colours, stuffs which were dipped in the very same furnace, and this is one of the miracles which the gospel of the Infancy attributes to Jesus. But, according to St. Chrysostom, Jesus performed no miracle before his baptism, and those stated to have been wrought by him before are absolute fabrications. The reason assigned by this father for such an arrangement is, that the wisdom of God determined against Christ's performing any miracles in his childhood, lest they should have been regarded as impostures.

dispute, he shall not cry aloud, and no one shall hear his voice in the streets." According to St. Jerome, there was in like manner an ancient tradition among the Gymnosophists of India, that Buddas, the author of their creed, was born of a virgin, who was delivered of him from her side. In the same manner was born Julius Cæsar, Scipio Africanus, Manlius, Edward VI. of England, and others, by means of an operation called by surgeons the Cæsarean operation, because it consists in abstracting the child from the Epiphanius in vain alleges, that to deny womb by an incision in the abdomen of the miracles ascribed by some to Jesus the mother. Simon, surnamed the Maduring his infancy, would furnish heretics gician, and Manès, pretended likewise with a specious pretext for saying, that both of them to be born of a virgin. This he became son of God only in conse- might, however, merely mean, that their quence of the effusion of the holy spirit, mothers were virgins at the time of conwhich descended upon him at his bap-{ceiving them. But in order to be contism: we are contending here, not against vinced of the uncertainty attending the heretics, but against Jews. { marks and evidences of virginity, it will Mr. Wagenseil has presented us with be perfectly sufficient to read the coma Latin translation of a Jewish work en-mentary of M. de Pompignan, the celetitled Toldos Jeschu, in which it is re-brated Bishop of Puy en Velai, on the lated that Jeschu, being at Bethlehem in Judah, the place of his birth, cried out aloud, "Who are the wicked men that pretend I am a bastard, and spring from an impure origin? They are themselves bastards, themselves exceedingly impure! Was I not born of a virgin mother? and 1 entered through the crown of her head!"

following passage in the book of Proverbs, "There are three things which are too wonderful for me, yea, four which I know not. The way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a man in his youth." In order to give a literal translation of the passage, it would have been necessary, This testimony appeared of such im- according to this prelate (in the third portance to M. Bergier, that learned di- chapter of the second part of his work vine felt no scruple about employing it entitled Infidelity convinced by the Prowithout quoting his authority. The fol- phecies), it would have been necessary lowing are his words, in the twenty-third to say, "Viam viri en virgine adolescenpage of the Certainty of the Proofs of tula,"-The way of a man with a maid. Christianity :-"Jesus was born of a The translation of our Vulgate, says he, virgin by the operation of the holy spirit. substitutes another meaning, exact indeed Jesus himself frequently assured us of and true, but less conformable to the orithis with his own mouth; and to the ginal text. In short, he corroborates his same purpose is the recital of the apos-curious interpretation by the analogy betles." It is certain that these words are tween this verse and the following one: only to be found in the Toldos Jeschu; { "Such is the life of the adulterous woand the certainty of that proof, among man, who, after having eaten, wipeth her those adduced by M. Bergier, subsists, mouth and saith, I have done no wickalthough St. Matthew applies to Jesusedness." the passage of Isaiah :-" He shall not

However, this may be, the virginity of

Mary was not generally admitted, even at the beginning of the third century. Many have entertained the opinion, and do still, said St. Clement of Alexandria, that Mary was delivered of a son, without that delivery producing any change in her person; for some say, that a midwife who visited her after the birth, found her to retain all the marks of virginity. It is clear, that St. Clement refers here to the gospel of the birth of Mary, in which the angel Gabriel says to her, "Without intercourse with man, thou, a virgin, shalt conceive, thou, a virgin, shalt be delivered of a child, thou, a virgin, shalt give suck ;" and also to the first gospel of James, in which the midwife exclaims, "What an unheard of wonder! Mary has just brought a son into the world, and yet retains all the evidences of virginity." These two gos-gaged in sexual connection with them. pels were, nevertheless, subsequently rejected as apocryphal, although on this point, they were conformable to the opinion adopted by the church: the scaffolding was removed after the building was completed.

