of miles, and thus punishing themselves to purify the soul. For these sacred deeds of folly, they are revered, esteemed holy,-immortalised! Nay; this deluding priesthood feed to repletion holy crocodiles, whilst their brethren die of hunger. Thus is the humiliation and degradation of the people consummated; they are divided into castes; and the absolute power of one man, the fabled descendant of the gods or of the celestial king, is rampant; before him all crouch with servility and tremble in submission, whilst my empire over man is universal and eternal.

(To be continued in next number.)

CRITICAL EXEGESIS OF GOSPEL HISTORY,

ON THE BASIS OF STRAUSS's 'LEBEN JESU.'

A SERIES OF EIGHT DISCOURSES; DELIVERED AT THE LITERARY INSTITUTION, JOHN STREET, TOTTENHAM COURT ROAD, AND AT THE HALL OF SCIENCE, CITY ROAD, ON SUNDAY EVENINGS, DURING THE WINTERS OF 1848-9, AND 1849-50.

BY THOMAS COOPER,

Author of The Purgatory of Suicides.'

VII. THE RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION.

WHEN the golden orb of day rose above the mountains, dispelling the mists that hung above the vallies,—and the birds, already risen from their leafy coverts, began to pour forth a bolder and richer melody,-and the flowers began to unclose their beauteous buds, and to yield their fragrant perfume to the air, the tribes of early men must have hailed the resurrection of the Bringer of Light with unspeakable rapture; and there is no wonder that almost every ancient nation worshipped the sun, as their Joy-God. In India he was personified, and became the second person of their Trinity-Veeshnu, or Chrishna, the Preserver,-from his attribute of maturing, and ripening the fruits of the earth, warming its soil with its genial rays; and thus, from year to year, keeping up the vigour and life of all existence. Chrishna, too, became incarnate, or took upon him human form, was born of a virgin, and was at→ tended in his childhood by shepherds, performed miracles, and even raised the dead. Mithras, the second person of the old Persian Trinity was also a personification of the sun, the great Preserver of Nature. Osiris, in the Egyptian Trinity, is again represented as symbolising the sun. He was the chief god of the ancient Babylonians, under the name of Bel or Baal; and the books of the Old Testament testify that he was worshipped under the same name among the Phenician or Canaanitish nations, whom the Israelites dislodged from Palestine. In the Greek and Roman mythology, the sungod Helios, or Phoebus, or Apollo, was endowed with a rank only inferior to that of Zeus or Jupiter, the Omnipotent Father. Our old Teutonic forefathers rendered the sun peculiar honours, as a high-god, and dedicated to his worship the first day of the week, which, in spite of our established Christianity after so many hundred years, still bears the name they gave it---Sunday. Even before they conquered the land, the ancient Keltic inhabitants raised their altars to the sun, and erected to him their upaithric or unroofed temples, such as Stonehenge. The fires they were accustomed to kindle in the sun's honour, four times in the year, are not yet forgotten by their descendants. In the mountains of Scotland, the Gael still lights the 'Beltane' or Baal's fire, in the month of May, and at Lammas, in August; nor is the

custom unextinct among the Kelts in the wilds of Ireland---where it bears the same name. Even on the Western continent, when the Spaniards discovered it, and called it a new world,' though it had been inhabited for ages by partially civilised nations---the worship of the sun was the chief feature of religion. The Inca, or sovereign of Peru, was the child of the sun, and was therefore sacred. The sun's worship was performed in a temple glittering with massive gold and silver; and a chief source of the popularity of the play of 'Pizarro,' in this country was the introduction of one striking spectacle on the stage---the Peruvians worshipping in the temple of the sun, before they went to battle.

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It is not merely for shewing how natural and universal was the adoration of the sun among ancient nations that I hastily recount these facts,—but to awaken reflection on a much deeper and weightier thought: the origin and source of the doctrine that to man belongs another life after the grave. wish, if not a hope, to which the heart of man cleaves when the doctrine has once been taught him; and which some of the strongest-minded men have found it impossible to subdue.

