in the inferior signs of the heavens-in the regions affected to evil and darkness, and is there compelled to suffer the malignant power of their chief before he (the Sun) passed the famous passage of the equinox of spring, which assures his triumph over darkness, and covers with fruits and flowers the face of the earth. The priests having personified the Sun, made a mere mortal of him-made him live exposed to all the infirmities of mortal life, until, triumphing in his course, he regained all that brilliancy which darkness for a season had wrested from him. The genius of allegory, so devoutly studied by the ancient mystagogues, or as they are very well called among the North American Indians, mystery-men, led them to compose a life, and imagine adventures analogous to the character that they had given to him, and which led to the attainment of the end proposed by the initiations. It is thus that Esop, wishing to picture men strong and unjust, who oppress the weak, has put en scene various animals, to whom he has given opposing characters, and has imagined an action proper to attain the moral end of his apologue. This is hinted at by Bacon in his Critique upon the Mythology of the Ancients, where he says, "In the first ages, when such inventions and conclusions of the human reason as are now trite and common, were new and but little known, all things abounded with fable, parable, comparison, allegory, &c., and even to this day, if any man would let new light in upon the human understanding, and conquer prejudice without raising contests, animosities, opposition, or disturbance, he must still go in the same path, and have recourse to the like method of allegory, metaphor, and allusion." Again he observes, "The concealed and secret learning of the ancients seems separated from the history and knowledge of the following ages, by a veil or partition wall of fables, interposing between the things that are lost and those that remain."

Besides the wrecks of ancient sacerdotal fictions, which were handed down to us in the works of Diodorus and Plutarchus, we have seen a life of Osiris and of Typhon (the god and devil of the Egyptians), composed by the Christian Bishop Synesius, who did not disdain to fabricate legends, believing, as he said he did, that fables were good for the common people, as they amused and kept them out of mischief. "When I am in my closet (said this worthy) I am a Philosopher-when with the vulgar I am a Bishop!" In these adventures, the characters and the portraits of the two principles of the Egyptian theology were traced from the imagination

with a bold and skilful hand. These principles were light and darkness, which seem ever to be struggling for mastery-poetically personified by Osiris and Typhon. The Persians had also their history of Ormusd and Ahriamanes, which contained a stirring recital of their combats, ending with the victory of the good principle.

The Persian priests had their legend of the chief of their religion, and they tell us that prodigies announced his birth. He was exposed to all sorts of danger from his infancy, was obliged to fly into Persia, as Christ was obliged to fly into Egypt; he was pursued as him by a king who wished to destroy him; an angel transported him into the skies, from whence they said he brought back the book of the law; as Christ, he was tempted by the devil, who made him magnificent promises, if he would but follow him; he was pursued and calumniated, as Christ, by the Pharisees; he performed miracles, in order to confirm his divine mission and the dogmas contained in his book. Such was the history of the god Mithra given by the Persians-squaring exactly with the history of Christ given by his worshippers. Now, Mithra was but a personification of the Sun,-and we dare to say, what all intelligent readers will certainly think, that Christ was no more,-nay, that the Christian religion is a mere copy of the Persian—a branch of the same allegorical tree.

In concluding this hasty notice of the Festivals of Christmas and of Easter, we deem it necessary to impress upon the minds of all readers, that it is precisely at the equinox of spring that Christ triumphed, when he repaired the evils of the human race, according to the fable of the Christians, called the Life of Christ. It is at that annual epoch that are held the fêtes which have for their object the celebration of that grand event; for the Easter of the Christians, as that of the Jews, is necessarily fixed at the full-moon of the equinox of spring-that is to say, at the moment when the Sun passes the barrier which separates the empire of the god of Light from that of the prince of Darkness,-when re-appears in our climate the magnificent star which gives life and light to all nature. The Jews and the Christians call it the fête of the passage, -for it is then that the god Sun, or the lord of Nature, passes towards our regions, and distributes those benefits, of which the serpent of darkness and of autumn had deprived us during the winter. It is the festival of the lord, so called, because it was cus

