Abdias relates that St. John, being warned by the Lord of the

termination of his career, prepared for death and recommended his Church

to God. He then had bread brought to him, which he took, and lifting up

his hands to heaven, blessed it, broke it, and distributed it among

those who were present, saying: "Let my portion be yours, and let yours

be mine." This manner of celebrating the eucharist--which means

thanksgiving--is more conformable to the institution of that ceremony.

St. Luke indeed informs us, that Jesus, after distributing bread and

wine among his apostles, who were supping with him, said to them: "Do

this in memory of me." St. Matthew and St. Mark say, moreover, that

Jesus sang a hymn. St. John, who in his gospel mentions neither the

distribution of the bread and wine, nor the hymn, speaks of the latter

at great length in his Acts, of which we give the text, as quoted by the

Second Council of Nice:

"Before our Lord was taken by the Jews," says this well-beloved apostle

of Jesus, "He assembled us all together, and said to us: 'Let us sing a

hymn in honor of the Father, after which we will execute the design we

have conceived.' He ordered us therefore to form a circle, holding one

another by the hand; then, having placed Himself in the middle of the

circle, He said to us: 'Amen; follow me.' Then He began the canticle,

and said: 'Glory be to Thee, O Father!' We all answered, 'Amen.' Jesus

continued, saying, 'Glory to the Word,' etc. 'Glory to the Spirit,' etc.

'Glory to Grace,' etc., and the apostles constantly answered, 'Amen.'"

After some other doxologies, Jesus said, "I will save, and I will be

saved, Amen. I will unbind, and I will be unbound, Amen. I will be

wounded, and I will wound, Amen. I will be born, and I will beget, Amen.

I will eat, and I will be consumed, Amen. I will be hearkened to, and I

will hearken, Amen. I will be comprehended by the spirit, being all

spirit, all understanding, Amen. I will be washed, and I will wash,

Amen. Grace brings dancing; I will play on the flute; all of you dance,

Amen. I will sing sorrowful airs; now all of you lament, Amen."

St. Augustine, who begins a part of this hymn in his "Epistle to

Ceretius", gives also the following: "I will deck, and I will be decked.

I am a lamp to those who see me and know me. I am the door for all who

will knock at it. Do you, who see what I do, be careful not to speak of

it."

This dance of Jesus and the apostles is evidently imitated from that of

the Egyptian Therapeutæ, who danced after supper in their assemblies, at

first divided into two choirs, then united the men and the women

together, as at the feast of Bacchus, after swallowing plenty of

celestial wine as Philo says.

Besides we know, that according to the Jewish tradition, after their

coming out of Egypt, and passing the Red Sea, whence the solemnity of

the Passover took its name, Moses and his sister assembled two musical

choirs, one composed of men, the other of women, who, while dancing,

sang a canticle of thanksgiving. These instruments instantaneously

assembled, these choirs arranged with so much promptitude, the facility

with which the songs and dances are executed, suppose a training in

these two exercises much anterior to the moment of execution.

The usage was afterwards perpetrated among the Jews. The daughters of

Shiloh were dancing according to custom, at the solemn feast of the

Lord, when the young men of the tribe of Benjamin, to whom they had been

refused for wives, carried them off by the counsel of the old men of

Israel. And at this day, in Palestine, the women, assembled near the

tombs of their relatives, dance in a mournful manner, and utter cries of

lamentation.

We also know that the first Christians held among themselves _agapæ, _or

feasts of charity, in memory of the last supper which Jesus celebrated

with his apostles, from which the Pagans took occasion to bring against

them the most odious charges; on which, to banish every shadow of

licentiousness, the pastors forbade the kiss of peace, that concluded

the ceremony to be given between persons of different sexes. But various

abuses, which were even then complained of by St. Paul, and which the

Council of Gangres, in the year 324, vainly undertook to reform, at

length caused the _agapæ_ to be abolished in 397, by the Third Council

of Carthage, of which the forty-first canon ordained, that the holy

mysteries should be celebrated fasting.

It will not be doubted that these feastings were accompanied by dances,

when it is recollected that, according to Scaliger, the bishops were

called in the Latin Church "_præsules,_" (from "_præsiliendo_") only

because they led off the dance. Heliot, in his "History of the Monastic

Orders," says also, that during the persecutions which disturbed the

peace of the first Christians, congregations were formed of men and

women, who, after the manner of the Therapeutæ, retired into the

deserts, where they assembled in the hamlets on Sundays and feast days,

and danced piously, singing the prayers of the Church.

In Portugal, in Spain, and in Roussillon, solemn dances are still

performed in honor of the mysteries of Christianity. On every vigil of a

feast of the Virgin, the young women assemble before the doors of the

churches dedicated to her, and pass the night in dancing round, and

singing hymns and canticles in honor of her. Cardinal Ximenes restored

in his time, in the cathedral of Toledo, the ancient usage of the

Mozarabian mass, during which dances are performed in the choir and the

nave, with equal order and devotion. In France too, about the middle of

the last century, the priests and all the people of the Limoges might be

seen dancing round in the collegiate church, singing: "_Sant Marcian

pregas pernous et nous epingaren per bous_"--that is, "St. Martian, pray

for us, and we will dance for you."

