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 12.

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,

The Sun neither rises nor gets in reality—it is in itself ever the same, always majestic, always brilliant; but in the relation the days have with the nights, there is in the world a progressive gradation, of increase and of decrease, which phenomena have given birth to ingenious fictions on the part of ancient theologians. They have likened the birth and the apparent growth and decay of the Sun, to that of a man who is born, grows, and, after having attained the age of maturity, degenerates or decreases in force, until he arrives at last at the term or end of the career that Nature has enabled him to run through. The god of day, or the Sun, personified in the sacred allegories, was reputed to have suffered the destiof man; he had his cradle and his grave, under the names of Hercules, of Atys, of Adonis, Bacchus, Osiris, or Christ. He was a child at the solstice of winter, or at the moment when the days began to lengthen, and it is under that form that the Sun's image was formerly exposed in the ancient temples, there to receive the homage of his adorers; because, according to Macrobe," the day being then the most short, the god Sun seemed to be as a feeble infant. It is the child of the mysteries-that same infant that the Egyptians drew the image of from their sanctuaries every year upon a day appointed."

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It is that same child of whom the goddess of Sais called herself the mother. In the inscription to be found upon the celebrated ancient temple erected to her honour, might be seen these words— "The fruit that I have brought forth is the Sun." It is that child, feeble and weak, born in the middle of obscure night, of which the holy virgin of Sais was delivered at the solstice of winter,-according to Plutarchus.

The Sun god had his mysteries and his altars, and statues were raised which represented him in the four ages of human life; nor were the Egyptians the only people who celebrated at the winter solstice the birth of the Sun-of that star which every year seems to triumph over darkness and death. The Romans had on a day fixed their grand fête of the Sun, when they celebrated solar sports, known under the name of sports of the circus. They fixed it on the eighth day before the kalends of January, that is to say, on that day which answers to our 25th of December, or to the birth of the Sun, adored under the names Mithra, Christ, &c. This is shewn in a calender printed in the Uranology of the celebrated Peteau, where we read, that "On the eighth day before the kalends of January, natalis invieti, or birth of the invincible." That invincible was Mithra, or the Sun. "We celebrate," said Julian the philosopher, "some days before the day of the year, magnificent sports in honour of the Sun, to which has been given the title of Invincible." The same epithet, as before stated in one of these Letters, is to be found upon all the monuments of the Mithriac religion, and is applied to Mithra, or to the Sun, the great divinity of the Persians, their great god Sun, the invincible Mithra.

In the sphere of the Magi and the Chaldean priests was represented in the sky, a newly-born infant, called Christ, or Jesus, placed in the arms of the celestial virgin, that is, the virgin of the signs, to which some philosophers have given the name of Isis, mother of Horus. And at what point of the heavens did that virgin and her son answer? (Let every Christian note this well.) It was at the hour of midnight, on the 25th of December, at the very same instant when the god of the year, the Christ, is said to have been born, and at that very point where the Sun seemed to rise on the first day above the eastern horizon.

To this fact we call the attention of all who are willing to be convinced, as it is of vast importance; it is a fact independent of all mere hypothesis-independent of all conclusions we may draw from it-that at the precise hour of midnight, on the

25th of December, in the ages when Christianity appeared,-the celestial sign which then appeared above the horizon, and of which the ascendant presided at what astronomers call the opening of the solar revolution, was the virgin of the constellations. It is also a fact, that the god Sun, born at the solstice of winter, that is, the 25th of December, is re-united to the virgin, and seems to envelope her with his fires at the epoch of our grand fête of the assumption, or the re-union of the mother with her son, and that she seems to go out from the solar rays heliaquement, at the very moment when the Christians celebrate his appearance in the world, or his nativity.

These are facts which cannot be abused away; nor do we doubt that they will produce great and lasting effects upon the minds of all candid readers. No reasoning, however sophistical, can set such evidence aside; but the attentive observer, who has the least acquaintance with the genius of the ancient writers and teachers, will draw from them consequences of vast importance, unless they can suppose that all these things are merely accidental-mere matters of chance, this, however, few will do who are on their guard against all that is likely to mislead their reason, and perpetuate their prejudices. One thing is certain, which is, that the same virgin-that virgin which can alone become a mother without ceasing to be a virgin-fulfilled the three grand functions of the virgin mother of Christ, whether in the birth of her son, in her own birth, or her re-union to him in the heavens; but it is, above all, in her function of mother that we shall examine her here. It is natural to think that those who personified the Sun, and made him pass through the different ages of human life—who attributed to him marvellous adventures, which they chanted in poems, or related in their sacred legends-would not fail to draw his horoscope, as it was the custom to draw the horoscope of other children at the moment of their birth. That usage was, above all, that of the Chaldeans and the Persians; and such fêtes were celebrated under the name of dies natalis, or fête of the birth. But the celestial virgin which presided at the birth of the god Day personified, was reputed to be his mother, and fulfilled the prophecy of the astrologer who had said, "A virgin will conceive and bring forth," that is to say, that she will bear or bring forth the god Sun, as the virgin Sais; hence the designs traced in the sphere of the Magi, of which Abulmazar has given us a description, and of which also, Albert the Grand, Roger Bacon, Selden, Kirker, and others, have

