ways, to those who invoked them." Armies were routed and victotories won, by their supposed instrumentality. The Kings of Persia and Chaldea were all instructed in the art, and by it mainly governed the minds of their subjects. Amongst these philosophers, Belus and Berosus hold distinguished rank.

From the testimony of Diodorus, and other ancient documents collected by Eusebius, it appears incontrovertible that the Chaldeans believed in God, as the parent and Lord of all. But they, also, believed in a "race of spiritual beings, called demons, whose existence could not have been imagined without conceiving the idea of a Supreme Being;" and "the whole Heathen world, from the most remote times, believed in a Supreme Deity, the fountain of all the divinities which they supposed to preside over the several parts of the material world-the true origin of all religious worship, however idolatrous, not excepting even that which consisted in paying divine honors to the memory of dead men. Besides the Supreme Being, the Chaldeans supposed spiritual beings to exist of several orders-gods, demons, heroes. "The ancient eastern nations in general-and among the rest, the Chaldeans--admitted the existence of several evil spirits, clothed in a vehicle of grosser matter; and in subduing and counteracting these, they placed a great part of the efficacy of their religious incantations."*

"These doctrines were the mysteries of the Chaldean religion, communicated, as was usual amongst the ancients, only to the initiated. Their popular religion consisted in the worship of the sun, moon, planets, and stars, as divinities after the general practice of the East." "The religious system of the Chaldeans," continues Enfield, "gave rise to two arts, that have long been celebrated-magic and astrology." But the magic of the Chaldeans is not to be confounded with witchcraft, or a supposed intercourse with evil spirits. It consisted in the performance of certain religious ceremonies or incantations, which were supposed, through the interposition of good demons, to produce supernatural effects. Their astrology was wholly founded upon the chimerical principle, that the stars have an influence, either beneficial or malignant, upon the affairs of men, which may be discovered, and made the certain ground of prediction in particular cases.

mans.

This philosophy was well known to the Greeks and to the RoPlutarch and Vitruvius quote Berosus as giving the Chaldean opinion of eclipses, and of the end of the world. "An eclipse of the moon happened when that part of its body, which is destitute Plutarch, as copied by Enfield.

of fire, is turned to the earth." And according to Seneca, they taught "that when all the planets shall meet in Cancer, the world will be consumed by fire; and that when they shall meet in Capricorn, it will be destroyed by an inundation." Their doctrine of the human mind was, that it is an emanation from the divine nature. Belus, they taught, divided the darkness and the humid mass called chaos, and thus formed the world.

As for the Persians and their Zardhust, called by the Greeks Zoroaster, and their holy Zeda, we only know, with some degree of certainty, that their magi, long before the times of Zoroaster, were the guardians of their religion and learning. They worshipped the sun, or fire, as a representation of divinity, and sacrificed to him horses. But their worship mainly terminated upon two-demonsthe good and the evil demon-one the spirit of a good man, a public benefactor; the other the spirit of a wicked man, or malefactor. Zoroaster, denominated the good divinity, Oramasdes; the bad divinity, Ariminus. Mithras was a divinity that acted as moderator between them, and him the Persians called the mediator. Through his instrumentality, they alledged, the good demon would ultimately triumph over the evil one, and that universal happiness would finally prevail. They were the primordial Universalians.

"According to Zoroaster, various orders of spiritual beings-gods, or demons-have proceeded from the Deity, which are more or less perfect, as they are at a greater or less distance in the course of emanation from the eternal fountain of intelligence; amongst which the human soul is a particle of divine light, which will return to its source and partake of its immortality,"

Passing from the philosophy or theology of the Persians, to that of the Indians, we observe, that their wise men, called Gymnosophists, or Brachmans, taught that God is light; not such as is seen like the sun, or fire, but intelligence and reason; that principle through whose agency the mysteries of knowledge are understood by the wise. He never produced evil, but light, and life, and souls, of which he is the sole Lord. The former and governor of the uni verse pervades it, and is invested with it as with a garment. He is immortal, and sees all things-the stars, the moon, and the sun, are his eyes. He is beneficent, and preserves, directs, and provides for all. The human mind is of celestial origin, and has a near relation to God. When it departs from the body, it returns to its parent, who expects to receive back the souls which he has sent forth. Besides this supreme divinity, other divinities, proceeding from him, are to be worshipped.

SERIES IV. VOL. 1.

16*

The Celtic philosophy, which includes that of the Gauls, Britons, Germans, and Northern nations, is to be acquired from the history of the Driuds. These were the priests and the prophets of the Celtic nations. "The Driuds rank with the Magi of the Persians, the Chaldeans of Babylonia, and the Gymnosophists of the Indians." Before the Romans knew Great Britain, the Driuds presided over its religion, its schools, and its tribunals of justice. They held their worship in groves, delighted in bloody rites and sacrifices, inflicted punishment upon transgressors and delinquents, and expounded fables. They shared a common origin with the Medes and Persans, and boasted of Scythian fathers lost in Sarmatians and Germans. Like all the other ancient Asiatic nations, they had their public and vulgar doctrine, for those without, and their concealed and more recondite philosophy, for the initiated.

principal were, Odin, Their divinities all re

The divinities were numerous, but the Thor, Tueseo, and chief of all THE EARTH. sided in natural bodies, but they acknowledged one God as supreme. Under the name of Odin, or the FATHER OF ALL, they did him hom. age. With them, the human soul is of divine origin, rational and immortal. All antiquity concurs in giving this as the creed of our Celtic ancestors of Asiatic descent. Cæsar himself, the founder of the dynasty, asserts this faith. They magnanimously contemned death. Births were eelebrated with tears, and deaths with joy. With Solomon they sang, "The end of a thing is better than the beginning, and the day of our death is better than the day of our birth." After death, with some of them, the soul commenced a series of transmigrations from one body ascending to another; with others, it passed immediately into the invisible world. Their creed was to worship the gods, to do good, and to exercise fortitude.

