dreds of thousands who were thus swept into eternity; but who will estimate the pain, the terror, the anguish, both of mind and body, occasioned by such calamities? It is well known that, while men may become familiarized with other objects of terror, or indifferent to them, the dread occasioned by earthquakes generally increases with their frequency. How extensive, then, the agony which they occasion! We once saw the flight from a city which had been shaken and shattered by an earthquake. The churches had been rent; the houses, in some cases, thrown down; and all, but the aged and the idiot, fled from the scene. Dismay was pictured in every countenance, and the wretched inhabitants could not be persuaded of their safety till many miles intervened between them and Foligno, the scene of the disaster. Indeed, on such occasions, the scene is indescribable. The stoutest heart quails before it. Gusts of wind interrupted by dead calms-the sun's disc reddened-the air murky, or rains incessant-electric matter evolved, or sulphureous and mephitic vapours issuing from the earth -noises under ground like the roll of distant thunder or artillery-these, mingled with the wild cry of scared animals, yet more sensitive as to that danger than man, all tend to augment the general wretchedness, and swell the tide of misery, when Jehovah arises to shake terribly the earth. It speaks plainly to the Christian to know that all these calamities by themselves never yet made one believer. Sixty thousand perished at Lisbon. Now, let it be supposed that just one had survived of all its population. That one standing alone amid the desolation, would neither have believed in the Saviour, nor loved his God the more, for all that had occurred. It is not calamity-it is not the earthquake, or volcano-it is not harrassing woes-it is not a broken heart, that makes a man a Christian. It is the mighty power of the Eternal Spirit put forth upon the heart; and while that explains how men continue" filthy still," amid all such calamitous warnings, or at the best only sink deeper into drivel. ling superstition, it enables the Christian to understand more clearly, and to value more highly, the promise, "I will send . . . the Spirit of truth, who will lead you into all truth." It was once our lot to be rocked by an earthquake at Venice; and though the shocks were smart, they had no power to check, even for an instant, men's onward rush in sin. It was the Sabbath, and the many-hued inhabitants of that strange city, the Italian, the German, the Turk, of diverse tribes, were mingling in the giddy pursuit of what God had forbidden. Yet not a moment's pause ensued; and we repeat, the stout heart of man can repel even the terror which earthquakes cause when the pleasures of sin are to be enjoyed. But if calamity will not win men's hearts to God, perhaps blessings will succeed. Perhaps the glory, and the grandeur, and the beauty, of this bay will lead the sinner back to the God who spread it out? To put this imagination to the proof, sail with us to the opposite shore of the bay, and walk a little inland-scramble up to the point of Posilippo-wander among these ruins, these fragments of marble pillars, and these piles of buildings now so sea-worn and fantastic as to mock the most tasteful handiwork of man. Vidius Pollio, the friend of Augustus, dwelt here, and from amid a thousand luxurious refinements, he looked out upon that bay. He saw all its glories sleeping in beauty as they sleep now, and might trace from his palace many a mile of mingled richness and magnificence, the very festival of the eye and the soul. What then, were the effects? Did all these glorious sights lead his mind to God? We answer, He built him fish-pools; he stocked them with the most dainty fish, and to render them fit for an epicure's palate, he fed them with human flesh, the flesh of his mangled and murdered slaves! The fish-pools still remain as if to testify against the atrocity, and tell how powerless nature is, in all its phases, whether of storm or of sunshine, against the heart of man. Perhaps, then, literature will suffice? To settle this aspect of the question, take the case of Count Victor Alfieri, the Byron of modern Italy, and unquestionably the most powerful of her recent poets. Amid the loveliness which Italy everywhere supplies, what were his principles? Amid his high relish for its glories, and his raptures as he described them, what was he as a moral being? He neither feared God nor regarded man. Unblushingly, in his Autobiography, he details the particulars of three intrigues with married women; and appears unconscious that his conduct was in aught blameworthy. Referring to the wretched results of one of them with an Englishwoman of rank, he records, with apparent simplicity, how much he lamented the degradation of which he had," though innocently," been the occasion. These are specimens of the morals of Italy. A