Their religion had not only the caverns, initiations, planetary periods, obelisks or pillars, and sacred groves, so common in the Asiatic and Egyptian systems, but had also their abhorrent human sacrifices. Few of my readers will need to be informed of the gigantic wicker figures which were wont to be filled with a hundred miserable victims, and burned together with them, amid the shouts and songs of the multitude.

There were also other modes of sacrifice.

Sometimes

a huge flat stone was used for the slaughter of an unhappy victim. It was furrowed with channels, to collect the blood flowing from his mangled limbs, into a bason hollowed out at the end of the slab. Such stones may still be seen in some parts of England. The favourite mode of offering, however, seems to have been by fire; and many places in our now Christian country retain names which antiquarians derive from these fiery orgies. Brandon Hill, one of the seven hills of Bristol, is considered to have been thus named, because people were anciently 'brenn'd' or burned there. Sometimes these sacrifices were on the largest scale. Tacitus tells us that the Hermanduri, a German nation, having vanquished the Catti, slew at the end of the war, all the prisoners they had taken, in one sacrifice. The sacred groves reeked with human blood as foully as did those of Scandinavia. All solemn compacts were hallowed by the murder of human victims; at least such was the custom of the Druids in Germany and Gaul, and it is not probable that those of England were more humane than their brethren on the continent. The learning ascribed to these philosophers had not purified their system from revolting cruelties, nor raised their countrymen at large above the same kind of practices. Cæsar informs us that sick persons among the Britons

used to sacrifice a man to procure their recovery, or promise so to do when restored. He describes the nation as scarcely clothed at all, and living all together in a promiscuous herd, much like the wild cattle of their own plains.

I must not conclude without a glance at Ireland. Druidism was established there; at least the oak was worshipped, and the soothsayers were called Druids. The sun appears to have been the chief deity of this people, and was called Grian and Beal. He was propitiated with human sacrifices, and the moon and stars shared his honours.

The worship of artificial gods was introduced by Tighermas, who reigned about A.M. 2820, as Keating informs us, in his curious and somewhat romantic History of Ireland. This king's idol was called Crom Cruacti; it was, doubtless, a symbol of the sun, and consisted of a stone having a golden top, with twelve smaller stones ranged around it. All the first-born both of man and beast, were sacrificed to this deity, and his rites inflicted great bodily pain on the worshippers. During these senseless and impious ceremonies, the king and many of his fellow devotees are said to have been struck dead by lightning.

It is foreign, however, to our present purpose to investigate farther the ancient history of these islands. We see cruelty, barbarism, and misery, all in close relation to each other; and we can trace all to those perverted systems of worship that drew the people away from the true knowledge of God. The history of Europe differs, however, from that of Asia, in one material point; we miss the national destruction. The Scandinavian, the Scythian, the ancient Britain, still exist, in their descendants, however they may have

been brought under Roman or other conquest, at various times. The introduction of Christianity is the great secret of this preservation. The faint light received from afar, or the broader ray that illumined some happier portions, prevailed to save these lands from the stagnation that succeeds darkness. The "salt of the earth," in however small a quantity it existed, preserved the mass from putrefaction and decay. But this refers to more modern times; darkness, darkness, still darkness, brooded over Ancient Europe in her Western and Northern provinces. Was there light in the East ? In Greece and Rome?-We shall see.

A. F.

THE BIBLE OUR STRONGHOLD.

THE language which describes Zion (Psalm xlviii.) may fitly be applied to the Scriptures" Walk about Zion, and go round about her; tell the towers thereof-mark ye well her bulwarks-consider her palaces : " for what do we find in the Bible but "towers," and "bulwarks," so strong, that they who flee into them are safe-so fortified, as to resist the fiercest enemy, and to defy the most combined attack. And when we "go round about her," do we not find great reason to "consider the palaces we meet with, which the Lord has so richly furnished, not only with necessaries, but as we proceed in the examination, how do comforts upon comforts lie in heaps around us?

In the way of example, how well are we defended, for we see sin bringing upon itself punishment, either signal or open, or else by a forcible blow on the conscience-a bitter remorse, a quickened recollection— telling us that an evil thing indeed it is, and a bitter, to sin against God; sin and sorrow are inseparable, their union dates back to the sad day when the sentence went forth which begins with a 'because,' and sends us back to the first scene of guilt and folly. Look at Jonah-he fled from the duty which was allotted him to perform, and to all human probability, he is left to perish in the sea. And when another prophet evinces

his weakness of faith, distrusting God, forgetting that the angel of the Lord encampeth about his people and delivereth them, and showing himself unsupported by the truth, that if God was on his side he need not fear, but fled from the persecuting Jezebel, and wished for himself that he might die. But the Lord's eye was over him, he left him not a prey to himself. And how must the prophet have been smote by the reproof so gently conveyed in the voice which came unto him and said, "What doest thou here, Elijah?" (1 Kings xix.) And what was the end of him who was charged with a message to Bethel, and commanded not to eat or to drink there, nor to return by the way he came ? We find him resisting the temptations of a court, and the promise of a reward; and then in a few verses we read of his awful fall,-temptation presented itself in another form, and he was seduced,—a lion met him by the way and slew him.

The fourteenth of Numbers contains another relation of disobedience, and its consequence. Some of the children of Israel transgressed the command of the Lord, and presumed to go up to the hill top, although the ark and Moses departed not out of the camp-and the result was, that they found in themselves the accomplishment of the prediction by which they had been warned-"Go not up, for the Lord is not among you, that ye be not smitten before your enemies, for the Amalekites and the Canaanites are there before you, and ye shall fall by the sword because ye are turned away from the Lord, therefore the Lord will not be with you." Here how plainly are we shewn in what safety consists, even in obeying implicitly the word of God, doing nothing without his authority, or without his presence, and doing it also in the manner prescribed,