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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.

LETTER 3.

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.

"Every man is brutish by his knowledge; every founder is confounded by the graven image for his molten image is falsehood, and there is no breath in them."-JEREMIAH LI. 17.

We offer an unbroken chain of evidence, of which all may, if they be diligent, reach the point of suspension, to prove, as far as anything in morals can be proved, that Jesus Christ, the supposed author of the Christian faith, never had more than an ideal existence-but then, it must be born in mind, each link of this chain must be examined, or there will be a defect—a kind of chasm in our proofs-as it is clear that the evidence unexamined is de facto no evidence at all— the strongest reasons unsought into are but on a level with the weakest,―nay, it often happens that the advantage lies on the side of the latter, as they generally float upon the surface of things, and therefore require no effort in those who compass them. To the blind, the most beautiful productions of a Raffaelle or a Carracci are in no wise preferable to the miserable daubs of a village painter-in like manner, the deepest or the shallowest reasonings are of equal worth and brightness to those afflicted with mental blindness, who are too often led (as the blind need a guide) by imposters, sacred and profane, who, in the words of our text, make them brutish by their knowledge.

It was fabled by ancient sages-that truth lay hid in wells, or deep pits-thereby intimating that if we would possess so bright a jewel, we must dive and search for it-and however true it may be that there is one "whose ways are past finding out," all besides seems open to our investigation, and shame upon deluders who would hinder the right use of our reasoning faculties. Let us, then, dig for truth into the very bowels of antiquity, and draw from thence mythologic lore—that rich material, without which we cannot have a solid and lasting foundation upon which to raise the imperishable superstructure of rational opinion. The treasures that a knowledge of mythology would pour into the lap of humanity are now, as in times long past, hidden from the vulgar gaze, and like parks, pleasure-grounds, and all things else, belong only to the few. The touch of Midas, it is said, turned all things into gold-but the magic touch of the searching investigator will do more than that; for it is surely more noble, as it is infinitely more useful, to add to our stock of sound information, or rub off the rust it had accumulated by lying idle, and so to speak, give it a brightness it had not before, than to convert by the simple touch, all things into a barren metal. Some, as though possessed by the spirit of darkness, seem to pride themselves in the renunciation of reason-that most precious gift of God to man-and roll on in the mire of their own superstition until, like the swine into which we are told a legion of devils entered, they are hurried down steeps and precipices, and perish in a sea of fanaticism.

The hater of instruction must needs be a helper, if not a lover of deception-as it is manifest that all ignorance is negative deception; besides, how shall the ignorant man be guaranteed from the evils which beset him on every side? Alas! how is he to be protected from the pitfalls dug for him by the enemies of truth— more cunning than the fox and cruel than the wolf?-or how should he upon whom "the light hath not shined," do ought but stumble in his darkness? We love not the traders in human ignorance-who, like the spotted hyena, in silence and in darkness, seize upon their prey-but would scare them off, or make their intended victims strong enough to wrestle with and destroy them-by imparting that light which will enable them to see things as they are, and not as they have been told they are having ever admired and felt the full force of the singularly expressive adage in Plutus

Scire meum nihil est, nisi me scire hoe sciat alter.

My knowledge is nothing unless I can cause another to know what I know.

sure.

Those who have examined, in a candid spirit, the contents of our former letters, will now be in a condition to descend with us and obtain that which is to all but the bold and single-minded, a hidden treaThe mine of intellectual wealth has been opened to the view of all let those who have the courage proceed to explore it, which all may do with perfect safety, if guided by experience and accompanied by the inestimable safety lamp of a pure and upright conscience. The promise made to enlighten-not to deceive-unvulgarise the vulgar-shall be faithfully kept-that is, if our ability to do, keep pace with our desire to do; and above all, we shall aim at simplicity of style, so that, if possible, our observations may be within the reach of the humblest capacity-striving in this matter to imitate Plutarchus, of whom it was said by Scaliger, that " he wrote more for men of the world than men of erudition." Nevertheless, the latter class of readers, it is humbly hoped, will have little cause to complain of our want of research-as it is by no means impossible to put much valuable learning in a very simple dress, free from that profusion of ornamental rubbish which serves only to encumber, and, as it were, hide it beneath a heap. Such abuse of language deprives the mind of its energy and suffocates judgment; and some one has happily observed, that even truths, if they deprived the mind of its elasticity, would degrade human intellect into brutish instinct. What, for example, can we learn from such pretty jargon as the following-that "God is a circle, whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere!" or the gratuitous nonsense of Albert Vieira, a Portuguese preacher, who wrote that "If the Almighty should happen to appear in a geometrical form, it would surely be the circular in preference to the triangular, the square, or the pentagonal!"