And lastly, the Jesuit Menestrier, in the preface to his "Treatise on

Ballets", published in 1682, says, that he had himself seen the canons

of some churches take the singing boys by the hand on Easter day, and

dance in the choir, singing hymns of rejoicing. What has been said in

the article on "Calends," of the extravagant dances of the feast of

fools, exhibits a part of the abuses which have caused dancing to be

discontinued in the ceremonies of the mass, which, the greater their

gravity, are the better calculated to impose on the simple.

MASSACRES.

It is perhaps as difficult as it is useless to ascertain whether

"_mazzacrium,_" a word of the low Latin, is the root of "massacre," or

whether "massacre" is the root of "_mazzacrium._"

A massacre signifies a number of men killed. There was yesterday a great

massacre near Warsaw--near Cracow. We never say: "There has been a

massacre of a man; yet we do say": "A man has been massacred": in that

case it is understood that he has been killed barbarously by many blows.

Poetry makes use of the word massacred for killed, assassinated: "_Que

par ses propres mains son père massacré._"--Cinna.

An Englishman has made a compilation of all the massacres perpetrated on

account of religion since the first centuries of our vulgar era. I have

been very much tempted to write against the English author; but his

memoir not appearing to be exaggerated, I have restrained myself. For

the future I hope there will be no more such calculations to make. But

to whom shall we be indebted for that?

MASTER.

SECTION I.

"How unfortunate am I to have been born!" said Ardassan Ougli, a young

_icoglan_ of the grand sultan of the Turks. Yet if I depended only on the

sultan--but I am also subject to the chief of my _oda,_ to the _cassigi

bachi_; and when I receive my pay, I must prostrate myself before a

clerk of the _teftardar,_ who keeps back half of it. I was not seven

years old, when, in spite of myself, I was circumcised with great

ceremony, and was ill for a fortnight after it. The dervish who prays to

us is also my master; an _iman_ is still more my master, and the

_mullah_ still more so than the _iman._ The _cadi_ is another master,

the _kadeslesker_ a greater; the _mufti_ a greater than all these

together. The _kiaia_ of the grand vizier with one word could cause me

to be thrown into the canal; and finally, the grand vizier could have me

beheaded, and the skin of my head stripped off, without any person

caring about the matter.

"Great God, how many masters! If I had as many souls and bodies as I

have duties to fulfil, I could not bear it. Oh Allah! why hast thou not

made me an owl? I should live free in my hole and eat mice at my ease,

without masters or servants. This is assuredly the true destiny of man;

there were no masters until it was perverted; no man was made to serve

another continually. If things were in order, each should charitably

help his neighbor. The quick-sighted would conduct the blind, the active

would be crutches to the lame. This would be the paradise of Mahomet,

instead of the hell which is formed precisely under the inconceivably

narrow bridge."

Thus spoke Ardassan Ougli, after being bastinadoed by one of his

masters.

Some years afterwards, Ardassan Ougli became a pasha with three tails.

He made a prodigious fortune, and firmly believed that all men except

the grand Turk and the grand vizier were born to serve him, and all

women to give him pleasure according to his wishes.

SECTION II.

How can one man become the master of another? And by what kind of

incomprehensible magic has he been able to become the master of several

other men? A great number of good volumes have been written on this

subject, but I give the preference to an Indian fable, because it is

short, and fables explain everything.

Adimo, the father of all the Indians, had two sons and two daughters by

his wife Pocriti. The eldest was a vigorous giant, the youngest was a

little hunchback, the two girls were pretty. As soon as the giant was

strong enough, he lay with his two sisters, and caused the little

hunchback to serve him. Of his two sisters, the one was his cook, the

other his gardener. When the giant would sleep, he began by chaining his

little brother to a tree; and when the latter fled from him, he caught

him in four strides, and gave him twenty blows with the strength of an

ox.

The dwarf submitted and became the best subject in the world. The giant,

satisfied with seeing him fulfil the duties of a subject, permitted him

to sleep with one of his sisters, with whom he was disgusted. The

children who sprang from this marriage were not quite hunchbacks, but

they were sufficiently deformed. They were brought up in the fear of God

and of the giant. They received an excellent education; they were taught

that their uncle was a giant by divine right, who could do what he

pleased with all his family; that if he had some pretty niece or

grand-niece, he should have her without difficulty, and not one should

marry her unless he permitted it.

The giant dying, his son, who was neither so strong or so great as he

was, believed himself to be like his father, a giant by divine right. He

pretended to make all the men work for him, and slept with all the

girls. The family lagued against him: he was killed, and they became a

republic.

