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he must have been a great and plausible impostor. David is spoken of in terms of the highest praise, but Jehu is condemned for cruelty, and Solomon for uxoriousness. The Pentateuch is supposed to have been written during the reign of Josiah, and the discovery of the books of the law to have been merely their imposition on society by some clever forger; and yet, in that case, what comes of the praise bestowed on the intellect and imagination of David, who celebrates the law as his study by the day, and his meditation by the night; who prays that it may be a light to his feet, and a lamp to his path; but all whose Psalms may also have been written during the reign of Josiah, or at some subsequent period; and in that case, Miss Martineau loses a poet hero, who may have been no poet, or, according to her standard of criticism, may never have had an existence. For the Saviour she professes to hold the utmost regard, but why we cannot guess; for, according to Miss Martineau, he also must have been a great impostor, making statements utterly false, and advancing claims absolutely unfounded.

It would be very difficult to guess whether Miss Martineau really believes in a future state of any description, or under any circumstances, from her works. She says, page 300, vol. i. :

"We truly respect, accordingly, the child's or the peasant's notion of a literal judgment day, when there will be a process of trial, with books of account opened, and a sentence passed in words, and burning inflicted, in the one case, and whatever the individual most desires conferred on the other. We truly respect these notions in the child and the peasant, while we know that no enlightened and disciplined man looks forward to any such actual scene."

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If by the term, "any such actual scene,' the writer means any scene bearing the leading features that she has caricatured slightly, the last sentence is grossly insolent; and while pitying superior minds of the present day, she might deal to them some portion of her charity reserved for Egyptians and Mahommedans, upon whom it is so largely lavished.

She is at a loss regarding John the Evangelist, somewhat doubtful whether the existence of the beloved disciple was advantageous or otherwise; but Simon Magus, to whom she ascribes the origin of a considerable part of Christianity, is deservedly not one of her favorites. Amongst other matters, she is somewhat vexed that the human race have been for some thousands of years in direct communication with butterflies, worms, and so on, without acquiring any great knowledge of their mental capacities. There may be much knowledge con

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cealed in consequence of our not becoming acquainted with the language and literature of the worms; but Miss Martineau should have included the other vermin of the Nile in these idle regrets.

The travellers left Egypt by the route of the Hebrews, and wandered in the desert of Sinai, one of them meditating, and the other recording her meditations as she wandered. The Scriptures give one short account, written by Moses himself, of that great leader's life in the wilderness, and the means by which he was led into the gigantic effort to redeem the Israelites from Egyptian bondage; but Miss Martineau knows better than Moses all these circumstances, and we subjoin her account of the matter :

"In the solitudes to which he now retired with according to the needs of his flock, and sitting his family, shifting his tent from valley to valley, down beside the secluded springs among the rocky mountains, his mind wrought vigorously among the materials stored up by his careful education. There is no place like the desert for fruitful meditation. There, among the immutable forms of nature, lives the past, for those who know how to look for it. It will not rise to view speak where the voices of men are heard. But among the changing scenes of social life, nor in the austere silence of the desert it presses its tale upon the tranquilized soul, and will, to one who knows, as Moses did then, and Mahommed of its unborn child, which is to redeem the after him, how to invoke prophecy of the future human race from its sins and its burden of woes. Here, as Moses sat under the shrubby palm in its moist nook, or lay under the shadow of the rock, did the past come at the call of his instructed memory, and tell him how these mighty Egyptians had been slaves, as his Hebrew breth

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yoke of their bondage, and risen into a powerful now were, and how they had cast off the nationality, by driving out the foe who had oppressed them for a thousand years, and by retributes through whose aid they believed all great storing to their honours the Supreme and his atdeeds to be achieved; and here, to his clear understanding, did the future promise the redemption of his race, and disclose the means by which it should be wrought. Here he learned to see, not at once as in vision, but in the dawning of many days, and from the suggestions of many thoughtful years-how the redemption of the cedents of former times should be followed, and Hebrew race should be effected, how far the where they should be departed from; what there was new and peculiar in the circumstances of his people, and how these circumstances should be dealt with. He saw that the Hebrews could not rise in revolt against their oppressors as the Egyptians had done against their shepherd conquerors; for the Hebrews had not the rights of their servitude as to be incapable of warfare. native possession; and they were so debased by He saw that they must be first removed from the influences which had made them what they were,

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and then elevated into a capability for independent social life."

