THE TESTIMONY OF PAGANISM TO THE TRUTH OF REVELATION.

No. II.

THE EXISTENCE AND CREATIVE POWER OF GOD.

THERE has not been wanting, in all ages, a class of men gifted with talents of various amount, some of them indeed belonging to the higher orders of genius, who have been so far infatuated by their mental superiority, or rather by the pride of their own hearts, as to turn the gifts against the Giver, and deny the very being of a God.

But these open atheists have generally been regarded with horror by the more decent part of mankind; and of late years they have given way to another class, more respectable in its appearance, and far more comprehensive in its divisions. We find in it a vast variety of character and opinion, from the professed scoffer and profligate, the disciple of Voltaire or Tom Paine, up to the learned, moral, and grave philosopher, who, while he allows the bible to be a very good code of morals, quietly sets it aside in all matters of history or science, as a book written to please the vulgar, or to suit the erroneous notions of antiquity.

This latter person-be he the mere secular student

of chronology or geology, who revels in periods of millions of ages, totally disregarding all scriptural declarations, whether literal or figurative-or be he the collegiate professor, who feels himself orthodox, and means to be pious, while he explains away, or misinterprets, or silently gets out of sight of scripture, in all literary matters wherewith he has to deal, historical, scientific or metaphysical,-is a far more dangerous being than the professed unbeliever; just as the covert attack, and the wound secretly given under the semblance of respect, are much more to be dreaded than the open hostility of the battle array.

These writers, whether or not they know it (and I would fain hope that they do not), are doing the work of scepticism, with far greater rapidity and success than a host of Shaftesburys, Gibbons, and Carliles could do. They are unsuspected, they are esteemed, they are implicitly followed, more especially by the young, and thus the seeds of unbelief are sown when men feel most secure from its poison.

Let me not be called uncharitable; this is a very plain case. Either the bible is the word of God, or the word of man; if it be the word of God, it must necessarily be infallible; but if any one part of it can be proved to be inaccurate, or deceptive, it is no longer an infallible book, and consequently it cannot be the word of God. If the philosopher can succeed in depriving us of the first two chapters of Genesis, with their history, let him also take the 20th chapter of Exodus, with its ten commandments; for the one rests on exactly the same authority as the other. Both are parts of one work, the Pentateuch, written by one inspired author, Moses; so that if the one be undermined, the other must fall with it: " Yea, let

him take all, forasmuch as with its veracity glory is departed” from it altogether.

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It is, however, against the more open unbeliever that we are at present to direct our attack, or rather to conduct our defence, since he has commenced the contest by attacking the foundations of our faith, and saying, with a certain character named in the Psalms, "There is no God;" or, if he acknowledge the divine existence, denying his power and operations in creating the world. We reply, that the Bible declares it to be as we believe it. He impudently makes answer, that the Bible is only a fiction of the Jews, or a modern invention of interested priestcraft. We are not now to examine its internal evidence, through which perhaps he has neither the patience nor the judgment to follow us; but we are to use a very simple argument, and say, if we can shew, from ancient Pagan authorities, which you greatly venerate, that all the nations of antiquity believed in a self-existent, powerful, creative Deity, whether he were called Ammon, Vishnu, or Odin; is it not a proof that the Bible is no modern invention, when it declares that there is one true, selfexistent, Almighty, Creative God, whose name is Jehovah?"

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I think no infidel or Deist will say me nay; and it is so well-known a fact, that all Pagan nations did and do still believe in such a Supreme Deity, that it is almost a work of supererogation to adduce proofs.

Whatever philosophers may have said of the minor divinities, none but the sceptic or the Atheist have ever denied the being or the godhead of the Demiourgos, or Supreme God, whose very name implied his creative power and its exercise, and who there

fore must have been Almighty, and the Framer of the universe.

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The Egyptian mythology is the earliest of which we have any copious account; and it is evident that all their deities were emanations from the great Supreme Being whom they called Ammon. We have the express testimony of Tamblictius on this point. In his work on the Mysteries of Egypt, he says: According to the Egyptians, Eieton, or the first God, existed in his solitary unity before all beings. He is the fountain and original of everything,' &c. And he adds, from Hermes Trismegistus, The Spirit who produces all things has different names, according to his different properties and operations. He is called in the Egyptian tongue Ammon, as he is wise; Ptha, as he is the life of all things; and Osiris, as he is the author of all good.'

In more recent times, Spineto, who had deeply studied the language and hieroglyphics of Egypt, says, that most clearly the original framers of that theogony admitted but one God, who governs all things by his various attributes. It is therefore quite clear that this Supreme Deity of Egypt, who was called Ammon, and at other times Kuouph, Mendes, or Ptha, was the creator of the world, the original fountain of all nature, as well as of all other divinities. Osiris is also one and the same with this deity, although somewhat more Grecian in aspect. The Greeks indeed declared him to be son of Jupiter or of Saturn, but this appears to have been only one of their many piratical appropriations; for they had as great an aptitude for stealing Egyptian gods as the ancient Irish charge the Scotch with possessing, for stealing their saints. Indeed the Greek gods are only new

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modelled Orientals with Hellenic names and countenances. The ancients themselves traced Greek theology to Egypt, and thence to Asia, as may be seen from Lucian, Zonaras and Pausanias; indeed the likeness to those originals, however defaced, is yet clear enough to be recognised.

Thales, Pythagoras, Anaxagoras and Plato all described God (Theos) as the one original and only self-existent being; the source of all nature, "the soul of the world," and the origin of all other gods. In the mythology of India, which undoubtedly is as ancient as that of Egypt, and which claims to be much older, we again find a supreme God and Creator, under the name of Vishnu; from whom proceed all other gods, and all nature, and who, by the testimony of Eusebius, the Puranas, and Capt. Wilford's Asiatic Researches, is proved to be no other than Kuouph, the great god of Egypt. I will not trouble my readers with the chain of arguments and quotations which establish this fact; I will only repeat that it may be very easily proved.

Let us now turn to another and very ancient system of mythology, though little known and less esteemed; I mean the Scandinavian, one of the most striking and romantic religions of Paganism. From the Eddas, the oldest and most authentic records of the Runic legends, we find that Odin was generally considered as the father of gods and men, although he is sometimes called the son of Bor, which looks very much like the Egyptian confusion between Osiris and Horus, or the many mistakes of the Greeks between Jupiter and Saturn.

Dr. Henderson, in his valuable work on Iceland, (I. Introd. p. 19.) gives the following as the form of