The prophets assume because they speak by their writings.

The world has been ambitious of the marvellous, the miraculous, of prophecy. All wisdom can point out analogy, wise foresight, but not insight, as all pretence thereto is imposture. Be the advantage of ventriloquism, voice and hand jugglery, what they may, but mind-jugglery covers the whole ground of false pretences.

There is no effect without a cause, and though we cannot account for it, yet this principle is universal to God. Every ancient nation has had its gods. The system that describes some of them is a bible. To make them most impressive, legends of miracles, prophecies, and mysteries are common. Now, does it follow that such are right? How do you know that they are wrong? Try them by the only potential jury, mind and reason, and they can give this only righteous verdict against such. You deem them right, because your education has been peculiar, you have been taught to believe implicitly in them by a blind faith. Now, all the education and faith were false, the pretended miracles were false. You did not question the first position, that your duty to mind absolutely required. You sacrificed your mind's rights at the altar of the priestocracy of superstition. You have been wofully deceived, and that by mind and self-delusion.

The question of mind is paramount to all others, and should hold them in abeyance. How, then, can you resign yourself to such subtle and designing impostors as those who fabricated such unprincipled plans?

The question of mind and reason is not advanced as a rational one, but by sophistry, in defence of superstition. It has ever been so with the priestocracy. Are they more truthful now than previously, except so far as science compels them? Be not their blind victim, to be fleeced and derided by them and posterity.

You appreciate augurs and soothsayers; they are the priestocracy, all analogous. Magicians and astrologers of the world in the days of ignorance prevailed, as humbug is the creature of ignorance. When we cannot account for miracles, or any wondrous events in the universe, the difficulty of solution is in us, and it is not in existence as to the miracles which cannot possibly have a being in this creation. Miracle, prophecy, and mystery are the creatures of ignorance, that has a prolific brood of humbugs, let off in every age of the world to the present day. Of course, then, none such are of God. Who endorses the miracles. When people speak of a miracle, it is their direct admission of ignorance of nature's laws and phenomena. The science of all natural laws destroys all miracles, prophecies, and mysteries.

Miracle is a thing to be wondered at, that cannot be defined as to its nature and character, though a natural phenomenon that exceeds the knowledge of science in the philosophy of the miracle-maker. It is the ignorance of the audience that makes the miracle, not the man pretending to operate.

Revealed religion! who revealed it but mind?

What is more, is false pretences. Where, now, are your prophecies? This is a test question. A great attempt has been made about God's mysteries. All that are priests' mysteries do not enlighten the world. The world is none the wiser whether they be God's or not, by all the bibles of tradition, nay, farther removed from them. As to prophecy, all that is practicable is by the inspirations of mind through sound sense and philosophical science, can be thus only consummated. What does somnambulism add to the proof? Where mystery prevails, there the bible false pretences prevail. The world is after making something by abuse of man.

There are even now the omens of birds, from which auguries are drawn! Of what avail is the mind without rational education? The mind that has instilled into it superstition, can rarely eradicate the evil of peculiar faith or credulity in such things. The idea of ghosts, not the ghost, haunts the mind of the credulous vulgar. The world, in the folds of peculiar faith, speaks of miracles, and there never was one; even the great creation of the universe, and the mighty creation of mind, if you are sincere in miracles, must be only a paramount problem; and this has proved the authenticity of the Creator's bible, whose volumes are its mighty solar systems, that your soul has to read to appreciate the divine author, and realize the divine presence, the Holy Centre.

It is clear that mind is supreme of creation, and therefore must be the particular centre of due honor that can never be paid short of immortality.

Rational mind needs no prophecy of man's black letter peculiar bible, when the most illustrious document is in bold relief most patent.

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The only seeming prophecy is entrusted to the function of time, the measure of motion of each orb.

When the immortal soul has read through in eternity, then the universe-problem will be solved.