The Siamese pretend, that on the contrary the family commenced by being

republican; and that the giant existed not until after a great many

years and dissensions: but all the authors of Benares and Siam agree

that men lived an infinity of ages before they had the wit to make laws,

and they prove it by an unanswerable argument, which is that even at

present, when all the world piques itself upon having wit, we have not

yet found the means of making a score of laws passably good.

It is still, for example, an insoluble question in India, whether

republics were established before or after monarchies; if confusion has

appeared more horrible to men than despotism! I am ignorant how it

happened in order of time, but in that of nature we must agree that men

are all born equal: violence and ability made the first masters; laws

have made the present.

MATTER.

SECTION I. A Polite Dialogue Between A Demoniac And A Philosopher.

DEMONIAC.

Yes, thou enemy of God and man, who believest that God is all-powerful,

and is at liberty to confer the gift of thought on every being whom He

shall vouchsafe to choose, I will go and denounce thee to the

inquisitor; I will have thee burned. Beware, I warn thee for the last

time.

PHILOSOPHER.

Are these your arguments? Is it thus you teach mankind? I admire your

mildness.

DEMONIAC.

Come, I will be patient for a moment while the fagots are preparing.

Answer me: What is spirit?

PHILOSOPHER.

I know not.

DEMONIAC.

What is matter?

PHILOSOPHER.

I scarcely know. I believe it to have extent, solidity, resistance,

gravity, divisibility, mobility. God may have given it a thousand other

qualities of which I am ignorant.

DEMONIAC.

A thousand other qualities, traitor! I see what thou wouldst be at; thou

wouldst tell me that God can animate matter, that He has given instinct

to animals, that He is the Master of all.

PHILOSOPHER.

But it may very well be, that He has granted to this matter many

properties which you cannot comprehend.

DEMONIAC.

Which I cannot comprehend, villain!

PHILOSOPHER.

Yes. His power goes much further than your understanding.

DEMONIAC.

His power! His power! thou talkest like a true atheist.

PHILOSOPHER.

However, I have the testimony of many holy fathers on my side.

DEMONIAC.

Go to, go to: neither God nor they shall prevent us from burning thee

alive--the death inflicted on parricides and on philosophers who are not

of our opinion.

PHILOSOPHER.

Was it the devil or yourself that invented this method of arguing?

DEMONIAC.

Vile wretch! darest thou to couple my name with the devil's?

(Here the demoniac strikes the philosopher, who returns him the blow

with interest.)

PHILOSOPHER.

Help! philosophers!

DEMONIAC.

Holy brotherhood! help!

(Here half a dozen philosophers arrive on one side, and on the other

rush in a hundred Dominicans, with a hundred Familiars of the

Inquisition, and a hundred alguazils. The contest is too unequal.)

SECTION II.

When wise men are asked what is the soul they answer that they know not.

If they are asked what matter is, they make the same reply. It is true

that there are professors, and particularly scholars, who know all this

perfectly; and when they have repeated that matter has extent and

divisibility, they think they have said all; being pressed, however, to

say what this thing is which is extended, they find themselves

considerably embarrassed. It is composed of parts, say they. And of what

are these parts composed? Are the elements of the parts divisible? Then

they are mute, or they talk a great deal; which are equally suspicious.

Is this almost unknown being called matter, eternal? Such was the belief

of all antiquity. Has it of itself force? Many philosophers have thought

so. Have those who deny it a right to deny it? You conceive not that

matter can have anything of itself; but how can you be assured that it

has not of itself the properties necessary to it? You are ignorant of

its nature, and you refuse it the modes which nevertheless are in its

nature: for it can no sooner have been, than it has been in a certain

fashion--it has had figure, and having necessarily figure, is it

impossible that it should not have had other modes attached to its

configuration? Matter exists, but you know it only by your sensations.

Alas! of what avail have been all the subtleties of the mind since man

first reasoned? Geometry has taught us many truths, metaphysics very

few. We weigh matter, we measure it, we decompose it; and if we seek to

advance one step beyond these gross operations, we find ourselves

powerless, and before us an immeasurable abyss.

Pray forgive all mankind who were deceived in thinking that matter

existed by itself. Could they do otherwise? How are we to imagine that

what is without succession has not always been? If it were not necessary

for matter to exist, why should it exist? And if it were necessary that

it should be, why should it not have been forever? No axiom has ever

been more universally received than this: Of nothing, nothing comes.

Indeed the contrary is incomprehensible. With every nation, chaos

preceded the arrangement which a divine hand made of the whole world.

The eternity of matter has with no people been injurious to the worship

of the Divinity. Religion was never startled at the recognition of an

eternal God as the master of an eternal matter. We of the present day

are so happy as to know by faith that God brought matter out of nothing;

but no nation has ever been instructed in this dogma; even the Jews were

ignorant of it. The first verse of Genesis says, that the Gods--_Eloïm,_

not _Eloi_--made heaven and earth. It does not say, that heaven and

earth were created out of nothing.

Philo, who lived at the only time when the Jews had any erudition, says,

in his "Chapter on the Creation", "God, being good by nature, bore no

envy against substance, matter; which of itself had nothing good, having

by nature only inertness, confusion, and disorder; it was bad, and He

vouchsafed to make it good."

