterest cold, a land of eternal snow and ice.

makes one's teeth chatter by the fireside.

Milton's description almost

"Beyond this flood a frozen continent
Lies dark and wild, beat with perpetual storms
Of whirlwind and dire hail, which on firm land
Thaws not, but gathers heap, and ruin seems
Of ancient pile; or else deep snow and ice.
The parching air

Burns frore, and cold performs the effect of fire."

That is, it produces "gnashing of teeth."

"At certain revolutions all the damn'd

Are brought; and feel by turns the bitter change
Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce.
From beds of raging fire to starve in ice,

Immovable, infixed, and frozen round,

Periods of time, thence hurried back to fire.

Another great poet sends

"The once pamper'd spirit

To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside

In thrilling regions of thick ribbed ice;

To be imprisoned in the viewless winds,

And blown with restless violence round about
This pendant world."

Other writers celebrated for "the wisdom of this world," have added divers loathsome and poisonous beasts and all manner of filth to this wintry scene. In fact, the leaders of the people have made it anything and everything to suit their immediate purpose, and one feels that some of them regretted not having more fierce and frightful terms to convey their thoughts in. On the one hand they would have liked to make it " seven times hotter," while on the other, the barest possibility of a "thaw" has almost started a pang of remorse.

CHAPTER VI.-THE SERPENT.

nachash is the Hebrew, and opis ophis is the Greek for our word serpent. Of this animal, Moses writes, "Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made."—(Gen. iii. 1). Moses says nothing about the form or size of the serpent. The most, I think, that can be gathered from the account is, that probably the serpent at first had wings. This may be supposed from the terms of the judgment against it; "upon thy belly shalt thou go." But whether the brute flew or swam is of little moment in the great drama in which he performed so conspicuous and disastrous a part. No doubt Moses omitted nothing needful for the student of the Scriptures to be acquainted with, The one and only point the narrative mentions is its exceeding subtlety. That the beast had the power of speech, certainly appears. "And he said unto the woman, comes in quite naturally; whence it may be that serpents were possessed of speech. Pagan writers frequently mention the circumstance of beasts and fishes speaking. Some writers have conjectured that the deprivation of speech was part of the curse. These things, however, deserve no more than a passing notice. When we bear in mind the orthodox (which is the Miltonic, which is the Pagan), doctrine of the devil, Moses' account is more striking for what it omits than for what it records. There is not a word concerning a separate agent; no, it was the nachask that was the tempter, and it was the nachash which was punished. This is plain and easy to be understood. But the moment that the narrative is touched by the words of the theological conjurors, it becomes hopelessly intricate and perplexing to the enquirer after truth.

According to the glosses of schoolmen, the devil who had beer pitched "o'er the crystal battlements" of heaven, slipped down serpent's throat while the beast was sound asleep. This is no complim to his subtlety; and how the passage of the seraph did not disturb his breathing may embarrass the unsophisticated reader. But from his entrance to his exit, the animal does not appear to have felt the slightest plethora or inflation. All the while he was inhabited, he was entirely subject to the will of his unknown tenant. This is very hard, seeing that he was soon to be terribly chastised for what was no affair of his. Before that ominous colloquy between one of the elohim and the sinners of Eden,

the high seraph had glided, as he entered, imperceptibly from the serpent's stomach, and the terrors of the sentence fell dead upon the poor unsuspecting brute. Now all this has its serious side. How does this version of the temptation reflect upon the attributes of the Creator? What of His omniscience, and His justice? The scheme is at once blasphemous and absurd. If the temptation were in this wise, the tempter was more shrewd than his maker; if not, then a lie is put upon the word of God. Let the clergy sit on that horn of the dilemma which they find most comfortable.

For gigantic abominations heroically perpetrated, mankind displays a sort of veneration. This perverted state of mind is frequently exhibited in regard to giant criminals. The offender seems to get more sympathy than the victim. While if the offence is paltry, contempt is heaped upon the delinquent in an opposite degree. Hence the devil is thought much more of than man his victim.

Admiration of the serpent has been manifested in an organized society, that is to say, a Christian community has esteemed the offender of Paradise an object of devout worship. Jews and Christians have bowed before his Serpentine Majesty. This sect, which seems to have sprung up in the third century, is said to have had its rise among the Jews. But many Gentile Christians were found among its members. They were called Ophites, from ophis, a serpent, or Serpentinians. In common with other apostates of early times, they believed that the world was made in opposition to the will of God. They maintained that the Serpent by which our first parents were deceived, was either Christ Himself, or Sophia oopia wisdom, a demon, or divinity-concealed under the form of that animal. In consequence of this, these Christians nourished a number of real serpents, to which they paid divine honours. *Egregious as the doctrine appears, it admits of some parallel in modern christianity. The Serpent, by these wild sectaries, was placed on a level with wisdom. His utterances were, therefore, of the highest consequence. It is precisely, -though unintentionally—so in these days, for the doctrine of the serpent is the darling theme of the modern clergy and ministers. His oracular saying," Ye shall not surely die”—(Gen. iii. 4)—is continually affirmed and dilated upon in modern pulpits, in the idea of the souls' divine essence, or immortality, and is received as greedily by the masses, as it was by the mother of all living in Eden of the East. And because the doctrine has been echoed from the Pagan oracles of Phocis, Ephesus, Antioch, Italy, Lybia, Epirus, Alexandria, and elsewhere, Christendom regards its divine

The Serpent, Deane informs us, has been worshipped in all the heathen countries of the world. In Babylon, Persia, Hindostan, China, Japan, Arabia, Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, Uhidah, and Congo, Greece, Epirus, Italy, Northern Europe, including Sarmatia and Scandinavia; by the Lombards, Vandals in Britain, Gaul, Mexico, and Peru. It has been worshipped, he says, as the goddess of wisdom, the god of vaticination (futurity), the goddess of Chastity, the goddess of Agriculture, and the god of Drunkenness. And he considers this serpent worship to have arisen from traditions handed down to subsequent generations respecting the serpent in Eden. It illustrates very forcibly the proneness of the natural mind to lapse into idolatry, and that too of the most debased kind.