false religion fosters them, and all the beauties of the land are powerless as counteractives. Omnipotence alone will suffice. XI. POESTUM. We have hitherto said nothing of this remote corner of Italy, the ancient capital of Lucania. Men speak of the ruins that are there, but the phrase is a misnomer. Three temples of rich and most tasteful architecture, of the Grecian-Doric order, still entire and perfect as when they were reared, reward the traveller for his journey thither. They now occupy a dreary and deserted plain. Not a vestige of the city of Posidonium, to which they belonged, remains; and so completely were these structures forgotten, or unknown, that for about nine centuries they were never heard of. About the middle of the last century they were accidentally discovered. Environed once by fertility, they are now encompassed by gloom. Malaria has depopulated the district. Their loneliness is a fit haunt for the pensive-and meditation has been there. Rogers has told that "The air is sweet with violets running wild But why mourn over such depopulation as is here? Why lament over man swept away, and his gods perished with him? Is not our whole world one universal ruin? Even in ruin, it is vast and glorious, -a magnificent monument of the Creator's wisdom and power-but still, it is a ruin; and they are blessed who are waiting and ready for the New Earth wherein Righteousness will dwell. WHAT SHOULD BE TOLERATED? THE endowment of Popery in Ireland is generally said to be a question pressing and important. To judge from present appearances, it will not long remain a question: it will soon be a fact. While it remains a question, however, it is our duty to do what in us lies to provide the materials of a right decision. Although the preponderating political power seems at present to be in the hands of those who cannot, in these high matters, distinguish between good and evil, the hearts of princes and people are in the hands of God, and He can turn them as the rivers of water. They who wait upon the Lord in providence will never despair. In the darkest prospect their course is prayer and pains: the issue belongs to God. In opposing the endowment of Popery in this country at the present day, we labour under a great disadvantage. The enemy has got a firm footing on a high vantage ground, and our most vigorous efforts to dislodge him are in vain. He owes more to the position that we have permitted him to occupy, than to his own inherent strength. Toleration is the platform that Popery in this kingdom possesses and abuses. The platform has been reared high and strong for religion to stand on; but Popery has smuggled in, under the name of religion, an alien host, and now we see the sacred battlements exultingly possessed by disloyalty, immorality, and crime. This is the disadvantage under which we combat the proposal to endow Popery. What is tolerated is already far advanced in the direction of being supported. We strike vigorously against endowment; but our blow falls powerless, because our antagonist stands on the firm footing of toleration. We must strike lower down; we must deprive the foe of his firm standing; we must take the toleration away, and the endowment would fall with it. Already we hear a cry from the Papists and their political allies-already a scream of triumph bursts from their ranks-" Bigotry! Fanatics in the nineteenth century, sprung from the ashes of Knox, and refusing toleration to their fellow Christians!" Not so fast, friends: we have learned some logic in our day, and we find it useful in dealing with such a question. You accuse us of being against toleration. Our creed on this point is-we tolerate some things, and others we do not tolerate. We would tolerate the reading of books, whatever book a man chooses to read, whether it be the Bible or Dens' Theology; but we would not tolerate the practice of riding down a man, from whose opinion you differ, under your horses' feet, or shooting him from behind a hedge. "But religion should be tolerated, irrespective of your opinion of its truth." Granted. But we deny that the practices for which Papists demand and get toleration in this country are religion at all. We allow toleration to religion; but we do not allow toleration to every practice which its advocates call religion. This is a point to which we earnestly call the attention of this Protestant country. The magistrate is not bound to permit a man, or body of men, to do what they choose in the name of religion. The magistrate may not presume to judge what is true and what is false in a man's religion, to the effect of preventing or concussing a man's belief; but the magistrate must judge what is religion and what is not, to the effect of regulating his own conduct in punishing pernicious conduct. If a society of Thugs exist in a community, who believe that they serve the Deity by assassination, the magistrate must not tolerate them: