a God of love and mercy, who desireth not the death of a sinner, but had rather that he should turn from his wickedness and live? Let us, in the spirit of Christian veneration for the nature of the Deity, ascribe these atrocities to the semi-savage tendencies of the Jewish horde, and not charge them upon heaven. Would it not be less impious to deny the inspiration of Moses than to derogate from the character of God

See Deuteronomy 23, v. 2, for the following inspired statute: A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the Lord. In the decalogue it is said the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children unto the third and fourth generation, but here the penalty of a crime is stretched over ten generations! Why should God have refused an illegitimate child to worship him in the midst of the congregation? What moral stain was there on the souls of those who were merely the unconscious and passive victims of their ancestors' guilt? Why should they have been placed in the position of criminals when not criminals, and made to blush for crimes not their own down to the tenth generation? To us this law savours more of depraved humanity than perfect divinity.

There can be no doubt that the whole of the Pentateuch was not written by Moses, if any part of it was, since he could not have given an account of his own death and burial. The question is where did he leave off writing, and who continued the work for him?* (Read the last chapter of Deu. teronomy.)

We have now run through the five books of Moses, as they are usually called, dotting down here and there such reflections as occurred to us in the perusal of that inspired portion of The Word.' We are well aware of having trodden upon what many will deem forbidden ground. How often shall it be told us that we are fools who have rushed in where angels would dare not tread! If we are wrong in what we have written, let pardon be granted us. We sinned from ignorance, and we therefore desire better information.

AN INJURED MAN.-The Evening Picayune has the following:-' The friends of the Rev. Mr. Hardy, feeling aggrieved at the announcement that he was keeping a gambling shop in San Francisco, have authorised its denial, and prove an alibi by stating that he is now in gaol at Lockport for bigamy.'-Liverpool Journal, Oct. 19, 1850.

* The book of Deuteronomy includes only the short period of about two months, and finishes with an account of the death of Moses, which is supposed to have been added by his successor, Joshua. These five books were written by Moses; and according to Archbishop Usher, they contain the history of 2552 years and a half.-Introduction to the Study of the Bible, by George Pretyman, Lord Bishop of Lincoln.

CORRESPONDENCE.

THE POOR MAN'S SABBATH.

SIR,-If the Christian system were something definite, respecting which there were not and could not be two opinions, it would then be a question whether it were not a code that, for the sake of peace and concord, it would be well to make public profession of. But when we see it split up into a thousand and one differing and antagonistic sects, when we see it has brought a sword instead of peace into the world, it is then clearly a duty to attack that system whenever it dares to propound positions and theories adverse to the inalienable rights of mankind. The most simple doctrines of this religion have been warped into codes to suppress intellect, freedom, and health; and while jarring sectarians wrangle about fulsome quibbles-which, except in their consequences, and as they are wrested to suppress the privileges of the human family, are totally indifferent to us all—all their breaches are healed, and they join in a united phalanx the moment the poor man is to be robbed of a privilege. The question of whether man was made for the Sabbath, or the Sabbath for man, in my humble opinion, was definitely settled by the reputed founder of the Christian system nineteen centuries since; and except for purposes of tyranny and intolerance, I am at a loss to conceive why the subject is mooted. Jesus Christ and his apostles (if the Bible be true) walked in the fields and enjoyed themselves on the Sabbath day, (which, by the bye, is Saturday, not Sunday at all) but the moment the poor of 1850 have opened up to them the means and opportunity of cheap and healthy recreation, that moment do the clergy of all sects and denominations, with the clique of venerable and antiquated individuals that kick their legs and move their arms whenever their pastor pulls the string, begin to howl about profanation of the Lord's day, accompanied with all the insolence, arrogance, and low abuse, that none but the faithful would demean themselves so much as to use. How stands the case as to the poor man's enjoyments on Sunday? Suppose he walks half a dozen miles on Sunday mornings, he is made a mark of completely by the pastor of the district-and if he be communed with on the subject, and be brave enough to assert his right to God's pure air, which he has no opportunity to enjoy on any other day, then there are on record a thousand instances in which the pastor, by hook or crook, by open or secret influences, has blasted the man's character by working on the fears or prejudices of some idiotic or fanatical employer; and the result is the pretended shepherd of the flock, the deputy, as it were, of him who said the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath, exerts his influence until the lover of freedom and fresh air is thrust from his employment, and whether he starves or thieves to live is quite a trifle to those who, clothed in fine rai. ment and fattened on the sweat and blood of the poor, dare to approach the Author of Nature with hypocritical and set phrases, which, after duly repeating with the necessary genuflections and changes of garment, bleaches them