The idea of chaos put into order by a God, is to be found in all ancient

theogonies. Hesiod repeated the opinion of the Orientals, when he said

in his "Theogony," "Chaos was that which first existed." The whole Roman

Empire spoke in these words of Ovid: "_Sic ubi dispositam quisquis fuit

ille Deorum Congeriem secuit._"

Matter then, in the hands of God, was considered like clay under the

potter's wheel, if these feeble images may be used to express His divine

power.

Matter, being eternal, must have had eternal properties--as

configuration, the _vis inertiæ,_ motion, and divisibility. But this

divisibility is only a consequence of motion; for without motion nothing

is divided, nor separated, nor arranged. Motion therefore was regarded

as essential to matter. Chaos had been a confused motion, and the

arrangement of the universe was a regular motion, communicated to all

bodies by the Master of the world. But how can matter have motion by

itself, as it has, according to all the ancients, extent and

divisibility?

But it cannot be conceived to be without extent, and it may be conceived

to be without motion. To this it was answered: It is impossible that

matter should not be permeable; and being permeable, something must be

continually passing through its pores. Why should there be passages, if

nothing passes?

Reply and rejoinder might thus be continued forever. The system of the

eternity of matter, like all other systems, has very great difficulties.

That of the formation of matter out of nothing is no less

incomprehensible. We must admit it, and not flatter ourselves with

accounting for it; philosophy does not account for everything. How many

incomprehensible things are we not obliged to admit, even in geometry!

Can any one conceive two lines constantly approaching each other, yet

never meeting?

Geometricians indeed will tell you, the properties of asymptotes are

demonstrated; you cannot help admitting them--but creation is not; why

then admit it? Why is it hard for you to believe, like all the ancients,

in the eternity of matter? The theologian will press you on the other

side, and say: If you believe in the eternity of matter then you

acknowledge two principles--God and matter; you fall into the error of

Zoroaster and of Manes.

No answer can be given to the geometricians, for those folks know of

nothing but their lines, their superficies, and their solids; but you

may say to the theologians: "Wherein am I a Manichæan? Here are stones

which an architect has not made, but of which he has erected an immense

building. I do not admit two architects; the rough stones have obeyed

power and genius."

Happily, whatever system a man embraces, it is in no way hurtful to

morality; for what imports it whether matter is made or arranged? God is

still an absolute master. Whether chaos was created out of nothing, or

only reduced to order, it is still our duty to be virtuous; scarcely any

of these metaphysical questions affect the conduct of life. It is with

disputes as with table talk; each one forgets after dinner what he has

said, and goes whithersoever his interest or his inclination calls him.

MEETINGS (PUBLIC).

Meeting, "_assemblée,_" is a general term applicable to any collection

of people for secular, sacred, political, conversational, festive, or

corporate purposes; in short, to all occasions on which numbers meet

together.

It is a term which prevents all verbal disputes, and all abusive and

injurious implications by which men are in the habit of stigmatizing

societies to which they do not themselves belong.

The legal meeting or assembly of the Athenians was called the "church".

This word "church", being peculiarly appropriated among us to express a

convocation of Catholics in one place, we did not in the first instance

apply it to the public assembly of Protestants; but used indeed the

expression--"a flock of Huguenots." Politeness however, which in time

explodes all noxious terms, at length employed for the purpose the term

"assembly" or "meeting", which offends no one. In England the dominant

Church applies the name of "meeting" to the churches of all the

non-conformists.

The word "assembly" is particularly suitable to a collection of persons

invited to go and pass their evening at a house where the host receives

them with courtesy and kindness, and where play, conversation, supper,

and dancing, constitute their amusements. If the number invited be

small, it is not called an "assembly", but a "rendezvous of friends";

and friends are never very numerous.

Assemblies are called, in Italian, "_conversazione,_" "_ridotto_". The

word "_ridotto_" is properly what we once signified by the word

"_reduit,_" intrenchment; but "_reduit_" having sunk into a term of

contempt among us, our editors translated "_ridout_" by "_redoubt._" The

papers informed us, among the important intelligence contained in them

relating to Europe, that many noblemen of the highest consideration went

to take chocolate at the house of the princess Borghese; and that there

was a "_redoubt_" there. It was announced to Europe, in another

paragraph, that there would be a "_redoubt_" on the following Tuesday at

the house of her excellency the marchioness of Santafior.

It was found, however, that in relating the events of war, it was

necessary to speak of real redoubts, which in fact implied things

actually redoubtable and formidable, from which cannon were discharged.

The word was, therefore, in such circumstances, obviously unsuitable to

the _"ridotti pacifici,"_ the pacific redoubts of mere amusement; and

the old term "assembly" was restored, which is indeed the only proper

one. "Rendezvous" is occasionally used, but it is more adapted to a

small company, and most of all for two individuals.

MESSIAH.

Advertisement.

