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the unhappy period when Orthodoxy and Arianism first drew the sword on each other, to the moral atrocities which Protestant ascendancy has committed in Ireland, this leaven of Judaical jealousy has harassed the Church, counteracted the spirit of Christ, and furnished Unbelief at once with its best apology, and its most effective weapons of offence.

But Judaism was also a system of pains and penalties. Fear was its master passion. Together with exalted notions of Deity, it ascribed to Him some of the lowest human passions. He was therefore represented as offended with his erring subjects, so that his wrath could not be appeased without suitable compensation. Hence arose a complicated ritual of atonements, whose design was to satisfy his anger, and render him propitious. Without shedding of blood there was, therefore, with the Jews no remission of sins. I am not unaware that similar ideas of the necessity and of the value of atoning sacrifices have prevailed among all ignorant and uncultivated tribes; and when one calls to mind that even among the classical nations, human blood was demanded as a needful expiation to the gods, one is justified in asserting that, severe as it was, the ritual of the Jews rather mitigated than aggravated this awful mistake. But as the influence of Judaism on the religion of Christ was more immediate and direct, I am disposed to think that this leaven of unrighteousness also passed from the Judaical institutions into the Church of Christ. Even the language of the New Testament itself wears a sacrificial hue; though I by no means think that the proper idea of an atonement is sanctioned by the Christian Scriptures. As, however, the writers of these books were of Jewish extraction, and had been nursed and reared in the use of sacrificial terms, they could do no other than convey to the world a system of mercy and love, in phraseology which, more

or less, wears the dress of a system of wrath and compensation. Subsequent ages have not distinguished the truth from the accidental investments in which, in some cases, it appears,-not separated 'the letter which killeth, from the spirit which giveth life'; and in consequence, the religion of Christ has had to labor under the corruptions which a belief in expiations has engendered.

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Kindred with this source of evil was that principle of revenge and reprisals, which demanded, in cases of injury and offence, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.' Had the Jews indeed been equal to their institutions, this inhuman practice, a practice derived from the influence of a semi-barbarous age, would have been discountenanced and abated. But the authority of Christ himself shows us that it was in active operation in his day. Indeed his own death is, to no small extent, attributable to its prevalence. And though against no one of the powers of evil did he more firmly set his face, protesting against it both in express terms and by the first principles of his religion; yet being congenial with the lower passions of humanity, it gained a footing in his Church, arrayed itself in the form of an angel of light, converted the crosier into a sword, spoke from the pulpit, arrayed Christians one against another, and when it had created strife and confusion within the Church, went forth to the condemnation of the world, and sometimes to actual slaughter.

Out of these combined influences sprang the system of favoritism and exclusion which, though essentially Anti-Christ, assumed to itself the designation of Orthodoxy. Hence the apocryphal, not to say fabulous notions which, concreted into a system by the influence of the clergy and the powers of the state, appear before the world as the only true saving faith. From first to last it is a system essentially Jewish, and as such essentially one of retributory pains and penalties. For the

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offence of one man- -the great progenitor of the race, the Deity, in anger, condemns all to everlasting torture. The sin of the father is imputed to his innumerable progeny. An expiation is offered. Wrath is appeased. Man is rescued. But though the offence of one abounded to all, the merit of another in effect reaches only to a few. What began in injustice, terminates in cruelty, and the fate of untold myriads is everlasting woe. The imputation of that merit, in each case, depends on the reception of a particular creed; and therefore, inasmuch as it is better for man to suffer temporal death than eternal ruin, those who had the guardianship of this sole means of salvation, were not only warranted, but required, if there were need, to kill the body in order to save the soul. Persecution is not only the natural, but the necessary offspring of a system of partial salvation; and it is only so far as those who hold any form of belief to be the passport to the divine favor, prove unfaithful to the very essence of their doctrine, that they can become truly charitable and philanthropic, and thus enter into the spirit of the Master whose name they bear. Meanwhile, this unholy and inhumane influence, however clothed with a fair exterior, is still actively and powerfully at work in the outward Church of Christ, setting father against mother, and brothers against sisters, making a man's worst enemies those of his own house; fostering spiritual pride; requiring the prostration of the human intellect; preaching passive obedience and nonresistance; building up priestcraft and superstition on the basis of fear; and bowing many a gentle heart beneath an intolerable burden, or converting the religionist into the maniac. And though I am not the person to look with unconcern on the progress of infidelity, yet if its mission is, like that of the tempest in the natural world, to purify and refreshen the moral atmosphere around us, I must say we shall have no reason to regret, should it

be employed by a wise Providence to unbind these heavy burdens, to strike off these rankling fetters of the spirit, and set the captive free.

The corruptions which Judaism engendered are mostly of a moral nature; those which came from Heathenism are rather intellectual, and I must add, on that account, less injurious. This resulted in part from the fact, that while it was the practice and prevalent tone of Judaism which corrupted Christianity, on the part of Paganism the defilement came from a speculative philosophy, and a mythological creed. Compared with the intense moral feeling of the Jew, the Pagan religion was little more than an intellectual form. When, however, this influence of the head came to be united to the moral influence which Judaism imparted, it greatly increased the tendency to corruption; for by the appearance of wisdom which it wore under the name of philosophy, it supplied that in which the Judaical element was deficient, threw the shield of reason around the false shapes of feeling, and in this guise won the understanding by its adulations, and captivated the heart by its perverted sensibilities.

Paganism was a system of gross polytheism. It had deified not only the powers of nature, but the good and the bad in human character, and raised the vilest of mortals to share the throne of the universe. It is true that when, in the second century of the Christian era, it began to make itself felt in the Church of Christ, it had parted at least as it existed in the hands of those philosophers who passed over into the Christian campit had parted with much of its grosser and more repulsive forms; yet it retained an influence over their minds which indisposed them to the bare simplicity of the religion of Jesus, made them fond of abstract and visionary speculations, and diverting their attention from the essence of Christianity which is eminently

practical, inclined them to find or make mysteries in their newly-adopted faith. He who had from his youth up been pleasingly engaged in curious enquiries respecting the essence of the gods, their orders and functions, and who had been trained to acknowledge an Olympus, on which there sat, in nicely graduated ranks, the celestial hierarchy, from the recently deceased Emperor up to Jupiter himself, could hardly be satisfied with the unpretending simplicity of the crucified man of Nazareth.

Still less, perhaps, could the unenlightened rustic, and the ambitious citizen, bring into the Church of Christ hearts cleansed from all the sensual idolatries in which they had been educated. How great soever the change which the religion of Jesus wrought, it could scarcely exterminate every relic of heathenism from the breast, especially when, in the third and fourth century, its own power began to wane, as the splendour of the character of the deeds of Christ faded from the world. The rays of that sun must be comparatively weak which men read of, rather than see and feel; and so, as time passed on, many, there is reason to think, adopted the name of Christian, while they retained in their minds and hearts much of the influence of that Paganism in which they had been educated.

Scarcely, therefore, had Jesus left the world two centuries, before the crucified man was elevated into a secondary God; and the corrupting influence of polytheism continuing to grow in the Church, he was ere long first associated, and then identified, with his own. Father, in conjunction with a third partner in the godhead; which three, however, mysticism, priestcraft and credulity declared to be one, alike different and the same, equal, yet not distinct. And as the Son was made coeval with the Father, so the Mother of God was placed on the highest step of their common throne, and a Jewish matron-the wife of a carpenter

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