We are, therefore, to understand that all the knowledge of Moses regarding "the Supreme," was derived from the Egyptians-from the people whose worship and idols he was so careful to warn his countrymen against, and with which he was so much incensed. The visions narrated by him are to be considered so many frauds, and yet the reader must remember that Miss Martineau holds the character of Moses in the highest reverence and esteem. We are even farther asked to believe that Moses derived none of his information from the Israelites themselves-that the teaching of the triarchs was entirely forgotten amongst themor that he never had enjoyed any intercourse with the people in whose favor and for whose liberation all his energies were stirred.

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The second volume contains some graphic sketches of desert scenery, mixed, unfortunately, with the speculations of the writer, which she supposes to be new, whereas they are old doubts, often considered :

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"How differently the Pentateuch here reads,

from the same worn old Bible which one has handled for five-and-twenty years, I could not have imagined. The light from Egypt and Arabia shining into it illuminates unthought-of places, and gives a new and most fresh coloring to the whole. I little thought ever to have seen so much of Moses as I did this day, within sight of Arab tents, like those in which he and Zipporah and their children lived when first here with Jethro's flocks; within sight of the same peaks which were land-marks to the wandering tribes; and of the same wadees where they rested, and surrounded by the very same mountain springs whence they brought water for themselves and their flocks. The wells within the convent seem to have been always inexhaustible; yet I dare say some of the Hebrew women discovered the ice-cold spring behind, which has, no doubt, lain in its shadowy nook since Horeb was up. reared. I wonder whether it was fringed with ferns when the Hebrew women saw it, as it is now. It was a tempting place for gossip, for sitting down to talk over the comforts of Goshen, and the verdure of Egypt, and pointing out the dreariness of this place, and reminding one another how unwilling they and their husbands had been to leave Egypt, foreseeing that they should only get into trouble by trying a new country. In yonder plain was the crowd of dark, low tents, with no tabernacle yet in the midst. Among the neighboring wadees were the herdsmen dispersed, tending the flocks every day of the week; for as yet there was no Sabbath. This, and very much more, did I see on that Sunday at Sinai; much that I could not have seen if I had been a cotemporary disciple of Moses-much that can be seen only by the light of an after age, of the educational purposes and processes for which the Hebrews were brought here."

Miss Martineau would have great difficulty in proving that "as yet there was no Sabbath.' The people are represented as at Sinai, when Miss Martineau makes this reflection; but previous to getting there, when in the Wilderness of Sin, "which is between Elim and Sinai," there was the Sabbath, observed, too, in a very solemn way, as this lady, who seems not to have read the Pentateuch

very

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ly, will find on referring to Exodus xvi. and 23d to the 30th verse. Some time elapsed after the events there recorded, before the Israelites passed through Rephidim to Sinai, from which the law was delivered, containing, amongst other commandments, the fourth. That commandment runs in language which implies, on the part of those to whom it was addressed, a previous knowledge and observance of the Sabbath. The subject is twisted into this place, apparently for the purpose of modernizing the institution of this weekly rest; for, under any circumstances, the herdsmen were compelled to tend their flocks, to a considerable extent, even on the Sabbath. Miss Martineau explains the religious creed of upon the following theory:

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"By his priestly rank and privileges, Moses knew the mysteries of Egyptian worship. He was the only one of the multitude at Sinai who knew, what we all know, or may know, nowthat the two chief objects of the heathen mysteries were, the preservation of the doctrine of the Divine Unity, and the detection or explanation of idolatry. The Orphic hymn, sung by the initiated in mysteries which were derived from Egypt, was familiar truth to him:-'I will declare a secret to the initiated; but let the doors be shut against the profane. . . . . I shall utter the truth without disguise. Suffer not, therefore, thy former prejudices to debar thee from that happy life which the knowledge of these sublime truths will procure unto thee; but carefully contemplate this divine oracle, and preserve it in purity of mind and heart. Go on, in the right way, and contemplate the Sole Governor of the world. He is One, and of himself Alone; and to that One all things owe their being. He operates through all, was never seen by mortal eyes, but does himself see every one.' Moses knew that this sublime truth of the myteries was once the common faith of men, though it was now called Atheism, from the contempt it was supposed to cast upon the popular gods: and that it must again become the faith of mankind, through him, amidst all the difficulty and suffering which attend a return from error to a fundamental primitive idea. He knew that, before he could see his hope fulfilled his hope that every Hebrew should worship Jehovah, as his father Abraham had done - the people must go through a process of training, as painful to himself as irksome to them. But this was the work he had to do; and he had brought them hither to begin it."