This article is by M. Polier de Bottens, of an old French family,

settled for two hundred years in Switzerland. He is first pastor of

Lausanne, and his knowledge is equal to his piety. He composed this

article for the great Encyclopædia, in which it was inserted. Only those

passages were suppressed which the examiners thought might be abused by

the Catholics, less learned and less pious than the author. It was

received with applause by all the wise.

It was printed at the same time in another small dictionary, and was

attributed in France to a man whom there was no reluctance to molest.

The article was supposed to be impious, because it was supposed to be by

a layman; and the work and its pretended author were violently attacked.

The man thus accused contented himself with laughing at the mistake. He

beheld with compassion this instance of the errors and injustices which

men are every day committing in their judgments; for he had the wise and

learned priest's manuscript, written by his own hand. It is still in his

possession, and will be shown to whoever may choose to examine it. In it

will be found the very erasures made by this layman himself, to prevent

malignant interpretations.

Now we reprint this article in all the integrity of the original. We

have contracted it only to prevent repeating what we have printed

elsewhere; but we have not added a single word.

The best of this affair is, that one of the venerable author's brethren

wrote the most ridiculous things in the world against this article of

his reverend brother's, thinking that he was writing against a common

enemy. This is like fighting in the dark, when one is attacked by one's

own party.

It has a thousand times happened that controversialists have condemned

passages in St. Augustine and St. Jerome, not knowing that they were by

those fathers. They would anathematize a part of the New Testament if

they had not heard by whom it was written. Thus it is that men too often

judge.

* * * * *

Messiah, "_Messias._" This word comes from the Hebrew, and is synonymous

with the Greek word "Christ." Both are terms consecrated in religion,

which are now no longer given to any but the anointed by eminence--the

Sovereign Deliverer whom the ancient Jewish people expected, for whose

coming they still sigh, and whom the Christians find in the person of

Jesus the Son of Mary, whom they consider as the anointed of the Lord,

the Messiah promised to humanity. The Greeks also use the word

"_Elcimmeros_", meaning the same thing as "_Christos._"

In the Old Testament we see that the word "Messiah," far from being

peculiar to the Deliverer, for whose coming the people of Israel sighed,

was not even so to the true and faithful servants of God, but that this

name was often given to idolatrous kings and princes, who were, in the

hands of the Eternal, the ministers of His vengeance, or instruments for

executing the counsels of His wisdom. So the author of "Ecclesiasticus"

says of Elisha: "_Qui ungis reges ad penitentiam;_" or, as it is

rendered by the "Septuagint," "_ad vindictam_"--"You anoint kings to

execute the vengeance of the Lord". Therefore He sent a prophet to

anoint Jehu, king of Israel, and announced sacred unction to Hazael,

king of Damascus and Syria; those two princes being the Messiahs of the

Most High, to revenge the crimes and abominations of the house of Ahab.

But in Isaiah, xlv., 1, the name of Messiah is expressly given to Cyrus:

"Thus saith the Lord to Cyrus, His anointed, His Messiah, whose right

hand I have holden to subdue nations before him." etc.

Ezekiel, in his Revelations, xxviii., 14, gives the name of Messiah to

the king of Tyre, whom he also calls Cherubin, and speaks of him and his

glory in terms full of an emphasis of which it is easier to feel the

beauties than to catch the sense. "Son of man," says the Eternal to the

prophet, "take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyre, and say unto him,

Thus saith the Lord God; thou sealest up the sun, full of wisdom, and

perfect in beauty. Thou hast been the Lord's Garden of Eden"--or,

according to other versions, "Thou wast all the Lord's delight"--"every

precious stone was thy covering; the sardius, topaz, and the diamond;

the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper; the sapphire, the emerald, and the

carbuncle and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and thy pipes was

prepared in thee in the day that thou wast created. Thou wast a

Cherubin, a Messiah, for protection, and I set thee up; thou hast been

upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst

of the stones of fire. Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that

thou was created till iniquity was found in thee."

And the name of Messiah, in Greek, Christ, was given to the king,

prophets, and high priests of the Hebrews. We read, in I. Kings, xii.,

5: "The Lord is witness against you, and his Messiah is witness"; that

is, the king whom he has set up. And elsewhere: "Touch not my Anointed;

do no evil to my prophets...." David, animated by the Spirit of God,

repeatedly gives to his father-in-law Saul, whom he had no cause to

love--he gives, I say, to this reprobate king, from whom the Spirit of

the Eternal was withdrawn, the name and title of Anointed, or Messiah of

the Lord. "God preserve me," says he frequently, "from laying my hand

upon the Lord's Anointed, upon God's Messiah."