tomary to give to the Sun that title; for Adonis, or Adonai, are mere names for that star, Lord of the world. In the Oriental fable Adonis, or the god Sun, like Christ, goes out victorious from the tomb after his worshippers had deplored his death. In the conseeration of the seven days to the seven planets, the day of the Sun was called the day of the lord, or commonly Lord's Day or Sunday. It precedes Monday, or the day of the Moon, and follows Saturday, or the day of Saturn,-two planets which occupy the extremes of the musical scale, of which the Sun is the centre, and number the fourth; thus the epithet lord agrees in all its relations to the Sun.

The Festival of Easter, called the fête of the passage, was originally fixed on the 25th of March, that is to say, three months, day for day, after the fête of the birth, or the Festival of Christmas ;the birth of Christ was, as before proved, the birth of the Sun.

The learned Cedrenus says, that Christ died on the 23rd of March, and the resurrection took place on the 25th, from hence came the usage in the church of celebrating Easter, the 25th, that is to say, the eighth day before the kalends of April, exactly three months after the eighth of the kalends of January, epoeh of the birth of the Sun. The fête of the passion, or of the death of the god of day, was fixed at the equinox of spring, and held by the worshippers of the Sun in every country of the world; with the Egyptians, it was the death and resurrection of Osiris; with the Phenecians, it was the death and resurrection of Adonis; with the Phrygians, it related to the tragical adventures of Atys; but it is above all in the religion of Mithra, or god Sun of the Persians, that we find the most perfect resemblance to the death and resurrection of Christ, and the other mysteries of the Christian faith, Mithra, as Christ, was born on the 25th of December, performed many wonders and miracles, and like him, suffered a resurrection, and his sepulchre was raised where the elect went to shed their tears, and idolize their god. It is for those who so obstinately believe that Christ was a man-god, to account for so singular a coincidence, by an appeal to reason and history; but this appeal, we know, they dare not make, the evidence we have offered is irresistible-it is drawn from the nature of things, and the most authentic records of past times.

London: H. Hetherington; A. Heywood, Manchester; and all Booksellers. J. Taylor, Printer, 29, Sinallbrook 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 13.

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

CHRISTIANS,

It is certain that if Hercules, of whom we read so much, was not really a Greek prince or bona-fide hero, but simply a personification of the Sun, as we have proved by authorities cited in former Letters, the fable of the twelve works is a solar fable, which can have no other relation than to the twelve months, and to the twelve signs one of which the Sun appears to pass through each month: the consequence will have all the clearness of a demonstration, when we compare each of the works with each of the months, or with the signs and the constellations which mark in the heavens the division of time during each month of the Earth's annual revolution.

Among the different epochs at which the year formerly commenced, that of the solstice of summer was the most remarkable. It was at the return of the Sun to that point that the Greeks fixed the celebration of their olympic fêtes, called olympic games, established, it was said, by the great Hercules; this was the most ancient error of the Greeks. In comparing the ancient calendar with the twelve works said to have been performed by Hercules, we shall fix the departure of the Sun Hercules in his annual course, The sign of the lion domicile of that star, and which furnishes to him his attri

butes, having formerly occupied that point, his first work will be his victory over the lion, which is really that which has been placed at the head of all the others: but before we compare month by month the series of the twelve works with that of the stars which determine and mark the annual route of the Sun, it will be well to observe that the ancients, when regulating their calendars, employed not only the signs of the zodiac, but more often remarkable stars placed beyond or without the zodiac, and the several constellations which by their rising or setting announced the place of the Sun in each sign. All who have read the poems of Ovid and Columelle will have full proof of this; but it is yet more completely shewn in the ancient calendar. Our readers will now be prepared to compare the subject of the twelve chants with the constellations which preside at the twelve months-the bare reading of which will convince the most sceptical that the poem of the twelve works is nothing more than a sacred calendar, embellished by the lovers of the marvellous, who in distant ages made abundant use of allegory and poetry, in order to give life and soul to their fictions.