he must punish them, not for the error of their belief, but for the wickedness of their conduct. The excesses of the Anabaptists on the Continent in the times of the Reformation, and of some sects in England in the times of the Puritans, were righteously punished by the magistrate, though the parties were acting under their own ideas of religious obligation. It is neither the abstract truth of the opinion held, nor the subjective sincerity of the person professing it, that should rule the magistrate's conduct in granting or withholding toleration; he must look to the fruit of the opinion in the conduct of the man, and its effects on the community. At this very day, for example, in the Canton de Vaud, the magistrate refuses toleration to a Christian community. The people and their pastors are not allowed to hold a religious meeting even in a private house. Some have been punished with banishment for that offence. In this free country the persecuting conduct of these democratic magistrates is very generally condemned; but it is instructive to analyze their conduct, and our own condemnation of it, in order to perceive the precise point where the blame lies. The rulers of the Canton de Vaud say, we would not refuse to tolerate religion, but these meetings have a political origin and a political end. They consist of persons who are dissatisfied with the government, and they seek to cover with the cloak of religion their combinations for its overthrow. If this averment were true, the government would be right in repressing these meetings. The whole question turns on the point whether they are right or wrong in the judgment they have formed of their design and tendency. They are in error; but it is of great practical importance to understand precisely where the error lies. The error does not lie in their presuming to judge the case, but in their coming to an unjust judgment. The tribunal is competent, but the decision is unrighteous. We would vindicate for the magistrates of that country the right of judging and determining whether the thing which assumes the name of religion be religion or sedition. In that judgment they are responsible to God, but to him only. They are not bound to tolerate the meetings because those who hold them say they are the exercises of their religion. The magistrate has a right to judge of their design and their effects. If he find them immoral, antisocial, or seditious, he is bound, in the exercise of his duty to the community, to repress them. If, on the other hand, he repress a really innocent religious meeting, under pretence of preventing a seditious intrigue, he sins against God, and God will avenge the cause of his persecuted saints. If this principle had been applied to Popery during the last fifty years, endowments would not now have been so nearly within its grasp. If we had not allowed it to fix its vices and crimes on the firm and elevated position of religious toleration, it would have been easier at this day to combat its claims. This nation, its rulers and its people, have been hoodwinked by the Papacy. In proportion as we ceased to look to it in the light of Scripture, and began to contemplate it in the light of human politics —the light of the nineteenth century, as it is calledwe mistook its nature, and took a serpent into our bosom. The warmth of our friendship has at length revived it, and now we are smarting under its sting. We say it deliberately, there is no safety but in retracing our steps. We must either go forward or backward. Sedition, disloyalty, and vice, must be either punished or bribed. If we would not proceed to endow, we must cease to tolerate. Papists are permitted, under the name of religion, to commit crimes against society for which other criminals would be punished. The proof of this proposition is at hand, and abundant. 1. They owe and profess allegiance to the sovereign of another country. They say this is religion; but it is not religion-it is disloyalty. When we claim permission to render allegiance to God, superior even to that which we owe to our Queen, this is religion. But when any subject of this realm claims permission to render allegiance to a man-sovereign of another and independent state-this is not religion. It would not be tolerated in others; and why should it be tolerated in Papists? If a set of men living in the country should profess an allegiance to the Emperor of Austria, superior to that which they owe to our Queen, toleration would be denied to them, at least to the extent of refusing them political privileges; and if allegiance to one continental sovereign would involve disfranchisement, why does allegiance to another escape? The profession of religion does not make a bad act good. The principle on which we have proceeded is vicious.