of a certain refined or etherial fire, or spiritual flame.'

"Aesar is represented symbolically by the act of lighting fire; i. e., putting in play the primitive movement for the creation of beings. The first month was called after him. March, with the Romans, was the first month. The Chaldeans called March Adar, the Syrians Odar, which, in their mode of speaking, was pronounced Azar or Ozar.

"The Gauls had god called Hesus was this from the Greek Low? or the Hebrew yw; Iso? or both? In Hebrew, if he were the emphatic article, then the word would be literally the preserver. Hesus was also often the destroyer; in Gaul, Mars. Iswara was also in India the destroyer delighted with human sacrifices."*

Thus we may perceive that there was a very striking similarity between the characters of all the imaginary gods of antiquity. All are traceable to the sun, the universal lord, from whose worship has descended, to our times, the various mummeries of religion. The theologian may wince at this, and cry out, abominable; the lordly bishop may skulk beneath the protection of the law, to evade discussion: but ultimately "the truth will out;" and then shall men perceive how they have been imposed on by the craft of bishops, priests, and their satellites.

Sir William Jones has, I think, sufficiently proved that the Ganessa of India and the Janus of Rome are identical. The same similarity is observable between the Esmun of Phoenicia and the Saman of Ireland, both signifying the sun, the source of heat and life. Again, Veit corresponds with the Hindoo Naut and the Neith of the Egyptians.

Sir William Jones observes, that Colonel Vallancey, whose learned inquiries into the ancient literature of Ireland are highly interesting, assures me, that Chrishna in Irish means the sun; and we find Apollo and Sol considered by the Roman poets as the same deity. I am inclined to believe that not Chrishna or Vishnau, but even Bramha or Seeva, when united and expressed by the mystical word Om, were designed by the idolaters to represent the solar fire.”*

Thus, to whatever part of the globe we turn our attention, we find traces of the worship of the heavenly bodies. And it would have been well for mankind if this religion had not been refined upon by priests. The first notions of religion among all savage nations are rude and barbarous; but as civilization advances these notions become more refined. Wrathful demons are supposed to exist; and this tenet is impressed on the mind with all the fervour and eloquence which the priests can muster. Here lies the secret of their trade. The wrath of these beings must be appeased by prayers and sacrifices; the priests must be the sacrificers, or they must teach the people what they are to do. The people must pay them well for their services; and thus the interest, the passions, and the self-love of this order of men combine to make them, as they ever have been, the pests and the deceivers of the people. But the day is fast approaching, when all this mummery shall "dissolve, and, like the baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wreck behind." Men appear to be gradually bursting the trammels which have been thrown around them by ignorance and superstition. The daystar of knowledge now faintly irradiates the world; but soon the sun of truth will arise, and, by the brightness of its rising, disperse the clouds which have so long been gathering on the human understanding.

OF THE TRUE ORIGIN AND NECESSITY OF MARRIAGE CEREMONIES.

(From Madan's Thelypthora, vol. iii., p. 309.)

THE invention of marriage ceremonies is as great a proof of the depravity and corruption of human nature, as the invention of written bonds and obligations under hand and seal; they alike prove that they are the effects of that necessity which mankind laboured under to secure themselves against the villany, treachery, and deceit of one another. If the world was what it ought to be, no obligation beside that of conscience would be necessary for the security of men with regard to any kind of bargains which they could make with each other. The man who lent another a sum of money, though without any other witnesses to the transaction than the parties themselves, would be perfectly secure- -perhaps more so than he is now, with a bond duly stamped and sealed and delivered by the hand of the obliger, in the presence of witnesses. If we ask, whence arose those voluminous securities, known in our law by the names of marriage settlements, mortgage deeds, and specialities of various kinds? it may be answered-" from men being afraid to trust one another without them."

The very same principle first gave birth to outward marriage ceremony; the simple institution of heaven would have been as sufficient to have bound the parties to each other at this hour as it was in the days of innocence, had not the corruption of human nature destroyed the influences of justice, mercy, and truth within the human soul. The adventitious circumstances of human ceremony, on this account, became necessary; and, as the world increased, and villany of all kinds augmented, the means of security against it has at all times exercised the invention of legislators, and employed the vigilance of the executive power, in order to obviate the mischievous effects of it.

But what a strange thing would it be to hear that a bond on paper, stamped with a stamp of such a value,

and sealed and delivered in the presence of witnesses, and not the sum of money lent, raised the duty in the obliger's conscience to pay it! and what a conscience must that man have who looks upon an outward security as the only reason for acknowledging a just debt! Yet this is the language of mankind with respect to marriage. The debt of justice, arising from the command of God, is easily set aside, and nothing is looked upon as obligatory but the outward bond. To say that this is less a mere civil contract than the other, is saying what is not true, and is the great advantage which has been taken of men's understandings in the business of marriage, to the no small emolument of those who have taken it, and to the distress and destruction of millions who have suffered by it.

CASES

WHEREIN INDIVIDUALS HAVE BEEN CHARGED WITH IMPIETY FOR RIDICULOUS REASONS.

PIERRE BRISSOT, M.D., who died in 1522, ventured to maintain that a pleuritical patient ought to be bled on the side affected; but the King of Portugal issued a decree to the contrary and afterwards, in 1529, the followers of Dr. Denys persuaded the Emperor Charles V., that Brissot's method was an attack upon religion, being an impious and mortal doctrine, as injurious to the body as Lutheranism is to the soul. (Vide Bayle's Dict., art." Brissot," note B.)

Vesalius, who died in 1564, was accused of impiety before the Inquisition, for having dissected a body, in which, according to his accusers, life was not extinct. (Vide Biog. Univ., tom. xlviii., p. 309.)

The Bishop of Exeter, in the present age, accuses the socialists of atheism and blasphemy, because they profess themselves ignorant of what the bishop himself says (whenever he repeats the Athanasian creed) is incomprehensible.-Welcome back, ye shadows of ignorance and monkish barbarism! and all hail, thou glorious inquisitor-general!

PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAYS.

NO. IV.

On the Causes and Effects of a Belief in Supernatural Agents.

"It is owing to superstition that men roll themselves in the dirt, thrust themselves into dunghills, observe Sabbaths, throw themselves on their faces, seat themselves before the temples, and practise absurd prostrations."-Plutarchus on Superstition.

THERE is a disposition in the human race, while they remain in a state of ignorance, to attribute everything which appears to them inscrutable to a supernatural cause. The general experience of mankind sufficiently attests the truth of this assertion. Wherever men have been found in a state of barbarism, they have almost invariably been characterised by this disposition. The few savage tribes which may be pointed out as exceptions to this general rule, by no means destroy its validity. We are not sufficiently acquainted with their manners and customs, their language and institutions, to be able to state positively that they entertain no belief in a system of supernaturalism. In the lowest state of brutality and ignorance in which it is possible for men to be, the understanding may be SO wrapped in clouds as to prevent even the small exertion of the reasoning faculty which the acknowledgment of a supernatural cause requires. However, among tribes a little more elevated as it respects their intellectuality, almost every phenomenon which they cannot understand is referred to the agency of supernatural beings. The untutored savage, upon beholding the movements and mechanism of a watch, proclaims it to be under the guidance of an animating spirit; and the North American Indian, when he beholds the lightning flashing athwart the blackened heavens, prostrates himself before it, and adores it as a divinity. The peasant of more civilized and polished climes, too,

I