It is well known that the Jesuit Sanchez gravely discussed the question whethe Virgin Mary contributed seminally in the incarnation of Christ, and that, like other divines before him, he concluded in the affirmative. But these extravagancies of a prurient and depraved imagination should be classed with the opinion of Aretin, who introduces the holy spirit on this occasion effecting his purpose under the figure of a dove; as mythology describes Jupiter to have succeeded with Leda in the form of a swan, or as the most eminent authors of the church-St. Austin, Athenagoras, Tertullian, St. Clement of Alexandria, St. Cyprian, Lactantius, St. Ambrose, and others believed, after Philo and Josephus, the historian, who were Jews, that angels had associated with the daughters of men, and en

St. Augustin goes so far as to charge the Manicheans with teaching, as a part of their religious persuasion, that beautiful young persons appeared in a state of na ture before the princes of darkness, or evil angels, and deprived them of the vital substance which that father calls the nature of God. Herodius is still more explicit, and says that the divine majesty escaped through the productive organs of demons.

What is added by Jeschu-" I entered by the crown of the head"—was likewise the opinion held by the church. The Breviary of the Maronites represents the Word of the Father as having entered by the ear of the blessed woman. St. Augustin, and Pope Felix, say expressly, that the virgin became pregnant through the ear. St. Ephrem says the same in a hymn, and Voisin his translator observes, that the idea came originally from Gregory of Neocesarea, surnamed Thaumaturgos. Agobar relates, that in his time the church sang in the time of public service-"The word entered through the ear of the virgin, and came out at the golden gate." Eutychius speaks also of Elian, who attended at the council of Nice, and who said that the Word entered by the ear of the virgin, and came out in the way of child-birth. This Elian was a rural bishop, whose name occurs in Selden's published Arabic List of Fa-the thers who attended the council of Nice.

It is true that all these fathers believed angels to be corporeal. But, after the works of Plato had established the idea of their spirituality, the ancient opinion of a corporeal union between angels and women was explained by the supposition, that the same angel who, in a woman's form, had received the embraces of a man, in turn held communication with a woman, in the character of a man. Divines, by the terms incubus and succubus, designate the different parts thus performed by angels. Those who are curious on the subject of these offensive and revolting reveries, may see further details in Various Readings of the Book of Genesis," by Otho Gualter; "Magical Disquisitions," by Delvis, and "Discourses on Witchcraft," by Henry Boguet.

SECTION II.

No genealogy, even although reprinted in Moreri, approaches that of Mahomet or Mohammed, the son of Abdallah, the son of Abd'all Montaleb, the son of Ashem; which Mohammed was, in his younger days, groom of the widow Cadisha, then her factor, then her husband, then a prophet of God, then condemned to be hanged, then conqueror and king of Arabia; and who finally died an enviable death, satiated with glory and with love. The German barons do not trace back their origin beyond Witikind; and our modern French marquisses can scarcely, any of them, show deeds and patents of an earlier date than Charlemagne. But the race of Mahomet, or Mohammed, which still subsists, has always exhibited a genealogical tree, of which the trunk is Adam, and of which the branches reach from Ishmael down to the nobility and gentry who at the present day bear the high title of cousins of Mahomet.

There is no difficulty about this genealogy, no dispute among the learned, no false calculations to be rectified, no contradictions to palliate, no impossibilities to be made possible.

In answer to this you are told, that you are a plebeian (roturier) from all eternity, unless you can produce a regular and complete set of parchments.

You reply that men are equal; that one race cannot be more ancient than another; that parchments, with bits of wax dangling to them, are a recent invention; that there is no reason that com13 pels you to yield to the family of Mahomet, or to that of Confucius; or to that of the Emperors of Japan; or to the royal secretaries of the grand college. Nor can I oppose your opinion by arguments, physical, metaphysical, or moral. You think yourself equal to the dairo of Japan, and I entirely agree with you. All that I would advise you is, that if ever you meet with him, you take good care to be the stronger.

GENESIS.