* 2. Popish priests swindle the ignorant out of their money by lying tricks; and the swindle is tolerated because its perpetrators call it religion. Instances innumerable may occur to the reader. Many a poor Irish peasant has been, during these late years, cheated out of his money for a recipe to keep his potatoes from rotting. We once conversed with a sharp little boy on a hill side in Ireland. He had a blessed medal hanging on his neck which cost only a penny. We suggested to the boy that it was not worth a pennythat half a dozen such medals might be bought for that sum. "I know that," said the boy; "but sure the "But priest blessed it, and that makes its worth." how do you know that it really was blessed? Among a great number, it may have fallen aside, and it may be only a bit of brass that you are trusting to." But the fine little fellow was armed at all points; with a clever roguish smile at our ignorance, he replied, "And sure was not the string of it wet when I got it." The boy told us at the same time that his sister had something, obtained from the priest, of far greater virtue than his medal, and that cost much more. was an Agnus Dei. This he explained to be a little cross with a lamb on it; and its peculiar virtue lay in having a bit of the Saviour's flesh inside of it. We asked him if ever he had seen the bit of flesh. If ever he knew any one who had seen it. He would not break it: it would be a bad boy that would break it up." ." "But suppose it were to fall into the hands of a wicked boy, and that he broke it up, would he see the flesh?" "Sure, he would not; it It No." "No. "That church can have no right to be tolerated by the magistrate, which is constituted upon such a bottom, that all those who enter into it do thereby, ipso facto, deliver themselves up to the protection and service of another prince. For by this means the magistrate would give way to the settling of a foreign jurisdiction in his own country, and suffer his own people to be listed, as it were, for soldiers against his own government. Nor does the frivolous and fallacious distinction between the court and the church afford any remedy to this inconvenience; especially when both the one and the other are equally subject to the absolute authority of the same person, who has not only power to persuade the members of his church to whatsoever he lists, either as purely religious. or as in order thereunto, but can also enjoin it them on pain of eternal fire. It is ridiculous for any one to profess himself to be a Mohammedan only in religion, but in everything else a faithful subject to a Christian magistrate, whilst at the same time he acknowledges himself bound to yield blind obedience to the mufti of Constantinople; who himself is entirely obedient to the Ottoman emperor, and frames the feigned oracles of that religion according to his pleasure. But this Mohammedan living amongst Christians, would yet more apparently renounce their government, if he acknowledged the same person to be head of his Church, who is the supreme magistrate in the state." John Locke's First Letter in Toleration.-Locke, would not appear to him because he was a bad boy." Now if a poor Trick-the-Garter takes his station on the road from Granton to Edinburgh; and if a Fifeshire farmer, on his way to the capital, turns aside to try his trick, and having bad luck, come off minus his money, the police will seize the unhappy trickster, and lodge him in jail. We should like to know on what principle the one swindler is endowed and the other punished. 3. One example more. The method in which the priests deal with stolen articles. Great credit is claimed by the priests, and, to the shame of our country, often given to them, on the ground that they sometimes, in the confessional, demand the stolen property from the thief, and restore it to the owner. A few months ago a shopkeeper in Glasgow missed a sove reign. He suspected his shop boy. The boy was taken up, and the case was undergoing investigation by the authorities, when a papist priest sent a message to the magistrate, restoring the sovereign, and intimating that the boy was innocent. A polite request was sent to the priest, that he would condescend to give up the name of the thief, that the ends of justice might not be thwarted. The priest declared he will not divulge the secrets of the confessional. There the matter dropped. Had any other person given up the stolen property, and refused to tell the name of the thief, he would have been dealt with as the guilty party. Why is this priest not put in prison until he makes known the thief? He pleads religion. But does this nation acknowledge that to be religion? It is offence against the laws, and should be dealt with accordingly. We tolerate a Popish priest's offences, that would be punished in other men: this has made us weak now in the combat against endowment. The priests put themselves in between the people and God—between the subject and the magistrate. The priest makes himself a god, and a law to the people; and when he has destroyed the man's