tent to anticipate such mutual slaughter as should thin the multitude to a number suited to the extent of country and more than content, if we may judge from their language and proceedings in urging on the terrible conflict.

It is utterly impossible to conceive what could animate these men to such a work, unless we attribute it to direct Satanic influence. They knew the land: they knew it in its days of peace and plenty, of security, and elegance, and ease. They knew that the victims there, for whose blood they were athirst were alike free from a turbulent spirit, and from the vices that certainly prevailed among the voluptuous lords under whose sway they lived unmolested; and that even in their religious observances they shunned all ostentatious display of their dissent from Romish practices, and worshipped unobtrusively, according to their conscience. It is a terrible spectacle of human depravity, this mission of the preachers from Citeaux. In all ages we find him that is born after the flesh persecuting him that is born after the spirit; and a Cain always hating an Abel because his own works are evil and his brother's righteous: but this was more; this was a flood poured out from the dragon's own mouth, to overwhelm and destroy the only true Church of God.

C. E.

THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD,

OR THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY.

No. VIII.-GREECE.

BUT we have higher authority than that of the ancient historians, for charging the Greeks with every species of iniquity. St. Paul, in his first epistle to the Corinthians, vi. 9, &c. gives a catalogue of persons stained with every crime that can degrade or defile, and ends with this pointed application, "Such were some of you." In the first chapter of his epistle to the Romans, he gives a similar description of the morality of the Pagan world, he traces up the whole hideous story to its true source. "Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened: professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image, made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and to four-footed beasts and creeping things: Wherefore God also gave them up unto uncleanness," &c. They gave up his worship for that of images and beasts, and in just retribution he gave them up to follies and affections viler than those of the beasts that perish. "They did not like to retain God in their knowledge," and therefore he " gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient."

This is the whole history of Paganism. Man deserted God, and God righteously gave him up to the natural consequences of his sin.-Man left the one "true light;" and the farther he wandered from it, the deeper became the moral gloom into which he plunged. Nor did his vain, self-confident guides, the philosophers, assist him out of his difficulty. We have seen what the sophists were, and how little calculated to lead the bewildered mind back to God. The most celebrated of the Grecian

sages, however superior to those double-tongued wretches, were still far removed from true wisdom or morality. Their follies and contradictory conjectures as to the nature and the very existence of a Deity would fill volumes; and as to their personal virtues, many of them would be considered a disgrace to society among ourselves, and hissed out of decent company.

I will not dilate farther upon this subject, but proceed to a brief notice of the mythology which led to all these evils and follies. That it was imported from Egypt there can be no doubt. It is a disputed point whether the first settlers in Greece were Egyptians or Phoenicians; some insist that Cadmus was of the latter nation, while others, with greater probability, contend that he and his colony were of the "mixed multitude,” that came out of Egypt with the Israelites, and separated from them in the desert; so that if they were not of pure Egyptian origin, they had, at least, resided in the country long enough to have learned its religion. The subsequent additions made to the Greek mythology were, also, Egyptian. Herodotus (Book 2.) tells us that 'the twelve gods' were brought into Greece from Egypt, and that Hercules and Bacchus were especially Egyptian deities. He also says that the names of the gods came from Egypt, after they had long been adored

in Greece without any names, and that these foreign titles were confirmed by the oracle of Dodona. I have already quoted that passage of Zonaras, 'It is said these things came from Chaldea into Egypt, and thence into Greece.'

The Marquis Spineto, of whose Hieroglyphic Lectures I have already availed myself, traces out so admirably this derivation and corruption of Hellenic mythology, that I cannot do better than quote another passage or two from his very useful work. The common place of burial (for the city of Memphis,) was beyond the lake Acherjsia, or Acharejish, which meant the last state, or the last condition of man,* and from which the poets have imagined the fabulous lake of Acheron. On the borders of this lake sat a tribunal of forty judges, whose office, previous to the dead being permitted to be carried to the cemetery beyond the lake, was to enquire into the whole conduct of his life. If he had led a wicked life he was thrown into a large ditch made for the purpose, to which they gave the name of Tartar, on account of the lamentations this sentence produced among his surviving friends and relations. This is the origin of the fabulous Tartarus, in which the poets have transferred the lamentations made by the living, to the dead themselves when thrown into it. The cemetery was a large plain surrounded by trees, and intersected by canals, to which they gave the name of elisout or elisaus, which means nothing else but rest.' It was reached by crossing the lake in 'a boat to which no one could be admitted without the express order of the judges, and without paying a small sum for the conveyance. This regulation was so strictly

*It is worth observing that, in Hebrew, achar means hindmost, or last; and jesh is being, or existence.

enforced, that the kings themselves were not exempt from its severity. Such is the origin of the poetical Charon and his boat:' and from the elisout or rest of the cemetery was derived the fabulous account of the Elysian fields.

After the funeral, the friends and attendants 'departed, after uttering three several cries, as three distinct farewells. To express therefore the circumstance that the deceased had been honoured with the rites of burial, and with the proper and legitimate lamentations of his friends, they exhibited on the legend imprinted on the mummy, or engraved round the tomb, the figure of the horse of the Nile, which the Greeks mistook for a dog. And as they at all times wished to add something of their own to the institutions of other nations, in order to express the three cries or farewells, they represented this same dog as having three heads. To this emblem, the Egyptians gave the name of Oms, and the Greeks in consequence of their mistaking it for a dog, that of Cerber, from the Egyptian Ceriber, a word that means the cry of the tomb,* and from which originates the Cerberus of the Greek mythology.'—p. 146, &c.

In the Amenti or Hades of Egypt, the soul was supposed to undergo a trial previous to its admission to happiness, similar to that which the body underwent before it was allowed burial. Emblematic representations of this trial are frequently found in Egyptian manuscripts. Osiris was the supreme judge; Smé, the infernal queen and goddess of truth, presided over the deliberations; Thoth wrote down the result, and fortytwo inferior judges, besides Horus, Apis, and Anubis, assisted at the ceremony.

* I would again notice a similarity to the Hebrew. In that language kera-bor would mean the cry of the pit; and the Egyptian was pronounced keriber.