If the fine title of Messiah, or Anointed of the Eternal, was given to

idolatrous kings, to cruel and tyrannical princes, it very often indeed,

in our ancient oracles, designated the real Anointed of the Lord, the

Messiah by eminence; the object of the desire and expectation of all the

faithful of Israel. Thus Hannah, the mother of Samuel, concluded her

canticle with these remarkable words, which cannot apply to any king,

for we know that at that time the Jews had not one: "The Lord shall

judge the ends of the earth; and He shall give strength unto His king,

and exalt the horn of His Messiah." We find the same word in the

following oracles: Psalm ii, 2; Jeremiah, Lamentations, iv, 20; Daniel,

ix, 25; Habakkuk, iii, 13.

If we compare all these different oracles, and in general all those

ordinarily applied to the Messiah, there will result contradictions,

almost irreconcilable, justifying to a certain point the obstinacy of

the people to whom these oracles were given.

How indeed could these be conceived, before the event had so well

justified it in the person of Jesus, Son of Mary? How, I say, could

there be conceived an intelligence in some sort divine and human

together; a being both great and lovely, triumphing over the devil, yet

tempted and carried away by that infernal spirit, that prince of the

powers of the air, and made to travel in spite of himself; at once

master and servant, king and subject, sacrificer and victim, mortal and

immortal, rich and poor, a glorious conqueror, whose reign shall have no

end, who is to subdue all nature by prodigies, and yet a man of sorrows,

without the conveniences, often without the absolute necessaries of this

life, of which he calls himself king; and that he comes, covered with

glory and honor, terminating a life of innocence and wretchedness, of

incessant crosses and contradictions, by a death alike shameful and

cruel, finding in this very humiliation, this extraordinary abasement,

the source of an unparalleled elevation, which raises him to the summit

of glory, power, and felicity; that is, to the rank of the first of

creatures?

All Christians agree in finding these characteristics, apparently so

incompatible, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, whom they call the

"Christ"; His followers gave Him this title by eminence, not that He had

been anointed in a sensible and material manner, as some kings,

prophets, and sacrificers anciently were, but because the Divine Spirit

had designated Him for those great offices, and He had received the

spiritual unction necessary thereunto.

We had proceeded thus far on so competent an article, when a Dutch

preacher, more celebrated for this discovery than for the indifferent

productions of a genius otherwise feeble and ill-formed, showed to us

that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Messiah of God, was anointed at the

three grand periods of His life, as our King, our Prophet, and our

Sacrificer.

At the time of His baptism, the voice of the Sovereign Master of nature

declared Him to be His Son, His only, His well-beloved Son, and for that

very reason His representative.

When on Mount Tabor He was transfigured and associated with Moses and

Elias, the same supernatural voice announces Him to humanity as the Son

of Him who loves and who sends the prophets; as He who is to be

hearkened to in preference to all others.

In Gethsemane, an angel comes down from heaven to support Him in the

extreme anguish occasioned by the approach of His torments, and

strengthen Him against the terrible apprehensions of a death which He

cannot avoid, and enable Him to become a sacrificer the more excellent,

as Himself is the pure and innocent victim that He is about to offer.

The judicious Dutch preacher, a disciple of the illustrious Cocceius,

finds the sacramental oil of these different celestial unctions in the

visible signs which the power of God caused to appear on His anointed;

in His baptism, "the shadow of the dove," representing the Holy Ghost

coming down from Him; on Tabor, the "miraculous cloud," which enveloped

Him; in Gethsemane, the "bloody sweat," which covered His whole body.

After this, it would indeed be the height of incredulity not to

recognize by these marks the Lord's Anointed by eminence--the promised

Messiah; nor doubtless could we sufficiently deplore the inconceivable

blindness of the Jewish people, but that it was part of the plan of

God's infinite wisdom, and was, in His merciful views, essential to the

accomplishment of His work and the salvation of humanity.

But it must also be acknowledged, that in the state of oppression in

which the Jewish people were groaning, and after all the glorious

promises which the Eternal had so often made them, they must have longed

for the coming of a Messiah, and looked towards it as the period of

their happy deliverance; and that they are therefore to an extent

excusable for not having recognized a deliverer in the person of the

Lord Jesus, since it is in man's nature to care more for the body than

for the spirit, and to be more sensible to present wants than flattered

by advantages "to come," and for that very reason, always uncertain.

It must indeed be believed that Abraham, and after him a very small

number of patriarchs and prophets, were capable of forming an idea of

the nature of the spiritual reign of the Messiah; but these ideas would

necessarily be limited to the narrow circle of the inspired, and it is

not astonishing that, being unknown to the multitude, these notions were

so far altered that, when the Saviour appeared in Judæa, the people,

their doctors, and even their princes, expected a monarch--a

conqueror--who, by the rapidity of his conquests was to subdue the whole

world. And how could these flattering ideas be reconciled with the

abject and apparently miserable condition of Jesus Christ? So, feeling

scandalized by His announcing Himself as the Messiah, they persecuted

Him, rejected Him, and put Him to the most ignominious death. Having

since then found nothing tending to the fulfilment of their oracles, and

being unwilling to renounce them, they indulge in all sorts of ideas,

each one more chimerical than the one preceding.