It is impious to ask of man miracles and prophecies, when the problem is elsewhere

in proper course of solution. Were the pretenders crazy, or those that believe them prophets?

Prophecies and miracles should not close at all, but should continue, as they are as necessary now as ever, for the influence is to be on mind that cannot take cognizance thereof unless submitted to all the proper tests of the senses. That is the nature of honorable testimony, of truth and honesty. The priestocracy pretend to the assertion, and they first originated the whole legends. Was it because they had no legitimate offspring of religion, that they were reckless of the effects of their falsehoods on posterity? It was their profession, that was enough.

Of what use are the pretended prophecies, their bible and patriarchs as they were called; all that, when none can be or are proved? Why this best of proofs omitted? Who endorses all such? The affiliated. What the interested sophists? Can a sworn sophist tell the truth? That would be a miracle indeed. That would be a miracle indeed. This bible will not stand the test of morals much less of religion. What was Noah's prophecy against Canaan for? Surely he never made such but by subsequent operators. Much stress is laid upon the position of Canaan, and enough to have fragments of hostility thereby in the human family. Now if I understand his story rightly, as far as presented, the children of Shem were in the worst bondage to Ham's descendants in Egypt, for four hundred years, if we allow that statement of the bible, which clearly proves prophecy futile; and when it states, too, the same people were in subjection to the Canaanites for years.

Could morals be worse, than credulity in such a book-curse to the world? The writers were the most pitiful pettifoggers in the drama of human events, and confined their bigoted contraction to their little circle, not even of facts, but of their miserable fiction. In the so miscalled universal empires, those of Shem and Japheth, the pretended bible first stock, after its deluge, alternately were the subjects, and are yet, so far as that implies. Now what has been worse than the vassalage of the Jews, for centuries since then? That was a theme for a statesman. I do not believe that any such tradition is correct, any more the prophecy, all one, and the same. The bible ancient lineage is as false as the balance pretended. It bears the ear-marks of the priestocracy, and in no part of the world, and in no age, did they ever rise to the dignity of men, but sunk far below the rights of mind, ever. What, then, is all biblical prophecy worth? Before we can be assured of the first prophecy of Noah, that reflects on the justice of God for punishing Canaan for his father, Ham, who had other sons, we should have it proved that the whole earth was known to the writers at that day, which is clearly disproved by their making it a plane, instead of a globe. It is even improbable, since a great portion of it has been long since their time discovered to the moderns, the discovery of which enabled them to pronounce its rotundity. Was there ever such a man as Noah? What mortals can endorse it?

Now what sort of justice was there in condemning a race of people to perpetual servitude, on account of a drunkard's nakedness being seen by his son?

Did the God of the universe have any hand in that? Is this inspiration? Was vision itself so unpardonable? Was it any personal action done to Noah? Had it been a parricide, the curse could not have been greater.

Is this bible-morals; certainly not religion?

It seems that one of its patriarchs, Noah, got so drunk that he stripped off his clothes and exposed his nakedness to his sons, and not content with all that, he cursed about, and worse than all, like a stupid beast, he cursed his innocent grandson!

How could Noah be a just man and perfect in his generation, walking with God, if he cursed the Canaanites in his drunkenness? But he did it from divine impulse! That adds impiety to blasphemy. It brings down the character of God to degraded man, and causes him to perpetrate an irrational deed.

The nearest version is, that because fanatics sought Canaan's land, the last were pronounced accursed to justify land piracy, murder by the wholesale, and all the accursed abominations of barbarism.

Is this the loveliest attitude of prophecy, that brutalizes man, and libels his maker? When one superstition was only to be superseded by another, a prolific crop of paganism to the remotest times. What was in such? There is no excuse, much less justification, because the priestocracy fabricated this impious felony.

True is such prophecy? Man of mind, republican, can you be so far lost to your rights to believe such?