Moses unquestionably was skilled in the learning of the Egyptians; but the authority on which we believe that statement imputes a different origin to his theology; and we have no right to use those parts of that narrative which suit our prejudices as correct, without accepting also its more important statements. Without the Bible we should know very little of Moses, and yet his character is greatly revered by our tourist, who denies, however, the truth of the information that he furnishes there regarding his own history, character, and purWhat can be more difficult than to entertain a feeling of respect for a critical and learned authority — and Miss Martineau is appearing voluntarily in these capacities through three volumes-who, at page 83, vol. ii., refers seriously to the patriarch Joseph as a sagacious and politic minister; as a person of whose existence there can be no more doubt than concerning that of Prince Metternich or Sir Charles Wood; as a statesman, in a crisis, worth more than both modern politicians, but furnishes us with the following statement at page 91, vol. iii. ?

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"It is believed by the learned that, during two centuries and a half, after the full assumption of power by the priesthood, under Jehoiada, the first four books of the Pentateuch were probably compiled from existing documents, and other means of knowledge; and that, finally, the book of Deuteronomy was written, and brought out with the others, in the name of Josiah, to work the greatest change in the religious condition of the Hebrews which had happened since they had left Mount Sinai. The books of the law were then found written in the ark-in the ark which is declared to have been empty at preceding dates: and a multitude of particulars in the books themselves prove, as biblical scholars have shown, that they could not have been reduced to their present form before the dates here assigned. For the consternation of king Josiah, and the sensation excited among the people, by the denunciations against idolatry -especially the prevalent idolatry of the country-we need only refer to the history. Our business with the event is to mark its effect on the religious thought of the nation."

All our knowledge of Joseph is derived from the Pentateuch. If these books be incredible, Joseph's existence is disestablished. He is no more to us than Waverly or Guy Mannering. Moses may be a myth, and Aaron a mistake, if this belief of the learned be worthy of any attention. It is true that the four first books are said to have been probably compiled from existing documents during the reign of Josiah. They never have been anything else than documents, and if they were copied from then existing documents, their authenticity remains unimpaired; while

if they were "compiled," their character is changed. We are very confident that all " the learned" cannot show a tittle of evidence to justify the preference of the word "compiled" to "copied," and that those who adopt it can show no better reason for doing so than a vain and weak-minded ambition to seem wiser than their neighbors. With this authoress, moreover, we fear that "the learned" are those persons only who support her opinions. Nothing is more common than a pretence of charity, or even a blunder of charity - a belief that a writer can be liberal and charitable who says that "the learned" think the Pentateuch dates only from the reign of Josiah, and that "all the enlightened" have ceased to expect or to believe in the day of judgment."

There are many errors into which the authoress falls, evidently from a careless study of the Scriptures - errors that have not a very prejudicial tendency, but at the same time destroy, as we have already stated, any confidence in her critical discrimination. The institution of the Levitical priesthood is ascribed in this work to the time of Joshua, although no fact is more distinctly, or perhaps more frequently, stated, than the succession of priests in the house of Levi, from Aaron downwards, and the separation of his tribe to offices connected with the priesthood and the services of religion.

of the kind to which we have referred : The following passage is founded on an error

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“The first thing evident in their history, after the arrival of the Hebrews in the promised land, is the utter apparent failure, for the time, of their leader's aim and hope for them. hope had been, and the aim of their desert life, to keep them pure from Egyptian popular superstitions on the one hand, and the planetary worship of Canaan on the other; but they were subject to both for some centuries after their arrival in Palestine, avowedly till the completion of the law and the full establishment of the ritual after the time of Joshua, and unconsciously, in several doctrines and many habits of thought, to the very last. The golden calf_at Sinai was not the only one by very many. hovah was still considered, at times, if not always, the chief God of the Hebrews; and this of golden calves to him exclusively, which indipreeminence was asserted by the consecration cated him to be the Amun or King of the Gods to this seeming Egyptian people. These calves were set up at Dan and Bethel, and on many a high place between, in the time of Jeroboam, three generations after the day when David brought the ark into Jerusalem, bidding its gates in. And as for the planetary idolatry, the peobe lifted up, that the King of Glory might come ple not only fell, immediately after their arrival, into the worship of the oriental Apollo and Diana, but the horses of the sun, and chariots of

the sun, were set up as consecrated images, at the very entrance of the House of Jehovah, up to the time of Josiah."