Thus, when they beheld the triumphs of the Christian religion, and found

that most of their ancient oracles might be explained spiritually, and

applied to Jesus Christ, they thought proper, against the opinion of

their fathers, to deny that the passages which we allege against them

are to be understood of the Messiah, thus torturing our Holy Scriptures

to their own loss.

Some of them maintain that their oracles have been misunderstood; that

it is in vain to long for the coming of a Messiah, since He has already

come in the person of Ezechias. Such was the opinion of the famous

Hillel. Others more lax, or politely yielding to times and

circumstances, assert that the belief in the coming of a Messiah is not

a fundamental article of faith, and that the denying of this dogma

either does not injure the integrity of the law, or injures it but

slightly. Thus the Jew Albo said to the pope, that "to deny the coming

of the Messiah was only to cut off a branch of the tree without touching

the root."

The celebrated rabbi, Solomon Jarchi or Raschi, who lived at the

commencement of the twelfth century, says, in his "_Talmudes,_" that the

ancient Hebrews believed the Messiah to have been born on the day of the

last destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman armies. This is indeed

calling in the physician when the man is dead.

The rabbi Kimchi, who also lived in the twelfth century, announced that

the Messiah, whose coming he believed to be very near, would drive the

Christians out of Judæa, which was then in their possession; and it is

true that the Christians lost the Holy Land; but it was Saladin who

vanquished them. Had that conqueror but protected the Jews, and declared

for them, it is not unlikely that in their enthusiasm they would have

made him their Messiah.

Sacred writers, and our Lord Jesus Himself, often compare the reign of

the Messiah and eternal beatitude to a nuptial festival or a banquet;

but the Talmudists have strangely abused these parables; according to

them, the Messiah will give to his people, assembled in the land of

Canaan, a repast in which the wine will be that which was made by Adam

himself in the terrestrial paradise, and which is kept dry, in vast

cellars, by the angels at the centre of the earth.

At the first course will be served up the famous fish called the great

Leviathan, which swallows up at once a smaller fish, which smaller fish

is nevertheless three hundred leagues long; the whole mass of the waters

is laid upon Leviathan. In the beginning God created a male and a female

of this fish; but lest they should overturn the land, and fill the world

with their kind, God killed the female, and salted her for the Messiah's

feast.

The rabbis add, that there will also be killed for this repast the bull

Behemoth, which is so large that he eats each day the hay from a

thousand mountains. The female of this bull was killed in the beginning

of the world, that so prodigious a species might not multiply, since

this could only have injured the other creatures; but they assure us

that the Eternal did not salt her, because dried cow is not so good as

she-Leviathan. The Jews still put such faith in these rabbinical

reveries that they often swear by their share of the bull Behemoth, as

some impious Christians swear by their share of paradise.

After such gross ideas of the coming of the Messiah, and of His reign,

is it astonishing that the Jews, ancient as well as modern, and also

some of the primitive Christians unhappily tinctured with all these

reveries, could not elevate themselves to the idea of the divine nature

of the Lord's Anointed, and did not consider the Messiah as God? Observe

how the Jews express themselves on this point in the work entitled

"_Judæi Lusitani Quæstiones ad Christianos._" "To acknowledge a

God-man," say they, "is to abuse your own reason, to make to yourself a

monster--a centaur--the strange compound of two natures which cannot

coalesce." They add, that the prophets do not teach that the Messiah is

God-man; that they expressly distinguish between God and David,

declaring the former to be Master, the latter servant.

When the Saviour appeared, the prophecies, though clear, were

unfortunately obscured by the prejudices imbibed even at the mother's

breast. Jesus Christ Himself, either from deference towards or for fear

of shocking, the public opinion, seems to have been very reserved

concerning His divinity. "He wished," says St. Chrysostom, "insensibly

to accustom His auditors to the belief of a mystery so far above their

reason. If He takes upon Him the authority of a God, by pardoning sin,

this action raises up against Him all who are witnesses of it. His most

evident miracles cannot even convince of His divinity those in whose

favor they are worked. When, before the tribunal of the Sovereign

Sacrificer, He acknowledges, by a modest intimation, that He is the Son

of God, the high priest tears his robe and cries, 'Blasphemy!' Before

the sending of the Holy Ghost, the apostles did not even suspect the

divinity of their dear Master. He asks them what the people think of

Him; and they answer, that some take Him for Elias, other for Jeremiah,

or some other prophet. A particular revelation is necessary to make

known to St. Peter, that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living

God."

The Jews, revolting against the divinity of Christ, have resorted to all

sorts of expedients to destroy this great mystery; they distort the

meaning of their own oracles, or do not apply them to the Messiah; they

assert that the name of God, "_Eloï,_" is not peculiar to the Divinity,

but is given, even by sacred writers, to judges, to magistrates, and in

general to such as are high in authority; they do, indeed, cite a great

many passages of the Holy Scriptures that justify this observation, but

which do not in the least affect the express terms of the ancient

oracles concerning the Messiah.