regard for God and the law, and put himself in their place, he claims great credit for condescending sometimes to check the culprit. See what a control these priests have over their people! See how they restrain them from evil doing! Nay, but see how they have opened the flood gates of every vice, by releasing mens' consciences from the fear of God, and teaching evil-doers, that any deed of sin may be pardoned after it is done, on paying a consideration to the priest in the confessional. Here is the fountain-head of Irish crime. It is man they are taught to fear, and not God. It is the priest and, not the law of the land. We have so long tolerated crimes, that we are on the point of being compelled to endow them If the magistrates of this country, with the Scriptures as their rule, and the fear of God in their hearts, would take courage and punish every evil doer without respect of persons--not sparing the culprit because he is a priest, not passing the crime because it is cloaked by religion--there might be hope for our country yet. The voluntary principle will not carry us through. The magistrate must form judgments about religion to the effect of regulating his public as well as his private conduct. The magistrate must make all religions alike, and allow every one to define what religion is. The magistrate should encourage and help forward the truth in religion; he should tolerate even the false in religion-a matter between man and God -but he should repress and punish crime with evenhanded justice, by whomsoever they may be committed, and by whatsoever name they may becalled. was MISS MARTINEAU'S TRAVELS IN THE EAST. EGYPT, Arabia, and Palestine, have been often and well described, and by recent authors too, yet we do not regret to see new works appearing from time to time, though the subject may seem to be hackneyed. But Miss Martineau's work is a deception. You take it for an amusing book of travels, and you find it, for the most part, a hash of bad theology. The subject is gradually opened up to the reader. He finds first," Eastern Life ;" then, "Eastern LifePast and Present." Then in the contents, Egypt and its Faith-Sinai and its Faith-Palestine and its Faith; and when he reaches the heart of the work, he finds lengthened discourses all going to prove, that Moses was a noble schemer-an Egyptian priest, whose plans for the liberation of Israel were fostered and matured, like those of Mohammed afterwards, by the wild scenery of the Arabian desert that the Hebrew prophets were sanguinary savages that the Evangelists either misunderstood or misrepresented Christ-and that Jesus himself an ignorant visionary whose distress in the Garden arose from the disappointment of his hopes of an immediate temporal kingdom. This gross misrepresentation of revealed religion is in itself offensive enough; for infidelity, like drunkenness, is wrong in any one, but particularly disgusting in a woman. But there is something unfair, besides, in the way in which it is smuggled into what seems to be only a book of travels. And yet it forms the staple of the work; for there is little in the volumes, considered merely as travels, to interest the ordinary reader. The part which, perhaps, amused us most, was that which describes the manner in which the party fared in the wilderness how the mutton and the macaroni were punctually ready at dinner-time, with the bottle of ale, in the corner of the tent, and how Miss Martineau enjoyed the "indispensable' chibouque. It seemed to show, that with money enough, one might travel as comfortably in the desert as in Middlesex. And another picture, to correspond with this, represents Miss M., and her friend Mrs Yates, in the neighbourhood of the first cataract, folding and ironing the "things washed by the crew," and giving a brilliancy unrivalled in Egypt to Mr Yates's trousers and shirt collars. This is all very "natural, simple, affecting;" but the "acting" comes afterwards, when the lady assumes the airs of a mystagogue, and, reviewing all the religions of the world, brings in Christianity as a thirdrate concern. We must lay before our readers an extract or two illustrative of these remarks. We do not enter on the character of Moses, for it is not so much any single passage that is open to censure, as the whole of that part of the work in which the conducting of Israel from Egypt to Palestine is treated as a matter of common history-an exploit of Moses, whose motives, and perplexities, and plans, Miss Martineau, being un peu clairvoyante, discerns and describes as English lady never described them before.* The following is her description of Elijah's transaction with the priests of Baal: "On the floor of this synagogue is shown a space railed in, to commemorate a deed which we should all be glad to forget, whether it be fact or mere imputation. The spot is said (but no one believes it) to be that where Elisha anointed Hazael king of Syria."