tained a place in the heathen systems of mythology, but the promise of a great Deliverer to come was also preserved in some form throughout the world; gaining strength with time, until Jesus, "the desire of all nations," came. Thus, while Simeon, and Anna, and other pious Jews were looking for him, we see, from the East, wise men, having seen his star, come to worship him; and from the West, we hear the heathen poet Virgil, while trying to flatter the emperor Augustus that he was the person referred to in the Cumæn verses, saying, "The last great age, foretold by sacred rhymes, "A golden progeny from heaven descends. The jarring nations he in peace shall bind, The immortality of the soul.-Every man feels that he has a living soul; and he knows in his conscience that there is a coming judgment. Some of the memorable warnings of Him, who taught in love, and who came to save, are: “Fear Him, which after He hath killed hath power to cast into Hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear Him."2 "For the hour is coming, in which all that are in the grave shall hear His voice, and shall come forth; they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of damnation." 3 A belief in the immortality of the soul, and of a state of future rewards and punishments, has come down through all ages, and through all religions. Homer, in his Iliad, makes his hero, Achilles, say, ""Tis true, 'tis certain, man though dead retains Apolonius, one of the philosophers, declared: "As to the 1 Matt. ii. 2. 2 Luke xii. 5. * John v. 28. opinion that good men should be rewarded after death, he could not reach either the author or original of it." Cicero says, "We conclude, from the consent of all mankind, that the soul is immortal." Seneca says, "The consent of all mankind, in their hopes and fears of a future state, is of no small moment to us." All legislators and philosophers, in every age and land, have made it a part of their system, and the founders of every form of religious worship have done the same. Such rare exceptions as the Sadducees of old and the few scattered infidels, who are generally looked upon with abhorrence, serving to confirm the rule. The translation of Enoch, shortly after the death of Adam, was not forgotten. Accounts of it appear, in some form or other, in almost every system of religion adopted by the heathen. The doctrine of the transmigration of souls, which is connected with a belief in immortality, is still held by a large portion of the earth's population. The indistinct knowledge which the heathen retained in their traditions, of the creation, of the deluge, and of the new world, gave them a notion of a succession of worlds; and led to the belief that Noah and his three sons were a re-appearance of Adam and his three sons, Cain, Abel and Seth; these being the only ones mentioned. The belief that the spirits of the departed have some ethereal form after death, and that they sometimes manifest themselves to the eyes of men, has prevailed, in all time, throughout all nations. This is very remarkable, considering that the appearances of Samuel to Saul, and of Moses and Elias to the apostles at the transfiguration, are the only well authenticated cases upon which to ground a belief in ghosts. The learned Dr. Johnson, speaking of the universality of the belief in ghosts, said, that after a careful investigation he had never been able to find an authentic case of a ghost having been seen. The fact, that such a belief has always been universal, shows an involuntary consent of all mankind to the truth, that the soul is immortal. Sacrifices. We have already noticed that in the first act of worship, after the Fall, God accepted the offering of a lamb in sacrifice, and also that sacrifices have had a place in every religion since that time. Let us now examine the heathen accounts concerning the origin of the sacrifices they offered. Plato, the philosopher, says, "At first no animals were of fered, but only the fruits of the earth and trees." Such may have been the thank-offerings of man before he sinned; such were the sacrifices offered by self-righteous Cain. His descendants and followers doubtlessly imitated him, but after the flood bloody sacrifices soon became general. That sacrifices were a divine appointment is one of the most universal traditions prevalent among men. Mr. Faber, after a thorough examination of the subject, affirms, that "Throughout the whole world he finds a notion prevalent that the gods could only be appeased by bloody sacrifices; and its universality proves that all nations have borrowed it from the same common source. There is no heathen people which can specify a time when it was without sacrifice. All have equally had it, from a time which cannot be reached by their genuine records." One Egyptian tradition makes Moth or Taut, supposed to be Adam, the inventor of sacrifices. Another says, Osiris, supposed to be Noah, is the god who first instructed men in them. The Italians were said to have been taught by Janus, the first father. His double face, looking forward and backward, is supposed to refer to Noah, "the child of the old world and the orphan of the new," as knowing the past and the future. According to the Babylonians, Zizuthus, on quitting the ark, built an altar and sacrificed to the gods. The same was said of the Grecian Deucalion. The same of the British Hu, who sailed over the flood with seven companions, and was emphatically called the sacrificer. The Chinese Fohi raised seven kinds of animals for sacrifices to the Great Spirit. All these point to Adam or Noah, though called by various names. Cæsar, the infidel of Rome, says, that the Druids of Gaul held, that unless the life of man was given for the forfeited life of man, the Deity of the immortal gods could not be appeased. The Athenians and Massilians, in their sacrifice of a man for the welfare of the state, show that they had an idea of a human redeemer. They loaded him with curses and prayed that the wrath of the gods might fall upon his devoted head, and thus be diverted from the rest of the citizens. They solemnly called upon him to be their ransom and their redemption, life for life, and body for body. After this ceremony they cast him into the sea as an offering to Neptune. In the Indian mythology, we learn that Menu, their great father, had three sons, one of whom was slain in the act of performing sacrifice. The slaughtered brother was consecrated as a god and worshipped by the Thessalonians with bloody hands. The death of Abel was, doubtless, the origin of this tradition. Sanchoniathon, the ancient historian of Phoenicia, speaks of the sacrifice by the god Chronus (the same as El or Ilus) of his son to his father Ouranus, and that the example was followed in the nation by the establishment of an expiatory sacrifice, which was considered as peculiarly mystical, having reference to things yet to come. The learned mythologist, Mr. Bryant, after giving a full account of this, concludes, " According to this, El, the supreme deity, whose associates were the Elohim, was in process of time to have a son, well beloved, his only begotten. He was to be offered up as a sacrifice to the father, by way of satisfaction and redemption, to atone for their sins and avert the just vengeance of God." Mr. Bryant leaves it to his readers to say whether this does not refer to an early tradition of Christ. It is a lamentable fact that all these relics of original truth, which were retained by the heathen in their mythology, were mixed up with fabulous traditions and gross superstition, and with an idolatrous and cruel worship which constantly grew more and more vile, licentious and corrupt. The seed of the Serpent has ever perverted the truth; doing so even in the visible Church of Christ. Peter speaks of certain persons as wresting some things in the epistles of Paul and "also the other scriptures to their own destruction." The Pharisees, the most professedly religious among the Jews, the then visible Church of God, put Jesus, who was "The Truth" itself, to death. Though they sat in Moses' seat, Jesus speaks of them as "children of the Devil." Since that time all history shows that there has been a succession of his children, not only among the heathen, but also in high places, loudly proclaiming that they are "The Church," while they are "holding the truth in unrighteousness," and covering up with their traditions the pure Word of God, and are also ever zealous, like their father, to destroy them who preach, or who live, Christ. 2 12 Pet. iii. 16. 2 John viii. 44. |