Having disposed of one of the patriarchs, let us try another. What can be more untrue than the prophecy of Abraham, a prophet as called by the bible, respecting the Israelites, Gen. xiii., 14, and the Lord said unto Abraham, ch. xiii., v. 15., “For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed forever.' But, say the affiliated, this Abramic prophecy was subsequently modified. Agreed,

says liberal monotheism, to all the legitimate extent, and then all modifications are still stronger against it, the afterthoughts of the priestocracy.

What shall be said of Moses, the dictator of the priestocracy? His prophecy is not proved, though: Deu. xxxiv. 10, "There arose not a prophet since in Israel, like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face." We will try him by Joshua, his prime minister, who assuredly will do him justice: Josh. ch. xiv., v. 9, "And Moses sware on that day, saying, surely the land whereon thy feet have trodden, shall be thine inheritance, and thy children's forever, because thou hast wholly followed the Lord my God." Was Moses the world-maker, or the Creator?

What can be not only falser than all the preceding affected prophecies, but more abominable blasphemies?

Where the Turk rules, is that the undisputed possession of the land of Canaan forever, by the Jews?

These prophecies were the purest and most unadulterated of any; why not fulfilled Because it was utterly impossible for God to have ever made any such. NoNo-never.

The God of the universe is not like man's creation's gods. What can be more untrue than all this? The pretended prophecies of Noah are equally futile. Who can endorse a universal deluge of this globe, in the face of impossibilities? None of these pretences can be modified without blasphemy, as the God of the universe is the God of foresight. Any other category makes him a god of afterthought, peculiar and imbecile, clearly a priestocracy's work.

Those who prophecy of the final restoration of the Jews are Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, &c. How comes the prophecy already quoted of the grand patriarch Abraham not fulfilled? That cuts all these subsequent prophets down at one blow, from which all Jewry and its bibles cannot recover. That is all of a piece in the whole humbug.

What could have been of greater value than the lost tribes? Why were they not recovered and united to the nation? Does pretended prophecy represent any elevated character, of policy or statesmanship or world government? It seems that the last is supreme over it. It did not begin to render them or mankind susceptible of mental improvement, but debased it. When we duly estimate the false pretences, the balance is immeasurably against all such.

They all necessarily present falsehoods. The books of Moses from Genesis to Deuteronomy, contain several remarkable interpolations, the last of which proves particularly them written very many centuries after Moses is said to have died. Deuter. chap.

xxxiv., v. 10.—" And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face. ""

This would not have been written in justice to truth till after-all the prophets so called lived with whom the comparison is made. If written after all, they are forgeries, if before, they are false. What profit then, can they be to the world to whom even prophecy is a wholesale forgery and falsehood?

No matter by whom written, the books are anonymous, and unworthy of credit as vitiated by interpolations if not by legends originally.

That is too plain to miss, after what we have seen of Moses.

As to prophecies we see the oracles of the heathens claim them, the Philistines, Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Balaam, and even his ass.

The pretension to divination was a profession among the ancients. Now as to the prophecies of Moses about the Jews, all that had transpired up to the time of writing the last word in Deuteronomy must be embraced. Of course the story presented is like all priestocracy's work, after-thoughts. Can enlightened minds of the present day be entrapped by such scurvy tricks? They would laugh at the Roman, Greek or Egyptian mummeries of augury and soothsaying, yet can take in all that of the Jews, that of course is worse, by being knavishly fixed up.

Do not the moderns need the policy of prophecy which would be immutable, if the God of the universe had instituted it?

That such should become extinct proves a change only in character, with the Jew peculiar God.

It is worse than children's play, to talk about prophecies. In what a miserable dilemma and transgression does the admission place the moderns, who not only stultify their own exalted minds in taking and endorsing these false pretences of the priestocracy, but blaspheme their God?

What are the credentials of divine mission? Miracles. What honorable proof has the world of them? None, but false pretences.

Do they establish anything then, trustworthy?

