istence of a supreme intelligence, Brahm, but teaches that he governs the world through the medium of numerous subordinate deities. The principal of these are Brahma, the Creator, who presides over the land; Vishnu, the Preserver, presiding over water; and Siva, the Destroyer, who presides over fire; these three persons are, however, but one God, and form the Trimourti, or Hindoo Trinity. The Hindoos, who profess this faith, have several sacred books, called Vedas, written in Sanscrit, and forming their code of religion and philosophy; they teach the metempsychosis or transmigration of souls, and the immortality of the soul, and prescribe a great number of fasts, penances, and rites. Pilgrimages, voluntary death, self-torment, ablutions, &c., are practised, and the females of the two higher castes are required to burn themselves on the dead bodies of their husbands.

6. Buddhism. - Buddhism resembles Brahmanism in many points. It is the prevailing religion in Thibet, Ceylon, the Birman empire, and Annam; and is professed by a portion of the people of China, Corea, and Japan. Buddhism teaches that the universe is inhabited by several classes of existences, partly material and partly spiritual, which rise by successive transmigrations to higher degrees of being, until they arrive at a purely spiritual existence, when they are termed Buddhas. These holy beings descend from time to time upon earth in a human form to preserve the true doctrine among men; four Buddhas have already appear. ed, the last under the name of Shigemooni, or Godama. 7. Nanekism.-Nanekism, or the religion of the Seiks, founded by Nanek in the fifteenth century, is a

The

mixture of Mahometanism and Brahmanism. Seiks adore one God, believe in future rewards and punishments, and reject the use of images as objects of worship; they receive the Vedas and the Koran, as sacred books, but think that the Hindoos have corrupted their religious system by the use of idols.

8. Doctrines of Confucius.—The Doctrine of the Learned, or the Religion of Confucius, is the received religion of the educated classes of China, Annam, and Japan; it uses no images, and has no priests, the ceremonies being performed by the civil magistrates. The rites, such as the worship of the heavens, stars, mountains and rivers, genii, and souls of the departed, are esteemed merely civil institutions.

9. Magianism.- Magianism, or the Religion of Zoroaster, teaches the existence of a supreme being, Zervan, or the Eternal, subordinate to whom are Or muzd, the principle of good, and Ahriman, the principle of evil, who wage a perpetual warfare; numerous inferior deities and genii take part in this struggle, in which Ormuzd will finally prevail. The sacred books of the Magians are called the Zendavesta. The ceremonies consist chiefly in purifications, ablutions, and other rites, performed in the presence of the sacred fire, the symbol of the primeval life; hence the Magians are erroneously called fire-worshippers.

The numbers of the adherents of each religious system have been estimated as follows:

Christianity.

Roman Catholics, 139,000,000

Greek Catholics, 62,000,000 Brahmanism,

Protestants,

4,000.000

Judaism,

Mahometanism,

120,000,000

100,000,000

SUPERSTITIONS.

MANKIND have in all ages been prone to the most lamentable superstitions. The enlightened nations of antiquity were no more exempted from them than the most ignorant. The Jews, as we are repeatedly informed in Scripture, could with difficulty be restrained from idolatrous and superstitious practices, and confined to the worship and service of the true God. This remarkable tendency of the Hebrew nation was probably caused by their sojourn, for the space of four hundred years, among the Egyptians, whose system of religion was a mass of idolatrous observances. They had a number of ideal gods, to whom they erected temples of prodigious size and great architectural splendor; the principal of these deities were Osiris and Isis, which are thought to have been typical of the sun and moon. But they also offered worship to various animals, as the ox, or bull, to which they gave the name of Apis,the dog, the wolf, the hawk, the ibis or stork, the cat, and other creatures; they likewise paid adoration to the Nile, personifying it by the crocodile, to which temples were erected, and priests set apart for its service. The Egyptians, notwithstanding their learning, also believed in dreams, lucky and unlucky days, omens, charms, and magic. In a word, they were grossly supersti tious, and seem to have had but a feeble conception, if any, of the laws which regulate the ordinary phenomena of nature.

The absurdities of Egyptian superstition formed a basis for what followed among the Greeks and Ro

mans, who had but a faint idea of an omnipresent and omnipotent God, the Creator and Ruler of the universe. Their notions of divinity, like those of other pagans, were grovelling and contemptible. The gods whom they adored were imagined to have been at one period rulers or heroes on earth, and still had their habitation somewhere within the Grecian territory, or at no great distance from it. Besides their belief in this vain mythology, both Greeks and Romans put faith in divination, oracles, the magical power of amulets, and dreams. Bees, ants, and various reptiles and beasts, were imagined to have the power of giving omens of good or bad fortune. The phenomena of the atmosphere and planetary bodies were likewise a fertile source of superstitious delusions. The appearance of comets, and also eclipses, were ominous of great public disasters, it being the general belief that they were special signs made by the gods to warn mankind of approaching troubles; in all which we see a lamentable proof of the follies to which even a refined people may be exposed, if ignorant of the laws of nature.

The superstitious delusions of the Greeks and Rcmans may be said to have died out at the final dismemberment of the Roman empire, and the overrunning of Western Europe by the Gothic nations. The introduction of Christianity also tended powerfully to root out the old superstitious usages, though a few survived to a later date. For these reasons, the superstitions and matters of credulous belief which afterwards affected the people of Northern and Western Europe, including the British Islands, were in a great measure of Scandinavian and Gothic origin. The only superstitions of

Eastern growth worthy of mention, which were perpetuated in Europe generally, were astrology, or a belief that the stars exercised an influence over the destiny of mortals, and alchemy, or the pretended art of transmuting the baser metals into gold; both of wnich delusions finally vanished before the light of knowledge that spread abroad in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

SCANDINAVIAN SUPERSTITIONS. -The superstitions of the European Northmen, or Scandinavians, - under which term are included the early inhabitants of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Iceland, were of a kind remarkably accordant with the cold and stern character of the regions which they occupied. Like the ancient Greeks, the Scandinavians had seats of the gods and of the blest, which they called Asgard and Walhalla, and these bore the same relation in their character to the Olympus and Elysium of the Greeks, that the countries of the North, with their stormy climes, their icy mountains, and perilous waters, bore to the perfumed and verdant plains of Hellas, and the fair blue skies overhanging the smooth Ionian Sea.

The deification of one or more great princes or rulers seems to have constituted the basis of the Scandinavian, as well as of every other pagan mythology. Odin, the supreme deity of the Scandinavians, and the ruler of heaven and earth, appears, like the Hellenic Jupiter, to have been a distinguished chief and warrior of early times. Although it is asserted by some that a divinity of the name of Odin was worshipped from the most remote ages, there is reason to believe that the worship of this personage, in the North at least, had its