If Firmicus, and others, mentioned in our last, were in the devil's secrets, surely this bold preacher must have had commerce with the Deity-else how should he come to know that God preferred the shape of a circle to that of a triangle, or a square?—truly such preachers are rare blasphemers. Surely, if they had such astonishing information, they should have set about writing a history of God, as Defoe did that of the devil, for the edification of all true

believers! Synesuis, a Christian bishop, in his Hymns, speaks of
the Deity in the following impious manner-
r-" Thou art a father
and a mother, a male and a female; thou art voice and silence;
thou art the fruitful nature of nature! Thou art the father of all
fathers; and being without a father, thou art thine own father and
son!! O, source of sources, principle of principles, root of roots!
thou art the unity of unities, the number of numbers; being both
unity and number!!! Thou art one and all things, one of all
things, and one before all things!" This ridiculous and, to us it
appears, most mischievous mode of writing, we shall carefully shun,
else we might invent "most serious names to hide our ignorance”
and dogmata, the hollowness of which might be covered by shewy
language, but we have yet to learn that the sublime drivel above
quoted from the early Christian writers, and to which we might
add a moderately sized volume, on the "transcendental qualities,"
"imaginative re-actions," the "vibratiuncles," "intentional species,"
"love spirits," and other figments or mental fungusses of modern
ideologists, have done anything more than sharpen the weapons
of the Atheists, who, like John Toland, laugh at the pains taken by
unwary theologians to refine the Deity into a mere nothing, and
exclaim-

Others, whose heads sublimer notions trace,
Cunningly prove that thou art almighty space;
And space we're sure is nothing-ergo, thou;
These men slip into the truth they know not how !

That subjects, however abstruse, about which something can be known, may, by a proper course on the part of public teachers, be made perfectly intelligible to the meanest capacity, is an opinion in which we are fortified by Moses and the prophets, in the sacred volume, and the writings of such men as Bacon, Locke, and others, among the profane; the latter are remarkable for the clearness of their style and the modesty with which they publish their views upon all subjects—and like Moses and the prophets, insist most eloquently upon the incomprehensibility of the Deity; as it is written that " none could look upon the face of the Lord and live." We read in Exodus, " And Moses said, I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt;" but the Lord (evidently not caring to be seen) said, " Draw not nigh hither, put off thy shoes from thy feet; for the place whereon thou standest is

holy ground." We elsewhere find that "the Lord spake to Moses fron a thick cloud;" to be sure, one reason was that the people might not hear him when he spake-but it also served as a sort of screen through which the eyes of Moses could not penetrate.

To return from this short digression, which, however, we trust will not be without its uses, as it may shew our readers the necessity there is that all who love wisdom should confine themselves to those subjects which lie within the domain of reason-beyond the boundaries of which "the wisdom of the wise is as foolishness." Nor will such limits be so hard to bear as some may be disposed to believe-for in reality, the knowledge of things is as the horizon that flies before us, and seems to mock our pursuit-keeping those who seek to grasp it in never-ceasing eternal motion. Had we all knowledge-all mental, nay physical motion would stop-none could bear the weight that omniscience would cast upon them; and those who desire it, like Semele, who wished that Jupiter might visit her in all the bright refulgence of his glory, would be destroyed in its fulfilment.

The fable of the Sphinx has been supposed to enclose as in a semi-transparent shell or covering, many useful hints affecting the acquirement of knowledge to those who are sufficiently sharp-sighted to penetrate beneath the surface. The Sphinx, as the ancients inform us, had the claws of a Griffin, the face of a woman, and the wings of a bird, and resided somewhere near the city Thebes, on the top of a high mountain-was noted for her cruelty in destroying all those who were unable to interpret her riadles-until Oedipus, a cunning man, induced by the hope of high reward, interpreted her famous riddle-slew, and took the monster-then placed the carcase upon a slow-paced ass,--by all of which is evidently meant what we have endeavoured to convey to the minds of our readers, that knowledge is a monster which can only be conquered by the brave and prudent, as Odipus is represented to have been. We are moreover told, that he was lame in his feet-by which we are admonished, that all who would vanquish and overcome knowledge, must do it slowly and by degrees-not running foolishly and out of breath-but, as before observed, calmly and deliberately, as though lame in our feet-so that we may not justify the proverb-swift a-foot, slow in head. Placing the empty trunk of knowledge upon an ass-which is here meant to signify experience-also en

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