All the miracles in the world as assumed, cannot repel for a moment any sectarianism

ancient or modern, Christ's or Smith's; that invalidates and vitiates all titles claimed. All sectarianism thus declared is antagonistic to God's unity, that must not be violated, else creation is violated in its preservation. So of course prophecies are perfectly worthless, a dead letter, analogous to all its bibles.

I need not particularize how defective all this is about Christ, till I reach that particular; or of the false positions of a Paul, who reminds us of the astrologer who knew all about the distant stars, yet proved his utter ignorance by falling into a near pit. What can be falser than John's revelation?

John that proclaimed to the seven churches of Asia, proclaimed the absurdities about the bible's heaven, which destroy the false pretences about Christ's greatest miracles. Thus they perpetrate murder on others, and suicide on themselves.

John only told too much, and in making a peculiar heaven for the peculiar gods, he put the last blow of destruction, and toppled it all over.

Are the prophecies of Daniel understood by the best minds? If they are, why do they differ so essentially? Those prophecies cannot be interpreted alike, by the moderns. Of what use are they to the world, that looks at truth and not oracles, that are all analogous from those of the pythoness to those of this monomaniac?

The genius of best minds is rendered impracticable in his quagmire about the accounting for the kingdoms, at the miserable guess-work, at the blasphemy of this trash, for Asia as well as Europe. Thus it is the most ludicrous, the most ridiculous position of the amateurs, that they now require a prophet, to unravel the prophecies of the past! These be thy gods, ye idol-worshippers. How could this prophecy be true, when "The fourth beast shall be fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces." Where was there a universal empire?

What can be falser than this, if the fourth empire, that is assumed to be universal, is assumed to be that of Rome the ancient? Her power, as imperial as it was, did not extend east beyond Babylon. How could it be a universal empire, to leave out a majority of the world's population, and one of two continents? The limits of that empire were fixed by Hadrian on the western side of the Euphrates, or on the very borders of Chaldea. How can this last part be true? Where was China, with her one-third of the world's population; India, with her eighth; Australia-when America was not even known? When was Arabia wholly subdued, that the bible defenders evince was

subject to no empire ?

Is this prophecy against prophecy, and that in the same bible, the modern Daniel against the ancient patriarch Abraham? But worse than that, there is a fatal collision between the last and Christ; for if Ishmael "will be a wild man, his hand will be against every man, and every man's hand against him," how will Christ have "the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession ?" "To whom every knee should bow," and becoming united, they should "love the brethren." This kingdom of Rome was equalled, if not excelled by that of the Saracens, after it.

Consistency is a jewel, that such bibles cannot attain. The Millerites, who have had awful and fatal panics, in several of their corps, given to some of the timid, to causing their deaths, can now well appreciate the impracticable prophecies, and find the difficulty on the other side of the proposition; for assuredly, if they never reach their ultimate place of rest till the decyphering takes place, they will have to look on the other side of eternity.

The bible speaks of false prophets, as if all were not so that pretended to prophecy. If they are not so, the fault does not lie with them, but those that affect to think otherwise.

so far from knowing prophecy, they

What else but the lying sort can prophets be; do not come up to the facts of creation, or of truth. There are no prophecies but are all matters of a piece with the vitiated books of Moses.

There is nothing certain in the peculiar faith bibles, not even their heaven, whose very God changed and repented. All the conception of the priestocracy reflected, as a mirror, the utter insignificance of their peculiar faiths and bibles. Had not the Creator impressed on mind all the elements of its duties, all that man could do would be totally inefficient.

Peculiar faith and prophecies present a sad view of the earth's history. To estimate the earth's desolation, we have only to notice their ancient conflicts. Martial piracy was much identified with their persecution. Vandalism prevails throughout these scenes of violence. The priestocracy were universally after power, and all that could procure it. It is ever in this light that we must study them. When it is said that Genseric, the king of the Vandals, the most bigoted, persecuted the orthodox Chris

tians, it was of a character in his overrunning and plundering Rome. The world presents an analogous condition of peculiar faiths suffering in turn from each other, unrestrained by the enlightened benefits of mental toleration.