THE sacred writer having conformed himself to the ideas generally received, and being indeed obliged not to deviate from them, as without such condescension to the weakness and ignorance of those whom he addressed, he would not have been understood, it only remains for us to make some observations on the natural philosophy prevailing in those early periods; for, with respect to theology, we reverence it, we believe in it, and never either dispute or discuss it.

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

Your pride cavils against the authenticity of these titles. You tell me that you are descended from Adam as well as the greatest prophet, if Adam was the common father of our race; but that this same Adam was never known by any person, not even by the ancient Arabs themselves; that the name has Thus has the original passage been never been cited except in the books translated, but the translation is not corof the Jews; and that, consequently, rect. There is no one, however slightly you take the liberty of writing down false informed upon the subject, who is not against the high and noble claims of Ma-aware that the real meaning of the word homet or Mohammed.

is, "In the beginning the gods made You add that, in any case, if there has (firent or fit) the heaven and the earth." been a first man, whatever his name This reading, moreover, perfectly corremight be, you are a descendant from him sponds with the ancient idea of the Pheas decidedly as Cadisha's illustrious nicians, who imagined that, in reducing groom; and that, if there has been no the chaos (chautereb) into order, God first man, if the human race always ex-employed the agency of inferior deities. isted, as so many of the learned pretend, then you are clearly a gentleman from all eternity.

The Phenicians had been long a powerful people, having a theogony of their own, before the Hebrews became pos

On the question of the eternity of the world, mankind has always been divided, but never on that of the eternity of matter. From nothing, nothing can proceed, nor into nothing can aught existent return.

sessed of a few cantons of land near nician author Sanconiathon. The Phetheir territory. It is extremely naturalnicians, like every other people, believed to suppose that, when the Hebrews had matter to be eternal. There is not a sinat length formed a small establishment gle author of antiquity who ever reprenear Phenicia, they began to acquire its sented something to have been produced language. At that time their writers from nothing. Even throughout the might, and probably did, borrow the an-whole Bible, no passage is to be found cient philosophy of their masters. Such in which matter is said to have been creis the regular march of the human mind.ated out of nothing. Not, however, that At the time in which Moses is supposed we mean to controvert the truth of such to have lived, were the Phenician phi-creation. It was, nevertheless, a truth losophers sufficiently enlightened to re- not known by the carnal Jews. gard the earth as a mere point in comparison with the infinite multitude of orbs placed by God in the immensity of space, commonly called heaven? The idea so very ancient, and at the same time so utterly false, that heaven was made for earth, almost always prevailed in the minds of the great mass of the people. It would certainly be just as correct and judicious for any person to suppose, if told that God created all the mountains and a single grain of sand, that the mountains were created for that grain of sand. It is scarcely possible that the Phenicians, who were such excellent navigators, should not have had some good astronomers; but the old prejudices generally prevailed, and those old prejudices were very properly spared and indulged by the author of the book of Genesis, who wrote to instruct men in the ways of God, and not in natural philosophy.

"The earth was without form (tohu bohu) and void; darkness rested upon the face of the deep, and the spirit of God moved upon the surface of the waters."

Tohu bohu means precisely chaos, disorder. It is one of those imitative words which are to be found in all languages; as, for example, in the French we have sens, dessus, dessous, tintamarre, trictrac, tonnerre, bombe. The earth was not as yet formed in its present state: the matter existed, but the divine power had not yet arranged it. The spirit of God means literally the breath, the wind, which agitated the waters. The same idea occurs in the Fragments of the Phe

De nihilo nihilum, et in nihilum nil posse gigni reverti.
Persius, Sat. iii.

Such was the opinion of all antiquity. "God said let there be light, and there was light; and he saw that the light was good, and he divided the light from the darkness; and he called the light day, and the darkness night; and the evening and the morning were the first day. And God said also, let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And God called the firmament heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day, &c. And he saw that it was good."

We begin with examining whether Huet, Bishop of Avranches, Le Clerc, and some other commentators, are not in the right in opposing the idea of those who consider this passage as exhibiting the most sublime eloquence.

Eloquence is not aimed at in any history written by the Jews. The style of the passage in question, like that of all the rest of the work, possesses the most perfect simplicity. If an orator, intending to give some idea of the power of God, employed for that purpose the short and simple expression we are consider