written. Abulmazar says, "In the first decan, or in the first ten degrees of the sign of the virgin, according to the traditions of the most ancient Persians, of the Chaldeans, of the Egyptians, of Hermes, and of Esculapius, is a young girl, called in the Persian language Seclenidos de Daryama, a name translated into Arabic by that of Adrenedefa, that is to say, a virgin chaste, pure, immaculate, with a delightful figure, sweet and most agreeable features, with long flowing hair, and a modest air; she holds in her hand two ears of corn, she is seated upon a throne, she nourishes and gives suck to a young infant, that some call Jesus, and the Greeks Christ." The sphere of the Magi, or Persian priests, published by the learned Scaliger, at the end of his notes upon Manillius, describes, in nearly the same manner, the celestial virgin; but he does not name the infant which is milked, or receives support from the virgin; and placed by her side is a man who can be no other than Bootes, called the nourisher of the Sun, and of the virgin Isis.

In the Bibliotheque national of France might formerly be seen an Arab manuscript which contained the twelve signs designed and illuminated, and there was represented a young child by the side of the celestial virgin, as nearly as possible like our representations of the virgin and son, and as the Egyptian Isis with her son. It seems probable that the ancient astrologers would have placed in the sky the infantine image of the new Sun in the constellation which presided at the re-rising, or that of the new year, the solstice of winter, from which simple root have sprung up all the fictions about a god conceived in the chaste womb of a virgin, since that constellation was really the virgin. That conclusion is surely more probable and therefore more sensible than the fanciful notion which many simple and not a few cunning fanatics so obstinately believe, or pretend they believe, that there did once exist a woman called Mary, who became a mother without ceasing to be a virgin, and that the fruit which she brought forth is an eternal being that moves and rules all nature. The Greeks said of their god, worshipped under the form of a ram or a lamb, the famous Ammon or Jupiter, that he was nurtured by Themis, one of the names of the constellations; she was also called Ceres, to whom the epithet Holy Virgin was applied, and was said to be the mother of the young Bacchus, or of the Sun; the image of which, with all the traits of infancy, was annually exposed at the solstice of winter in the holy temples or sanctuaries. The author of the Chronicles of Alexandria expresses himself in these terms, "the Egyptians have

up to this day consecrated the couche (lying-in) of a virgin and the birth of her son, that it is customary to expose in a cradle to the adoration of the people. The great king Ptolemy having demanded the reason of that usage, was answered that it was a mystery taught to their Egyptian forefathers by a great prophet. It may be well to add, that with the Egyptians the term prophet meant simply a chief of the initiations.

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It is contended by many learned authors that the ancient Druids rendered honours to a virgin, and that her statue was formerly in the territory of Chartres, with this inscription-Virgini paritura. It is certain that on the monuments erected to Mithra, or the Sun, of which the worship was formerly established in Great Britain, might be seen the figure of a woman with an infant sucking at her breast, which doubtless represents the mother of the god Sun. An English author who wrote a dissertation upon that monument, detailed all the similarities and all the circumstances which could establish a relationship between the fêtes of the birth of Christ and those which related to the birth of Mithra. That author, very pious, but not philosophic, can only see, in the very remarkable relationship between these two fictions, a prophecy as to the birth of Christ. He however remarks truly, that the Mithriac worship was spread over the Roman empire. He cites also the testimony of St. Jerome, who complained bitterly that the Pagans celebrated fêtes in honour of the rising Sun, or of Adonis, and likewise in honour of Mithra, in the same country, where it was said Christ was born, that is, Bethlehem; these, according to the theory we are endeavouring to support, were but the same kind of worship under different names, as an examination of the fable of Adonis, which will be given in a future number, will prove to every intelligent reader, when it will be seen that Adonis, like Christ, was miraculously born-suffered a cruel and untimely death-followed by a glorious resurrection.

We have shown upon what astronomical basis is founded the fable of the incarnation of the Sun in the bosom of a virgin, under the name of Christ; and now we will pass on to an examination of the supposed death-then to his resuscitation or resurrection at the equinox of spring, under the form of the pascal Lamb.

The Sun, the only Redeemer from the evil that his absence had produced, was said in highly poetic sacerdotal fictions, to be born at Christmas, or the solstice of winter, when he remains three months