reward and punishment, &c. must have been inculcated by the believers in some one particular religion, however misunderstood by later proselytes, or changed in appearance (or, if it be so, even in spirit) by the lapse of succeeding ages.

It may be said, on the other hand, indeed, that, as hope and fear are common to man, so also must be the phantoms which those passions excite in the mind. But, the idea of a Godalthough it may seem to us at present obvious and even necessary -could scarcely have sprung up in twenty different regions, without a communication of one with the other; and the notion of an Hereafter, with its attendant consequences, is too complicated, and too much at variance with the proofs of mortality perpetually occurring before our eyes, to have arisen among a dozen different sects of Pagans without some teacher wiser than themselves.

Of all ancient mythologies, that of Greece appears to have been the most beautiful and imaginative. It sprang out of the base and earthy superstitions of Egypt, as the winged butterfly is born of the dull and loathsome chrysalis. It did not, indeed, touch the heavens, but it rose into the air, and there sate enthroned, above Pelion and Parnassus and Olympus with its hundred heads,-a creature of beauty before whom sages and poets were proud to bow down and worship. Nevertheless, it was false and hollow. Its Gods had no perfection, except of form. They were cruel, lustful, rapacious, deceitful, and implacable. But they had strength and grace of body (mixed up with deformities of mind), and this was enough for the Greeks. God is said to have created man after his own image. The Greeks fashioned their Gods after themselves, and were satisfied. Indeed, their heroes or demigods were actually of human descent, and the great Olympian conclave itself had, probably, a similar origin, except where its deities were mere embodyings of certain qualities of human nature, or impersonations of virtues which they themselves (if we may believe their stories) did not always think it necessary to exercise.

Every folly of every other creed, however, shrinks in comparison with the preposterous superstition of the Egyptians.In the belief that all things had their origin in the slime of the world-or the mud of the Nile-or some such notion, they went down to the dust for their Gods, and worshipped, in perverse absurdity, all that is held hideous in form or base in nature. The snake, and the crocodile, the ichneumon, the dog, and the bull, cats, onions, monkeys, goats, sheep, falcons, wolves, vermin, and, in short, every thing which the dirt of Egypt produced or nourished was considered sufficiently good for the humble idolatry of its inhabitants. They were once adorers of the visible heavens; but they left that worship, in order to

invest with divine attributes every thing which was inferior to themselves. They thought, perhaps, to raise the idea of human nature, by reducing their Gods below it: but this, if it ever existed, was a short-sighted vanity; for they worshipped still.

Much learning and ingenuity have been employed, in different ages, in inventing for the Egyptians different reasons for their extraordinary conduct; yet it has not on all occasions been justified. It is said, that one idol was emblematic of wisdom, another of fruitfulness, a third of prudence, a fourth of eternity, and so on. These, however, (whatever might have been the case originally) do not latterly appear to have been mere symbols. The bull was not adored because he had power, or patience, or cunning, or innocence; but the God Apis was believed to exist in him,-incarnate. He was apt to die, indeed; but the people who could abase themselves before a cat, or pray by the hour to a monkey or a rope of onions, were not likely to be daunted by so small a difficulty. It was the death of a deity whom they could easily replace, and nothing else was wanting than a little more fiction to render the absurdity perfect. They adopted the idea of a transmigration of souls and created a perpetual Apis. We say amongst ourselves that the king never dies' but this is considered an useful political fiction, and is held, indeed, necessary for the purposes of justice. We do not, we confess, so readily perceive the good which was to ensue from the mysteries of the Egyptian religion (of which, however, Plato and Pythagoras aspired to be members) or the supposed immortality of the holy bull.

The Indian is an obstinate and inveterate superstition,the creed of traditions which have existed six thousand years. Whatever beauty it originally possessed (and it certainly had beauty) is now defaced and worn away. Such as it is, however, it is still potent and mischievous. Its worshippers still retain their fears for their ancient gods, and pour out in blind obedience deluges of human blood before their brutish shrines. The system of excommunication, (the losing of cast,' as it is called,) their burnings and bruisings to death, still continue to excite both our wonder and contempt. Sir William Jones had learning and elegance enough to make us admire the theory of the Hindoo religion; but nothing can extenuate certain points of its practice, or tempt us to forget the cruel' and crafty policy of the priesthood, or the inexpressible folly of the people.

The Chinese, in religion, as in all other matters, claim an antiquity beyond all the rest of the world. There never was a people so completely the slaves of the giant Custom. They are the true practical optimists, and are utterly beyond both

argument or error. Every thing is as it should be with them, and as it always has been. Some nations have broken up their idols of wood and stone; others have given up worshipping the sun to adore the Power which created it; and others again have left the stars to their course, to prostrate themselves before the reptile which crawled at their feet; but the Chinese are where they were thousands of years ago! There is no alteration, at least no material alteration, in them. Their kings, we believe, still trace their pedigree to the moon, and make cousins of all the planets; and their sacred books (which they also trace beyond the time of Moses) are older, better, wiser, and less controvertible than any other creed, written or traditionary, which has existed in the world from the time of Adam (the Chinese Adam!) down to the moment of this present writing. It is well, perhaps, for the stability of their holy structure that the native sceptics are dealt with in a summary way; and that the Phantom of Justice who presides in China (and who has long since quitted the balance for the sword) as little permits impudent curiosity to assail it from abroad, as heresy to sap it at home. An offender against the most trivial point of faith is tried for his life, equally with one who prints the scriptures and thereby extends the religion! In regard to downright unbelievers, their heads are cut off without ceremony. The consequence of all this is, that the Emperor, to this day, remains first cousin of the moon, and the people of China are Pagans still.