Can any one show us how it was possible, without some natural object to dictate or suggest the thought, for the first men to conceive the thought of a future life? A 'revelation'-do you point to? In what revelation were the first men told that they should live again after death? Direct us to it. If you believe the Old Testament to be a revelation, tell us where it reveals a future state. There is but one passage which is ever made a strong point in it, by theologians, who contend that this doctrine is found in it; and that is found in the Idumean book, 'Job'-'I know that my Redeemer liveth, &c.,' and yet this passage can be made as clear in its meaning, by giving it quite another sense, as it seems to be by giving it the orthodox sense. Adam is told that in the day in which he eats of the fruit in the midst of the garden, he shall surely die-but he is never told that he shall live again: neither is Noah, or Abraham, or Isaac, or Jacob; nor do they profess such a doctrine. All the promises given to the patriarchs are temporal; they refer solely to possessions and enjoyments on earth, for themselves or their posterity. In the system of Moses there is no reference to a future state: it is all of the earth, earthy.' Indeed this is so notorious, that to obviate the difficulty in which such an omission has always placed divines, the great bishop Warburton wrote his celebrated masterpiece The Divine Legation of Moses,' in which 2,000 authors are quoted, and in which it is shewn that every heathen legislator of antiquity taught the doctrine of future rewards and punishments as a means of overawing mankind and ensuring, by fear or hope, their observance of certain precepts and their political obedience. Moses, on the contrary, says the episcopal giant of learning,-shews the divinity of his mission by omitting to work on man's fears, or excite his hopes, of a future life by teaching it; and by insisting on the observance of the "Law;" without it. Some people were ill-natured enough to charge the bishop with a sly insinuation against the Christian, or New Dispensation doctrine; but it was quite unfair-for he laid the polemical flail about the shoulders of 'free-thinkers' so lustily, as to shew that he had no sympathy with them.

At a later period the belief in a future state found its way among the Jews. Even when the legend of Elijah--that grandest and sublimest of all the legends of the Old Testament-was written, there seems to have

been some notion of a future existence-Elijah, in the chariot of fire 'went up into heaven.' By the time of Christ-that is, after their acquaintance with the teaching of the refined Greeks, if they had not already borrowed the doctrine of the Eastern people, the sect of the Pharisees were celebrated for their maintenance of this doctrine; while the Sadducees, who were persons of the highest rank, rejected it and denied it altogether.

That it makes no part of the Patriarchal and Mosaic Dispensations is clear. A text or two, by great straining, could not be a satisfactory proof that it was there. What must be more important than all other doctrines put together would have met us on every page, if the writers of the early books had had it revealed to them.

Then how came it into the world? Man is like the beasts that perish' -a sentence from the book we have just been speaking of-seemed a natural and rational conclusion. Man never saw a dead dog, after his flesh was mouldered away and his bones were crumbling, start anew into life. He never beheld a resurrection of any animated being; and, as an animal himself, there seemed no hope for him of living again. But a wish is soon father to a thought-(to borrow Shakspere's wisdom); and the feeling of being for ever separated from those he loved, of never more enjoying his favourite pursuits, of remaining for ever unconscious, brought a weight and gloom upon man which seemed unendurable. But the Sun!-did he not go down into the earth, and rise again, daily? The seasons!-did they not return again by his influence? The trees!-did they not again put forth their leaves at the return of his beams? There was hope, then, for He was superior to the other animals. They possessed but a limited mind,—'instinct' man called it; while he was able to subdue them, to train them, to use them for his own purposes, by the superior gift of reason: he had a soul, a spiritual man within the bodily man. After the grave he would enter on a new home: rude ideas were formed of it, at first : there was hunting in it, and all kinds of pleasure: then it became more elevated—it was an Elysium, a refined existence; while the dread alternative was Tartarus-the gloomy realm of Dis or Pluto, whose gates were kept by the three-headed dog Cerberus.

man.

In the East the metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls, became the prevailing idea: the soul would pass through many animal forms, and then return to the same man; for which reason the Egyptians embalmed the body that it might be ready when the period arrived-namely, 3,000 years when the mummy in its fine linen cerements was to be resuscitated by the soul re-tenanting it.