There can be no doubt whatever that the Jewish ritual was fully established during the reign of Solomon, although that monarch tolerated, with it, the worship of many false gods, on account of the connections that he formed; and participated in idolatry at one period, probably the middle period of his life and reign. The calves set up at Dan and Bethel were consequences of the separation of Israel from Judah, and the formation of the former into a separate kingdom. The tribes Lever coalesced again, and the Israelites had no connection with the reëstablishment of the Mosaic ritual amongst the Jews under Josiah.

The same careless statements regarding facts, and the objectionable formation of arguments on these mis-statements, which we have already often noticed, prevails through the whole historical theology of the work. The error regarding the Mahommedans, in the first sentence of the following extract, is frequently repeated; manifesting an ignorance of ecclesiastical statistics entirely unaccountable on the part of an ecclesiastical teacher; and Miss Martineau assumes that office.

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"The latter faith, which has transcended all preceding religions in its power over the human race Mahommedan, which has won its tens of thousands to the thousands of any other faith well-known to us - is not without its representative here. Towering above the shrines of the Greek deities, and the source of the sacred Hebrew river, and the site of the palace of the Cæsars, and the fields where Jesus walked, is the great Saracenic castle, held for ages in the name of Allah, and Mahommed his Prophet. We saw it long this day, as we were riding over the boundary hills of Palestine.

of race.

"These were our last hours in the Holy Land. From these heights we looked back upon a land of most variegated scenery, and I could not but feel of faiths curiously commingled, strong as was the Jewish profession of unity of faith, and The main feature of its faith, however-its monotheism - finally remained unchanged for so long as to serve as a basis for its distinctive character before the world. Though allegorically impaired by the Pharisaic sect before the time of Christ, and by the Alexandrian, and other parties ever since, that great doctrine has remained, on the whole, practically established; and this it is which distinguishes this birth-place of a religious faith above, perhaps, every other on earth. Next to this ranks the distinction given it by the appearance of Christ. When men shall have learned to receive his doctrine in the simplicity with which he gave itto receive it from himself, from his life and his words they will probably become aware that it is its commixture with superstitions and insti

tutions older than itself, which is the cause of its not having been more extensive and effectual in its operation than the history of eighteen centuries shows it to have been. Encumbered with much that was never contemplated by the Teacher himself, and that is incompatible with the whole spirit of his Gospel-encumbered with a priesthood and ritual of its own, and tions of all the nations who ministered to the adulterated with more or fewer of the superstiHebrew mind, it is no wonder that the true doctrine of Christ is overlaid and almost destroyed. The paternity of God extending to all men; the infallible operation of his will or providence his strict moral government, by which moral retribution is inevitable; the brotherhood of the whole human race, and in that the promise of peace on earth and good will towards men ; and the establishment of a spiritual kingdom on earth, of which he should be Prince, and his followers the administrators, the dead rising to enter into it; and the living to be admitted without death; the expiration of the Jewish law on the establishment of this kingdom, and the spiritual nature of the new religion, which was to have the heaven and the earth for its temple, and the whole body of believers for its priests: - these were the points of faith which appear to have been offered by Jesus himself the simple glad tidings which the earnest disciple hears from him when listening to his voice alone in the retirements of Palestine, sequestered from the embarrassing echoes of other countries, and later times. It was thus that Palestine and its faith appeared to one, at least, as I looked back this day from the ridge of the eastern hills, for the last time upon the valley of Jordan."

The absolute statement in the first sentence of this extract is, that Mahommedanism has won ten times the number of converts attached There are to any other faith known to us. different forms of Mahommedanism, as there are different forms of Christianity; and clubbing all its adherents in the different sects together, they do not make out a number equal to the disciples of more than one known faith. The followers of Buddha in the different forms of Buddhism are more numerous than those of Mahommed. Christianity in its various forms is believed to embrace two hundred millions of persons. We have no good reason to suppose that there really exist two hundred millions of Mahommedans on the earth. Its entire population is reckoned at eight hundred One-third of that number are supmillions. posed to be resident in China and its immediate dependencies, and there are few Mahommedans amongst them. Central Asia contains Mahommedans. In Western Asia, they greata vast population, but the majority are not ly preponderate; but that region and the northern coasts of Africa contain the greatest numbers and strength. In Europe there are not