in due course from all their sins, and they ride home in their coaches to good dinner, thanking the Lord they are not as other men are. I say heaven be praised they are not as other men are, for were it so I solemnly believe the world would long since have been a desert, and the human family would have exterminated one another.

At the present moment, as Gorham has read himself into his living, the whole church are watching with pretended horror, but with real alarm, the Sunday excursion trains. While between London and Bristol, and other large towns, the reduction was but a third of the full charge, priestcraft stood aloof, feeling certain the denizens of Birmingham, Bristol, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, and London could not fraternise at that price. Why the fare was double and treble the weekly earnings of thousands of working men. If any, therefore, did avail themselves of the Saturday, Sunday, and Monday reductions, it was the well-to-do middle classes--the souls of whom, I can only suppose, ecclesiastics do not care much about; most certain it is they never got up a grand howl of piety about it. But the case is terribly altered when the poor Londoner can take a run to Bristol for six shillings, to clasp or be once more clasped in the arms of aged parents, whom his poverty had for years debarred him the gratification of seeing and speaking to when brother meets with sister—when hearts commune with hearts —when the poor man of London can for six shillings pour out his troubles to the poor man of Bristol-when the advocate of free-thought in Bristol tells to his astonished brother in London what clerical tyrants dare to do in country places, and when the London brother dares in return to breathe a loftier spirit of independence into his brother man of the country. Then the spiritual dogs of war are let loose, and the employer, the landlord, the railway director is hounded on to slaughter and to sacrifice—for it will never do, and well the clerical tyrants know it, and for that reason they are politically supported, for the oppressed to have means and opportunity to canvass the misdeeds of their oppressors, or to concert one with the other, or mature plans and organisations that would and could but end in the demolition of clerical and political usurpations. It is for these reasons the clergy of Bristol have dared to remonstrate with the directors of the Great Western Railway. How dare they do as the clergy do, work on Sunday-even though from three to five thousand persons are thereby enabled to enjoy themselves in a way hitherto beyond their reach? Let the poor man and his family rot at home, let him perish in the pestilential air of the court in which he exists, and in the garret which, as a mockery to his misery, rich men call his home-what has he to do with the blessed sun, or the bright heavens, or the green fields-let him on Sunday contemplate the tiles, his pale and emaciated wife, his prematurely old and ricketty children, and when he is tired of such contemplations let him open the Bible and read 'Blessed are the poor, for they shall enjoy the kingdom of heaven.'

If these priests were themselves immaculate, there might be a chance of bearing with them, but wherever you touch a public print, the foulest, meanest, most despicable deed to be found therein has for its author a clergyman. Only a week or two since, at the petty sessions at Chippenham, a poor woman, mother of two little girls whom, through poverty, she had placed in the national school of the place, had to summon before the magistrates sitting in petty session the Rev. Mr. Purbrick. The infants she had found, from the thighs and legs upwards, to be a mass of bruises-and it turned out that the clerical brute had ordered another female child to lift their clothes, and threatened her with punishment if she did not do it, and then with a cane, upon their naked bodies, proceeded to satiate his bloodthirsty propensities, till the children were a mass of bruises. And what is his punishment? He had to pay costs, but no fine was inflicted because the Rev. Judas had expressed his contrition. Fortunately for him he was a parson. But I say the time is near, even at our very threshhold, that shall witness a new order of things. The masses are beginning to read, as is evidenced by the brewers' men, who have so lately vindicated our nationality by their conduct to the miscreant Haynau. They are beginning not only to know their rights, but are becoming able to use them temperately. It needs no prophet to foretell that the days of kingcraft and priestcraft are already numbered. R. L. B.