-P. 299. We do not know whether the antipathy of Miss Martineau to Elijah and Elisha be connected with an admiration of Baal and his worship; but these are described in the following style: "Here I received another lesson in the magnificence and exquisite beauty which could have no meaner origin than a spirit of reverence. In these mighty halls, under these lofty colonnades, there can be no doubt that hearts have beat, and souls have been stirred, with emotions as intense as human nature is capable of-of adoration and gratitude to the Lord of Life, and the Light of the world. Baal was the most lifegiving and beneficent of heathen deities; and he was adored accordingly."-P. 318. Besides asserting that the Scriptures in general are records, not oracles," it is thus she disposes of the Evangelists: "In general, it is no light work for the sincere and reverent mind to read the Gospel history, so as to come within reach plexing echoes of his place and time, to separate it from the of the actual voice of Jesus, and listen to it among the per Jewish construction of Matthew, the traditional accretions of Mark and Luke, and the platonizing medium of John."P. 175. When the prophets of Jehovah are reprobated in comparison with the worshippers of Baal, we need not wonder that while the evangelists are disparaged, Simon Magus should be lauded as an earnest and sincere, a learned and highly gifted man, on whom "the Christian disciples heaped shame and accusation" for merely seeking in an honest way to add to his scientific knowledge. Nor need we be surprised that the annunciation and incarnation of our Saviour should be treated as matters less worthy of reverence than the mythological traditions of Egypt. "We were led to the spot of the annunciation, and shown the granite pillars where the angel Gabriel and Mary stood when she received the promise. To persons well read in history, who are aware of the frequent recurrence of this mythic story, in connection with the birth of conspicuous men, there is nothing surprising in meeting with it here.-In Egypt, it was harmless and interesting to trace the incarnations which, understood as we understand them now, give us at once the truths made known in the mysteries and the form of allegory in which the priests presented the concealed doctrine to the people.-But when, in a much later age, the monotheistic Jews put aside the characteristics of their faith, received the infection of allegorizing from their heathen neighbours, and attached their allegories to the simple history of their prophets; the process assumes a new character, and is likely to be used to a most disastrous purpose." Pp. 222-3. Christians believe, on the authority of Isaiah, as interpreted by the New Testament writers, that Christ was a man of sorrows," oppressed and afflicted, whom it pleased God to "bruise and to put to grief." Miss Martineau is quite of a different opinion, and declares that "Never before were a few months of life so crowded with joys as were those of the ministry of Jesus." The only real sorrow which she seems to have discovered in his lot, is his early fate, which blasted the fond hopes he had cherished of a kingdom to be established in Judea, during that generation, in which he was to be sovereign, and his apostles were to be princes. A kingdom which he had dreamt of-not like Moses in the desert, but-oh, prodigious!-among the shrines of Pan and the Nymphs. "Here came Jesus to the shrines of Pan and the Nymphs, and had their statues, probably, and certainly their sculptured shells and glorifying inscriptions, before his eyes. No place could be a fitter one in which to speak privately to his followers of his Messiahship and his approaching kingdom; and in which to distinguish, by extraordinary promises, the follower who, being the first to acknowledge his Messiahship, was selected by him to be the main support of his anticipated empire."-P. 263. This is probably enough to show the character of the work before us, which is the main design of the present article; for we have no intention of arguing with the author on the evidences of Christianity. We should not probably have noticed the work at all, had we not seen it incautiously recommended in certain quarters, and had not the style of the work seemed likely to mislead some unsuspecting minds. For there is in it an air of superior knowledge-a pretension to prodigious wisdom, which, though very ridiculous to an experienced and well-informed mind, is apt to bewilder a young inquirer. A question, for example, on the relation of the Egyptian to the Jewish worship, was the subject of long and learned study and discussion between such men as Spencer and Warburton on the one side, and Witsius and Graves on the other; and even in later times, with the advantages of hieroglyphic lore, learned men talk modestly on the subject. The question is decided by Miss Martineau at a glance, and the Jewish