Rational religionists desire to exclude the vandalism of all such faith, now too abundantly despotic.

Let not bible interpreters pretend to solve prophecies by any bible legends. They should attend to a better theme. Who does not recollect the savage Portius Cato's famous "Carthage must be destroyed."

When ready to become subjects, the citizens were excluded from the city, that it might be destroyed. The savage Romans burnt this city of seven hundred thousand people, razing it to its foundations. Even the Roman general wept over its ruins.

It is faithful history that embraces science and philosophy; that presents the right causes and effects-not oracle prophecies, a thing of no existence-that rational mind needs.

What do the Jew oracles say of the destruction of this, one of the most splendid cities of the world? This was a remarkable event in the world's history and time's annals, in which the pure priestocracy could have dilated for a world's benefit. But Jew, as well as Canaanite hands, were reeking with human sacrifices.

Did we see Jews coming forward to civilize the balance of mankind, in the arrest of such things, when other nations established it as a compact, and proved themselves longways ahead of Jewry in civilization ?

What! the Jews not helping to humanize the world, when they boasted of having a peculiar God, that did all peculiarly for Jewry?

No; they sunk into the lowest barbarism themselves, by the effects of this very prophecy, and devoted their own proud city, Jerusalem, to be sacked by Titus, and sacrificed on the bloody altar of this same prophecy more than a million of their own fellowcitizens, immolated by the delusion of an oracle of their degraded priestocracy. What was prophecy and all the accompaniment for, but the best civilization of the world? Has such mission ever been thus proved?

Not an iota, for the reverse has been established, in the fearful annals of humanity.

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A mighty inspiration was that which left out of sight of the world, some of its best portions, one of its two continents! That ignored the form even of the globe, the philosophy of its position, the reasons, &c. Ah, but these things did not concern the Jews. Come Jew, christian, prophets should tell us, then, where were the lost ten tribes! This was a question of importance, for the proof of prophecy. Has it been answered? Better was it not expedient to have that loss prevented? If the Jews were selected for the world's benefit, assuredly all world questions are essential.

The only best way for the world prophets and all, to do best and right, is to act on principles of truth and independence. Has it been done? Very far from it.

God has not superseded mind by prophecies that require prophecies to interpret them, nor inspiration that requires science to correct and rectify it.

God deals in the facts

of creation, man deals in the fictions of fictions. God certainly would have protected his chosen peculiar people more particularly than he did, as they were overrun and captured by so many different nations. They were, of course, vindictive towards their captors, and painted them in their worst colors. If his power was peculiarly manifested about such things, protection was best.

Why was pretended prophecy so much behind the wants of the world, as not to have America preached to? All this, kills the doctrine of peculiar faith completely. Where were the cities of Central America so long depopulated, that their desolation could not have been prophecied about? Surely the Gospel should have preceded science in the discovery, if faith be superior to mind and reason, and the magnificent enjoyment awarded the Jews as something worth while. Prophecy should have been for the world.

Why did she not enlighten all Asia, as China? Why not prophecy to all? What desolation has come to the country of her protection? Such should not be desolation, but the noblest triumph of intellectual and moral greatness of all nations that we would expect to see realized. And has it come to this, that the potency of peculiar faith has ruined, instead of elevated the Jewish character? Yes, this is the proof, that the Jewish mind has been debased by its peculiar faith, Judaism. What a reflection of self-congratulation, for comprehensive rational religion! The world has to come to this decision, the sooner the better, that any peculiar faith is a despotism instead of mind's blessing.

If the pentateuch had been written after the Jewish captivity, then it was easy to describe the Chaldeans and Babylonians, that had birds' wings on their beasts. As to