Ten thousand pages of the style and character of Enfield's History of Philosophy, or of Cudworth's Intellectual System, but multiply evidences that the philosophers, sages, lawgivers, founders of States, and the great ancestors of mankind, one and all, had the same rudimental ideas of creation, the same conceptions of a spiritual system, above, beyond, and independent of, a material creation. Their mythologies, fables, fictions, metamorphoses, traditions, show a com. mon fountain of spiritual conceptions, views, and antecedent revelations. And as certainly as a shadow implies a substance, an effect a cause, or that something is, because something always was, do they all demonstrate the great truths of revelation. They all prove that Abraham was before they were; that Moses was more learned

* So called from Deru, the Celtic name of an oak.

than all the sages of the world; that God had spoken to man before man himself spoke; that the spiritual universe preceded the material; that in it are angels, spirits, demons, authorities, principalities and powers, supernal and infernal; and that things above, around, and beneath us, are in constant, ceasless progress towards a new goal-a more sublime, awful, and glorious destiny, than human ima, gination can conceive, or human language express; and that man's wisdom and happiness alike essentially depend upon believing what God says, and in doing what God commands.

A. C.

APOSTOLIC BAPTISM.

"Facts" and "Evidences" on "the subjects and mode" of Christian Baptism, by C. Taylor, editor of Calmets Dictionary of the Bible. Stereotype edition. New York, 1850. Published by M. W. Dodd.”

THIS is a boastful and boasted performance. It is affirmed by the publisher that "the American Baptists, like their British brethren, have not ventured, either to dispute the FACTS,* or to invalidate the EVIDENCES."

Again it is affirmed "that an erudite polemic cannot be found, who will seriously convert Mr. Taylor's oracular position. Baptism, from the day of Pentecost, was administered by the apostles and evangelists to infants, and not by submersion. Therefore, the subsequent FACTS and EVIDENCES are as irrefutable as the truth in Jesus."

Such is the frostispiece to this learned duodecimo of 236 pages. And so confident is the author of his positions, that he says, "for his facts and evidences he desires neither grace nor favor," p. 7. Aagain he says that the more learned Baptists now confess that infants are included in the term oikos family, as used in the New Testament; while it is curious to observe the difficulties to which they are reduced, who contend that infants are excluded from the term "family" and that the word must be restricted to adults. If our translators had employed the term FAMILY, instead of the words

* The "Facts and Evidences," is the title of a pamphlet published by the editor of Calmets Dictionary, in 1815, "on the mode of baptism," and addressed to a Deacon of a Baptist Church, with two plates, "showing some ancient baptisms in the porticos of churches.".

No Baptist author, known to me, has ever affirmed that infants are excluded from the terms oikos or oikia, but only from the families, so called, in which baptism is named.

HOUSE and HOUSEHOLD, the sect of Baptists never would have existed! What a misfortune, that the English word "family" had not been adopted by the Greeks, Romans, French, Germans, and all other nations, since its mere "adoption" by our translators, would have forever prevented the existence of that deluded sect called Baptists! This disquisition on oikos and oikia, with no less than twelve pictures, (hallowed number!) engravings of ancient baptisms in the porticos of Roman cathedrals or Greek churches, exhibiting some water or oil being poured on the head of the subject, is the sum total of the volume.

As to the disquisition on oikos and oikia, we have already demonstrated that it is wholly gratuitous. If we should admit that oikos and oikia meant family, and always family, and nothing but family, unless it was proved that every family must necessarily have infants in it, it is of no logical force whatever. It is mere mockery of reason and argument-a puerile assumption, of which any scholar ought to be ashamed. We will most cheerfully concede, that some families were baptized in the apostolic age, even many more than reported. What then! We still have amongst us family baptisms. But two family baptisms are reported in the New Testament-Lydias and the jailors. Other households of baptized persons are namedthe household of Stephanes; that of Cornelius, the Centurion; that of Onesiphorus; the house of Chloe; the house of Philip; the house of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus; the house of Priscilla and Aquila. In not one of which there is the slightest evidence that there was an infant; but, on the contrary, we have all the internal and circumstantial evidence in each, that in all the points in which they are considered or alluded to, there was not an infant in one of them. No man that has a proper respect for his head and his heart, or his education, can, so far as we ought to judge, argue from oikos, oikia, family, house, or household, in favor of infant baptism. This argument from oikos or oikia, was very satisfactorily disposed of almost thirty years ago, in my debate with Dr. M'Calla. This was proved, as Christianity itself is sometimes proved, not merely by the first acclamation, but by the thousands and the myriads of intelligent Pedobaptists that have, in our own time, repudiated it, and, by overt acts, have renounced family and infant baptism, and voluntarily put on Christ, by an immersion into his death.

But, besides the argument in favor of infant baptism, deduced from the family baptisms alluded to, we have no less than twelve pictures on the subject, collected from the vestibules and domes of the Greek and Roman Catholic Churches. The first is that of the