It is surely no violent instance of bigotry on our parts to assert the pre-eminent character of the Christian religion over those which we have mentioned, as well as over others of a similar fashion. We do not mean to defend or even to extenuate the blindness and enormity of our own intolerant zealots. The burnings at the stake (from the simple conflagration of a witch or nonconformist, up to the hideous grandeur of an auto da fé) are no more to be contemplated without hate and contempt than any similar instance of damnable fanaticism which may have disgraced the annals of Rome or Egypt. It is not, indeed, so much of the practice of any religion that we would now speak, but of the theory and general aspect as shewn to us by writings and traditions. And upon this point we must maintain the supremacy of our own. The utility and moral beauty of its precepts (founded, as they generally are, upon pure reason, and calling into perpetual action the best qualities of our nature) are incomparably beyond the limitary dogmas of the sophists, or the ordinary dictates of other religions. They comprehend a far more extensive view of man, and are better adapted to his wants and nature. There is no other system of morals indeed, unless it

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be the Mahometan (and that, having been framed subsequent to the introduction of Christianity, adopted, naturally, part of what was good in it) which can claim any competition with our own. And the Mahometan religion itself is, assuredly, more limited, sensual, and earthy. Its spirit is more carnal and craving, fuller of humbler policy and gaudier dreams; for, although its principle was originally sufficiently ascetic in some respects, it was indulgent in others, and its paths of virtue on earth were lost in a voluptuous distance, in which all delights were blended, and a Paradise of Houris opened for the eternal joy of the 'true believer.' In this respect, the Greek superstition was better; but that, in its turn, never got beyond mere ideas of beauty and perfections of shape. They had, indeed, some personifications of goodness, as Prudence, Piety, Charity, &c. &c. but these were rather poetical than religious allegories, and were inferior to their Gods, who were brute specimens of deity,-incarnations, as it were, of mere physical power, and not remarkable; as we have said, either for intellect or virtue. Indeed, we may discover, even amongst nations generally reckoned tasteless and savage, more delicate and finer instances of imagination than in any of the flights of the Koran. What, in the Mahometan legends, can equal the Chinese superstition that Fohi's mother conceived him as she was encompassed by a rainbow? or the tradition of the tribe of (we believe) Mexican Indians, in which the virgin mother of one of their deities sees a white plume descend floating from heaven, which falls into her bosom and is lost? These things are scarcely surpassed by our own account of the Spirit which embodied itself in the figure of a dove, and descended in a stream of light upon the forehead of Mary, a forerunner of the immaculate conception.-Of ideas like these, the pages of the Koran are destitute.

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Passing by our own peculiar belief as to rewards and nishments, in which rank and power on earth are utterly set at nought, and a system of unerring and universal justice is supposed to be administered, with reference only to the sins and virtues of individual man, Christianity must also, in other respects, be considered as more refined and ideal than any other religion known to us. The shadowy aspect of our future is, assuredly, more poetical than even the dim Elysium of the ancients; and our Heaven beyond the stars, where eternal happiness and rejoicing are,-where winged spirits meet disencumbered of their clay-where the good man meets his friend, and patriot mingles with philosopher-where all is glowing with eternal life, stainless, untroubled, sublimer than a dream— where Heaven is indeed Heaven, with its thrones, and dominations and hierarchies, its fiery seraphim, and cherubs flourishing in immortal youth; its sanctities and troops of angels, when

With solemn adoration down they cast

Their crowns inwove of amaranth and gold;"

and, lastly, its Great and immaculate Presence, "high throned above all height;" are surely superior to the capricious elevation of heroes and legislators into planets, or all the 'Hereafter' of the Pagan world. Our idea, too, of a supreme good,-invisible, immeasurable, and immortal-omniscient and omnipresent -inaccessible to passion and temptation, and soaring above all the infirmities of the flesh, is utterly beyond the conception of the Greeks, whose Jove was a mere personification of power; sublime only as a giant is, the slave of every appetite, and the sport of every contemptible caprice. Our belief is in an abstraction of all excellence-a grand unity-commensurate with our largest ideas of goodness and power; whereas the Grecian notions were often confined to petty desires and grovelling wishes. Their God was split and subdivided into patrons of the passions, to suit the exigency of the moment. A constellation of excellence would have blinded them, and so they cut their heaven out "into little stars," and (not unlike our modern Catholics, who have saints for shipwreck, and travel, and other occasions) shaped, thereout, Cupid and Mars, Diana and Pallas, and the rest, whose several propensities were supposed to accord with the pursuits of different votaries, and who would therefore be more likely, as they fancied, to lend a willing ear to their own individual proselytes or worshippers, than if any one deity were perplexed by the clamour of contesting petitioners. These secondary gods were the friends at court, who were more open to flattery than the monarch himself, and interceded for the virgin and the philosopher and the soldier, &c. in proportion to the incense offered at their shrines.

As the aspect of Christianity is more sublime, so is the poetry in which its history is recorded of a loftier (or, as the case may be, of a purer and gentler) character than that of any other religion. The moral precepts of the Koran are laid down simply, but the mood of Mahomet seems never to have been divulged in the hour of his inspiration. The ancient sayings of the Greeks were neat, pithy, and sententious, and the Delphian Oracles more than sufficiently mystic. But where, elsewhere, is to be found that extraordinary union of the grand and the beautiful, of the terrible, the simple, the argumentative, and the pathetic, which the books of the Old and New Testament perpetually exhibit? In these strange and inspired writings, we may contemplate the perfections of almost every style, from the plain phraseology of the ancient patriarchs to the sounding denunciations of the prophets,-from the sublime story of