ritual declared to be a copy of what existed in Egypt hundreds or thousands of years before. While others are laboriously working at the alphabet of the ancient hieratic language, Miss Martineau at once reads the "written legends" which detail the message of Thoth to the Queen of Thothmes IV. If anything could surpass this presumption, it is the coolness with which she assures Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, that in her examination of the monuments of Egypt, she only five or six times differed from him, just as if she knew any thing of the matter but what she had learned from Wilkinson himself, or from inferior authorities. Miss Martineau speaks of the incarnation of Christ as a mythic story. Strauss said so before her; and yet to a mind which has studied the subject of myths, there cannot be an idea more egregiously absurd. A myth is the hypothesis by which the mind fills up the blank of history, and traces existing or ascertained phenomena to some imaginary personage; or to a person who, though not absolutely unreal, has had fictitious acts ascribed to him, bearing some relation to future events. No scholar, for example, now believes in the truth of the early history of Rome. Some may believe in the existence of Romulus and Numa, though they discredit the legends connected with these names. Others trace in the name and nursing of Romulus the savage strength (pun) which formed the ori ginal community of Rome, and in Numa, the influence of law (vous) in regulating the community when it was formed. But whatever grains of fact may be found in the narrative, the story is substantially the effort of imagination to fill up the chasm of history which the devastation of the Gauls had made. But suppose that these kings were acknowledged to have been real persons, and that we had in our hands a genuine narrative by their contemporary Julius Proculus, in which he spoke of the nursing of Romulus as something which he had seen with his own eyes, or which was formerly known to hundreds of his neighbours, it is evident that the story would be no longer a myth. It must be either accepted as a truth, or despised as a falsehood. Equally impossible is it to melt into mythology the narratives given by the evangelists, of what their 66 eyes had seen, and their hands had handled." The miracles of Christ-and his incarnation must evidently stand or fall with his miracles-were either facts too solemn for any but fools to trifle with, or they were the most unparalleled fabrications by which the world was ever imposed upon. To speak of them as myths is mere drivelling. There is one principle on which all recent historians from Niebuhr to Grote are agreed, namely, that it is absurd to attempt to produce a true history by stripping a marvellous narrative of all that is supernatural. This system of Euemerism or Rationalism, or the semi-historical theory, as it has been variously called, is acknowledged to be incapable of leading to any trustworthy results. And if it be unsatisfactory in regard to the myths of classic antiquity, it is equally puerile in regard to the miraculous histories of Scripture. Yet it is upon this exploded system that Miss Martineau attempts to write the history of Moses. Without adverting to the miraculous circumstances of the exodus, to the daily supply of manna, or the water from the stricken rock, she sees only the skilful management of Moses in leading hundreds of thousands for forty years in the wilder ness. She does not perceive that she abandons the miracle to advocate a sheer impossibility. No doubt she endeavours to reduce the numbers of the Israelites, by asserting that it was impossible for them to have multiplied in Egypt to one-third of the number assigned. Learned men have differed from Miss Martineau on this point. But allowing the numbers to be reduced to one-tenth of those actually and repeatedly stated, we should still have two hundred thousand souls to be led and fed and clothed in the deserts of Arabia—and that not for some sudden and transient incursion, 'but during a sojourn of forty years. Had it been a British army drawing on the resources of the nation in Hindustan on the one side, and England on the other, it would still have required an extraordinary commissariat. But when the army was the nation, and all was hostile around them, their very existence was a miracle, let Miss Martineau make of it what she will. But our object is not to defend the Mosaic history, but only to show, that while Miss Martineau talks of myths and mythic stories, she is ignorant of the best ascertained and most generally recognised principles by which the relation of mythology to history is determined. She has been reading naughty books like those of Strauss and Salvador, and she has heard something of myths which are a fashionable subject among modern littérateurs, and she writes on these subjects-or could write on them if she would |