Yet 3,000 years have elapsed since many of those strange relics were embalmed: some of them which have found their way into Europe are believed to be of that date:-but they never awake into life! And when the rest have become as old, they will not be nearer a resurrection. Such an idea demonstrated that those old Egyptians, with all their colossal tombs and temples and amazing pyramids, were children in some things. To judge by what we see of the perishable condition of the body, it never can live again, except in so far as it partakes of life by being separated into other bodies.

Yet the sublimest thinkers cleaved to the doctrine of a future state. It was one of the strongest tenets of Socrates, the great master of moral wisdom among the Greeks. It was the favourite doctrine of his favourite disciple, Plato. The great and good Carpenter's son of Nazareth taught

it: that is evident amidst all the divergencies of the legends. Paul, the Pharisee-for by his own statement you know he was 'of the straitest sect' was already predisposed to believe it, and therefore made it a part of his teaching; but he, and the Platonising Christians after him, were, in their own minds, strengthened by a new verity, as they held it to be-the resurrection of their crucified Master. Since their time the question has, after endless controversies, settled down among orthodox Christians into one fixed confession. The resurrection of Christ is the only foundation for the doctrine of man's future existence.'

I say that all orthodox doctors of divinity have come to this conclusion. What, then is the evidence for Christ's Resurrection? If something so eternally important as our eternal existence depends upon it, we ought to have most certain and clear evidence for it. Is it so? How stands the fact? Let us look at the evidence calmly, candidly; but yet, unshrinkingly, and without being overawed by those who threaten us (if we disbelieve the evidence) with all the pains of endless perdition.

(To be continued.)

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NOTICE TO THE PURCHASERS OF COOPER'S JOURNAL.' From the great difficulty I experience in attending to the Journal while from home, I have resolved to suspend it for THREE MONTHS. The 27th No. will, therefore, not appear till the First Week in October. With the last No. for December, a brief Index shall be given, so that the volume may be complete for 1850. The Romance, CAPTAIN COBLER,' will also be suspended till the recommencement of the Journal: 18 numbers are now published: about 10 more numbers will complete it. All letters addressed to 5, Park Row, Knightsbridge, London,' will be forwarded to me while I am from home. THOMAS COOper.

A WORD ABOUT SUNDAY OBSERVANCE. THERE is a class of persons in Christendom-and unfortunately a very large and influential class, too-who, it is said, are ready to do anything on a week-day, and nothing on a Sunday; and these are the pious respectabilities who keep all on' fretting themselves to fiddle-strings about the 'awful sin of Sabbath-breaking! This religious hobgoblin that haunts the twilight of so many half-educated minds is becoming quite an alarming nuisance, and causing as much commotion as the celebrated Cock-lane ghost did in days of yore. It has forced its spectral self into the House of Commons, and there that noble churchman, Sir Robert Inglis, falls down and worships it. It has glided amongst the coronets of the Upper House, where it finds a patron in the well-meaning, but rather feeble, Lord Harrowby. The presence of his Shadowship in the Legislature bodes no good: it is ominous of unpleasant consequences to the principle of free conscience in religion: it marks an increased activity in the Cantwell and Mawworm school; and, without any disrespect to our Northern neighbours, we should say it betokens a sort of Scotch mist' over our English intelligence.

Now, as our deeds are not evil, we love light rather than darkness, and therefore feel in duty bound to do all we can to diffuse the rays of Truth and Reason whensoever and wheresoever they are most required. On every question in which man is interested, we wish man to think for himself, and argue from facts, and not by fanaticism. If the advocates of 'Sunday Grievance' Bills would follow this plan, they would find considerable difficulty in cooking orations in favour of Sabbath sanctification, and we should hear less of keeping holy' the seventh day by closing postoffices and stopping railways, and all that kind of senseless gabble. If those who stick up for the Fourth Commandment and 'no surrender,' and yet call themselves Christians, would lay aside their nursery preju

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