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very many millions. The error of saying and repeating and reiterating the saying, that these people are ten times more numerous than the adherents of any other faith are two thousand millions strong which they would require to be, in order to have ten times the number of all Christians - should not find a place in a work professing to describe Eastern life and faith- to be the product of personal research, aided by the accumulated treasures of the learned" and of " the enlightened." When mistakes of this nature regarding matters of general notoriety are committed, what can we expect amongst the tombs and the ruinous monuments, the dust, the sand, and the mud of fallen Egypt?

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of a noble, though ultimately an impious and wicked race? A prophet denounced for their doom that "there shall not be any remaining of the house of Edom." The doom seems to have been literally fulfilled, for no traces now remain of the vigorous and active people who set " 'their nest among the stars." The singularity of Petra consisted not merely in its houses being excavations, and its streets chasms between rocks; but in the scenery, for many miles around, which exhibited the same alternation of precipice and chasm. Miss Martineau's descriptions of the deserted rocks, that were once a proud metropolis, are extremely vivid.

To lose one's way in Damascus, in Paris, or any other foreign city, is an unpleasant event for a tourist; but to be lost among the ruins of rocks, in a city of tombs, is far more serious. There is the chance of never meet

The epitome of the Christian religion given in the last extract is so far correct; but falling back on the words of Jesus, the test to which we are referred, it is incomplete, and there is a haze and darkness hanging over the abstracting any one to lead the wanderers right, and which He left not over his doctrines. There is little satisfaction in noticing the views promulgated by Miss Martineau, because we have no standard of appeal; for what are the words of Jesus? Words that do not suit the argument are pronounced to be interpolations. This entire deficiency in the basis of the discussion, must often render it devoid of results. One statement in this extract echoes the words of reflective men through all Christendom. Christianity has not yet covered the earth, because it has not yet been generally practised by its professors.

We have wandered far from the pleasant and profitable parts of this work—those descriptive chapters which abound in most interesting narrative. The tourists were particularly fortunate in their sojourn at Petra, and they were able to examine that old metropolis in the rocks more carefully and completely than any preceding party. There is, perhaps, more interest attached to the ancient capital of Idumea than any other eastern city, except Jerusalem more interest appertaining to the place, although neither felt nor expressed as yet in Europe. What induced the children of Edom, at a time when the broad world lay unpeopled before them, to perch their home with the eagle amongst the rocks? What charm had those "clefts of the rocks" to the long line of Dukes of Edom the aristocracy of Idumea? By what process did they who went not down to Egypt reach that high degree of refinement, and of acquaintance with the arts and sciences that they undoubtedly possessed? When at last the judgments denounced from God by Isaiah, Jeremiah, and other prophets in Israel, fell on them with irresistible power - where fled the fragments

the danger, when a party appears, that they will most probably lead them wrong. That was the fate of Miss Martineau and a party of her companions. They were caught in a storm amid the ruins of Petra, while they knew not scarcely where to turn; but they were well repaid for the danger and the delay by a spectacle that cannot be of frequent occurrence amongst the rocks of Edom. The water channels were filled once more, and the streets of the city were peopled to their gratification: —

"We waited and watched: and a very pretty dashing down from the summits, here and there, thing it was to watch the little white torrents as far as we could see. But these same waterfalls were sending streams down the intervals of the slopes before us-in some places ankledeep. The whole sky was one dark gray: and it struck me that, not only was there no prosfrom home to run the risk of further delay. My pect of its clearing up, but that we were too far companions objected that we had no guide, and were quite ignorant of the way; whereas somebody would certainly be coming soon to look for us. I had a pocket-compass with me, however, and was quite sure of the general direction. I knew that the tents lay south-west, on the other side of the water-course. So, off we went, as straight as an arrow-across gullies, over hills, through ankle-deep water- for it was no time for picking and choosing our footing. One of my companions was lame that day; but on he must go, over stone-heaps and through pools. We found a way down into the water-course walked many yards along it-knowing now where we were — and got out of it not far from had half put off my wet clothes, I heard a shout our platform. Within three minutes, before I

- the torrent had come down. Down it came,

almost breast-high-rushing and swirling among the thickets and great stones in the water-course, giving us a river in a moment, where we had

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