In the foregoing extracts we have the counter claims of the Egyptians and Ethiopians: they may, however, be in a measure reconciled by the fact that Egypt conquered and absorbed Ethiopia. In either case we must concede a greater antiquity to the zodiacal worship than to the Jewish Nation. In the same work, under the heading "Jocasta," is the following description of the Sphinx :

"There was then in that country a monster called Spinx, who had a face and voice like a maiden, the body like a dog, the tail like a dragon, the claws like a lion, and wings like a bird."

Here we have a sphinx with parts of five animals. The probability is that in some rude specimen of the early sculpture, the tail and body may have been intended for those of an ox, but misunderstood by the narrator, because of imperfect delineation; or like John's beasts around the throne, for some mystical reason, a fifth beast was added.

Egypt records an astronomical period of 1460 years, called the Sothiac Cycle. At the end of each of these periods Sothis, Sirius, or the dog-star, rises in the latitude of Thebes just before the sun. By this they rectified their calendar. According to "Bunsen," there are records of the return of three of these periods before the Christian era.

But our limits admonish us that we must bring this essay to a close. We have presented but a tithe of our proofs that the Jews-notorious for their deficiency of inventive genius, but with good imitative powers-have but followed the lead of the other unmixed tribes, and borrowed their religious system from their former masters. If Moses obtained his directions viva voce from Jehovah, is it not strange that he should be told to reproduce the same leading ideas which he had been taught in Egypt? that he should call his God by the same name; separate the animals, a la Egypta (the Egyptians. detested swine); practice circumcision; make an ark in imitation of theirs; exclude women from the priesthood as they

did; adopt the Zodiac, giving to each of the tribes one constellation, etc.? It will be argued that Abram practiced circumcision. He did, but not until after he had sojourned in Egypt.

It is true that Moses sought to isolate the Jews from their fatherland by discouraging the arts and sciences among them, absolutely forbidding the making of a likeness of anything above, around or below the earth; and also by continually preaching to them about their degradation and hardships. He attempted to excite their hatred against their former oppressors; but fond memory, busy with the past, was ever tempting them to retrace their steps to that land of plenty, of golden skies and perpetual sunshine.

NOTE. The author of the foregoing essay has elsewhere treated the general subject at length, in a work entitled "The Hierophant," published in 1859.

LEX TALIONIS LEX TERRE.

HE Gallows still stands as one of the expressive sym

TH

bols of a vindictive theology and a semi-barbarous law. Its cold, accursed shadow falls on all the land-on the Church and State; on sympathetic human hearts, on the faces of little children that lisp, with tremulous voices, the names of its victims, and on the souls of unborn babes, to blight and blacken human nature. Its hideous image and its frightful work; its bloody record of the law's mistakes; its long lines of innocent victims and of creatures morally deformed-all grim and ghastly in their gory habiliments; the infamy that falls on desolate homes and blasts the hopes of families— all present to the living only sad and sickening scenes of tragic interest, and to the future a foul inheritance of blasted hopes and bitter memories.

S. B. B.

QUID DIVINUM.

Translated from the French of Revue Spirite of Paris.

BY MRS. EMMA A. WOOD.

HE article that follows in this connection is in answer to a let

THE

ter in a former number of the Revue, to whose writer our author, while substantially agreeing with him in sentiment, yet replies by Quid divinum. The insertion of the letter, however, is not necessary to a comprehension of Quid divinum, which will, I think, be found sufficiently interesting and important, treating as it does of the intimate relation of all material things to things spiritual. It is also interesting as an illustration of the manner in which the subject is treated by French Spiritists of different schools and of different views in the same school-showing how a subject assumes new aspects in passing through various forms of mind.

Foreign Spiritists, it is well known, hold some peculiar views, which though adopted, either wholly or partially, by some of our own people, have not, as yet, been fully indorsed by the majority among us, the principal one being the reïncarnation of the soul through various human bodies, either in this or in other worlds, until the soul's purification has reached its highest degree. They, however, expressly repudiate the ancient idea of the human soul entering the body of an inferior animal. Everything progressing to good, no backward step is permitted by the Infinite Ruler of all. This doctrine of reïncarnation so permeates all their writings, that every argument and every exemplification is colored by it, and those who read, as well as those who translate, must look at their arguments from the stand-point of their own philosophy; finding, as they will, in every new investigation, fresh proofs of the goodness and wisdom of the Creator.

QUID DIVINUM.

In all diseases it is necessary to understand the part of the Quid divinum. A long time ago was Quid divinum dis

covered. The expression comes to us from Hippocrates, who admitted it in its fullest signification when he called epilepsy the sacred disease.

By this expression he seemed to wish to say that the gods themselves created disease in the human body, and that then medicine was powerless. In fact, how struggle against the will of the gods! Light may be thrown upon this expression by Spiritism, which science also permits us to determine more exactly the generation of diseases, and at the same time the intervention of medical science and of medicine. This is what we shall endeavor to do; but first we shall unfold some general views of life, as Spiritism enables us to comprehend it.

GENERAL VIEWS OF LIFE ENLIGHTENED BY SPIRITISM.

Whatever may be the instrument the Creator has used to manifest life, were it only by means of a cellule, it is evident that the life is no more in the cellule than is electricity in the machine that manifests it; the cellule is the matter God has used to manifest His thought, which is life.

When an engineer creates a locomotive to run rapidly over great distances and transport heavy burdens, the locomotive is the expression of the engineer's thought, it is not itself the force and movement; all that is in the thought of the engineer, manifested by the locomotive. It is a thought-made machine, and by the same argument we can say of life, that it is a thought made flesh.

Has God desired solely to manifest life? Let us follow life from the cellule to its better defined expression in the various organisms-what shall we see? Life always manifested by cellules, but also, a thought manifested by organisms-a thought that goes on always being developed in a clearer, more distinct manner with the increasing perfection of the organisms.

The organism, then, is not living solely by the life of the cellules, it is living still more by the thought that created it, and for the end for which it was created; man, created last,

is necessarily the heir of the organic lives that preceded him, and the heir of the thought that presided at the work of creation, which has given occasion to the words of St. Paul"That God knew and loved us before we were."

CREATION OF THE ANIMAL SOUL.

If man is the heir of the thought that presided at the creation of organisms; if God who made all these things knew and loved him before we were, man is then the foreseen result of the creation and not a being issued instantaneously from the hand of the Creator, like Minerva, armed cap-a-pie, springing from the brain of Jupiter. If man is the result of all these organisms it must be that these organisms have not only produced something, but something progressive, and this progressive something is the animal soul.

This something, still animal soul, must have passed along the thread indicated by the zoological scale; the development of instinct and intelligence must have kept pace with this progress of the organism and have been continued up to man.

THE ANIMAL SOUL AND THE SOUL OF THE FIRST MAN.

The Revue, of February, 1867, speaks of a dog who attempted suicide; on that occasion a communication given by a Spirit taught that animals are responsible for their actions in proportion to their advancement. The same Revue speaks of a dog that has reäppeared, thus demonstrating the survival of the animal soul after the destruction of his organism. Dogs dream; this can not be doubted by all observers; it may then be supposed that other animals of equal development also dream. We know a fact that shows, according to the evidence, that dogs see spirits, thus they may enjoy the faculty called seeing mediumship; all these psychic facts, of the same nature in men and animals, prove a relative identity of psychic nature. We do not mean a complete similitude between the two natures.

Seeking to demonstrate the ascending progress, existing