REVIEW OF BOOKS.

Chambers' Jonrnal for September. Orr & Co., Amen Corner.

Ir is not only a great fact, but a misfortune of the utmost magnitude, that while the people have but a very few prints public spirited enough to publish the whole truth respecting the millions and their interests, there are hundreds engaged in a systematic perversion of their rights, their duties, their wants, and their interests. They mislead and delude the people, and make their very delusions-brought about by their own machinations-reasons to justify the iniquities that are perpetrated upon the democracy of the country. 'Self Imposed Taxation' is an article in which the Chambers have the assurance to assert that all that the working man pays in taxes, of any kind or description, except that for soap, (which they allow to be a necessary) is self-imposed, and can be done without. Their reasonings, or rather their baseless and impudent assumptions, to endeavour to give a shadow of reason for their conclusions, are like the following-which I quote entire :-' Take the case of a Scottish rural labourer. His house, having at most but three or four windows, is subject to no tax; his small garden or patch of ground is equally exempt; the clothes of himself and family, made from native wool, and from cotton or flax, are also untaxed; the family food is likewise un

taxed, and his Bible is printed on untaxed paper,' and concludes the long, specious, and false paragraph by broadly stating 'that the manual labourer, so far as will is concerned, may be said to be altogether untaxed.' Now, in the first place, why has this labourer three, or, at most, four windows in his house? The answer is, because the odious imposition—the window taxcompels the poor labourer to block up the other three or four. Messrs. Chambers do not mean to assert that a Scotch labourer, who may have six or seven children of various sexes, then himself and his wife, would exist with three windows-which answer to three rooms only-were it not for that tax that compels him to shut out the light of heaven. In the next place, is it a fact that 'his small garden or patch of ground is equally exempt? Is there no oily minister requiring annuity tax, or do the ministers of the kirk live upon air? If they do how is it that Mr. Tod and others are now languishing in jail, for not paying ministers' dues. Then is it true that the family food is untaxed?

Does tea pay no 2s. 2d. in Scotland? In that fair land is coffee untaxed, and sugar innocent of the exciseman? Do Messrs. C. deliberately insinuate that the Scottish labourer defies the guager, and takes his tea, sugar, coffee, tobacco, beer, whiskey, at the merchants' prices without having paid the duties our fraternal government exacts? No, they mean not this, they mean that the half starved millions should never taste such luxuries-let the poor slave from sun-rise to sun-down, and then take a turn among the bushes and regale themselves on berries and a drink cf water. Why the erudite gentlemen should allow the working men soap we cannot make out. Literature is as necessary to the mind as soap to the body, and yet Messrs. Chambers say the outside a working man need contribute in taxes in a year is four shillings. They, in their own persons, are living instances of the falseness of their own article, for it is a public fact that they were themselves obliged to give up a publication solely in consequence of the duty upon paper. Who do these 'Do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do' men think buys their journal? Who do they think read the bulk of the cheap publications but the working men? And is not therefore the duty upon the paper paid by these poor readers? Who pays the duty upon the advertisements in all papers-the publishers or the rich and poor, who are compelled to advertise? The fact is, the article is one huge lie. We have hitherto analysed this precious composition on their own grounds, and taking their own case, and we think our readers, even taking it so, will see its speciousness. But it has another side, which is what justice is there in citing a Scottish peasant as a type of the working classes? -to which we shall again refer in our next number.

The Lever-Social and Political. James O'Neill, Belfast.

We regret this periodical did not reach us on the day of publication, as (with all respect be it spoken) anything like a practical step in the way of