for their lives when thirsting in the desert,-in the most sacred places of the Temple. And with respect to the Christians-" that they were haters of mankind, and their religion a detestable superstition."

Pliny only learned something of the sect when they were accused as criminals before the tribunals, and, not finding them guilty of any moral crime, he yet thought it right to punish them for their obstinacy in refusing to worship the gods, and in persisting to call themselves Christians.

Except Porphyry, and Celsus, and Julian, who wrote against them, and who do not deny the accuracy of many of the accounts of the facts and miracles recorded in the Scriptures, most of the other writers either allude to them by the way of illustration, of ridicule, or contempt; and all the philosophers of the latter Platonic school appear to have considered Christianity as a philosophical system deserving of some attention, and accordingly, many of them blended its doctrines with the reveries of Plato and of the old Greek philosophers. In opposition to this, the Christian writers, by their numerous quotations from Scripture, by their arguments and explications of its doctrines, shew that they had deeply studied them, and un

derstood them exactly in the same sense as the Christians of every age, down to the present day, have invariably done.

After having thus given an historical view of the writers who either opposed or alluded to Christianity, and those who embraced, accepted, and defended it, or died for it, I read to them that chapter of Paley in which he shews the character of Christ as a moral preacher, and those points in which, simply considered in this light, he was not only original, but differed from, and excelled all other teachers whatever. Part of this was heard with attention; but some observations and criticisms having been occasionally made, a good deal of time was lost in discussing points which had no immediate connexion with the subject.

In order to come, therefore, to what was really useful, I proposed to them that we should meet every Wednesday night, as well as Sunday, by which means our course of discussion would be the sooner ended. This was readily agreed to, and the meeting was appointed to be held in my house. The chapter in Horne's excellent work, entitled, "Testimonies from natural and civil History to the credibility of the Old Testament," was my text

book. I read passages and commented on them. My object was to shew, that among the various, strange, and contradictory mythologies of the ancient nations, there was a mixture of truth blended with them respecting the creation of the world, an universal deluge, and various other particulars of the early history of man,—such as the primeval chaos, the division of time into weeks, the fall of man and the introduction of sin and misery, the worship of the serpent, and the necessity of sacrifice as an expiation for sin. A good deal of conversation took place on the pretensions of various nations to antiquity, and the claim of such inventions and astronomical observations as implied a contradiction of Scripture chronology.

At our next assembling I read the testimonies of Manetho, Eupetinos, Artapanes, Tacitus, Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Justin, Juvenal, Porphyry, Julian, and Mahommed, to shew that Moses was a real character, and not a mythological person, as some have impudently asserted, and that he lived long before Sanconiathon, who, according to them, lived before the Trojan war.

The history of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is attested by Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Solinus, Tacitus, Pliny, and Josephus. Barnes,

Alexander Polytresh, Nicolaus Damascenus, Artapanes, and other historians cited by Josephus and Eusebius, make honourable mention of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. The departure of the Israelites from Egypt, and their miraculous passage of the Red Sea, are mentioned by Berosus, Artapanes, Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, &c. These, and many other circumstances of minor importance, which I pointed out, proved the real existence of Moses, and called upon us to examine his history, and those parts of his character which would mark his credibility or incredibility. I then referred to the external proof of the genuineness of the Old Testament; the historical testimony and character of the Jews; the internal evidence, the language, style and manner of writing, circumstantiality of the narration; and the proofs of the genuineness and authority of the Pentateuch in particular; from the nature of the Mosaic law, and the united historical testimony of Jews and Gentiles.

As they seemed pleased with the subject, at our next meeting I endeavoured to put them in fuller possession of the whole facts and opinions of ancient nations respecting their early history and worship, or mythology. The specimen I

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read, I said, would give them an idea of the extent, the obscurity, and difficulty of tracing the religious opinions of the earliest nations; since for a long period after the commencement of mankind, nothing, as far as we know, had been committed to writing, and the accounts we have of them, have been given by authors who lived long after the period of which they write. The same uncertainty exists in the history of all early nations, examples of which might be cited in the histories of Scotland, Ireland, China, Greece and Rome, where much of what is related is nothing else but fiction and fable. Hesiod, the earliest of the Greek writers, in his Theogony, may be referred to as an instance of the impossibility of arriving at truth on these subjects. It is not necessary, I said, to adopt Bryant's theory in its full extent, as it was evident that he had advanced many opinions, which, though ingenious, could not be received as sound, for they were founded on data, which were obscure, fabulous, and contradictory. No man of sober sense, judging of these things, could form any decided opinion, as he had no means by which to correct the discrepancies; nor was it of the least importance, whether one nation borrowed from another,