Lastly, they assert, that if the Saviour, and after Him the evangelists,

the apostles, and the first Christians, call Jesus the Son of God, this

august term did not in the evangelical times signify anything but the

opposite of son of Belial--that is, a good man, a servant of God, in

opposition to a wicked man, one without the fear of God.

If the Jews have disputed with Jesus Christ His quality of Messiah and

His divinity, they have also used every endeavor to bring Him into

contempt, by casting on His birth, His life, and His death, all the

ridicule and opprobrium that their criminal malevolence could imagine.

Of all the works which the blindness of the Jews has produced, there is

none more odious and more extravagant than the ancient book entitled

"_Sepher Toldos Jeschu,_" brought to light by Wagenseil, in the second

volume of his work entitled "_Tela Ignea,_" etc.

In this "_Sepher Toldos Jeschu,_" we find a monstrous history of the

life of our Saviour, forged with the utmost passion and

disingenuousness. For instance, they have dared to write that one

Panther, or Pandera, an inhabitant of Bethlehem, fell in love with a

young woman married to Jokanam. By this impure commerce he had a son

called Jesua or Jesu. The father of this child was obliged to fly, and

retired to Babylon. As for young Jesu, he was not sent to the schools;

but--adds our author--he had the insolence to raise his head and uncover

himself before the sacrificers, instead of appearing before them with

his head bent down and his face covered, as was the custom--a piece of

effrontery which was warmly rebuked; this caused his birth to be

inquired into, which was found to be impure, and soon exposed him to

ignominy.

This detestable book, "_Sepher Toldos Jeschu,_" was known in the second

century: Celsus confidently cites it and Origen refutes it in his ninth

chapter.

There is another book also entitled "_Toldos Jeschu,_" published by

Huldric in 1703, which more closely follows the "Gospel of the Infancy,"

but which is full of the grossest anachronisms. It places both the birth

and death of Jesus Christ in the reign of Herod the Great, stating that

complaints were made of the adultery of Panther and Mary, the mother of

Jesus, to that prince.

The author, who takes the name of Jonathan, and calls himself a

contemporary of Jesus Christ, living at Jerusalem, pretends that Herod

consulted, in the affair of Jesus Christ, the senators of a city in the

land of Cæsarea. We will not follow so absurd an author through all his

contradictions.

Yet it is under cover of all these calumnies that the Jews keep up their

implacable hatred against the Christians and the gospel. They have done

their utmost to alter the chronology of the Old Testament, and to raise

doubts and difficulties respecting the time of our Saviour's coming.

Ahmed-ben-Cassum-la-Andacousy, a Moor of Granada, who lived about the

close of the sixteenth century, cites an ancient Arabian manuscript,

which was found, together with sixteen plates of lead engraved with

Arabian characters, in a grotto near Granada. Don Pedro y Quinones,

archbishop of Granada, has himself borne testimony to this fact. These

leaden plates, called those of Granada, were afterwards carried to Rome,

where, after several years' investigation, they were at last condemned

as apocryphal, in the pontificate of Alexander VII.; they contain only

fabulous stories relating to the lives of Mary and her Son.

The time of Messiah, coupled with the epithet "false", is still given to

those impostors who, at various times, have sought to abuse the

credulity of the Jewish nation. There were some of these false Messiahs

even before the coming of the true Anointed of God. The wise Gamaliel

mentions one Theodas, whose history we read in Josephus' "Jewish

Antiquities," book xx. chap. 2. He boasted of crossing the Jordan

without wetting his feet; he drew many people after him; but the Romans,

having fallen upon his little troop, dispersed them, cut off the head of

their unfortunate chief, and exposed it in Jerusalem.

Gamaliel also speaks of Judas the Galilean, who is doubtless the same of

whom Josephus makes mention in the second chapter of the second book of

the "Jewish War". He says that this false prophet had gathered together

nearly thirty thousand men; but hyperbole is the Jewish historian's

characteristic.

In the apostolic times, there was Simon, surnamed the Magician, who

contrived to bewitch the people of Samaria, so that they considered him

as "the great power of God."

In the following century, in the years 178 and 179 of the Christian era,

in the reign of Adrian, appeared the false Messiah, Barcochebas, at the

head of an army. The emperor sent against them Julius Severus, who,

after several encounters, enclosed them in the town of Bither; after an

obstinate defence it was carried, and Barcochebas taken and put to

death. Adrian thought he could not better prevent the continual revolt

of the Jews than by issuing an edict, forbidding them to go to

Jerusalem; he also had guards stationed at the gates of the city, to

prevent the rest of the people of Israel from entering it.

We read in Socrates, an ecclesiastical historian, that in the year 434,

there appeared in the island of Candia a false Messiah calling himself

Moses. He said he was the ancient deliverer of the Hebrews, raised from

the dead to deliver them again.

A century afterwards, in 530, there was in Palestine a false Messiah

named Julian; he announced himself as a great conqueror, who, at the

head of his nation, should destroy by arms the whole Christian people.

Seduced by his promises, the armed Jews butchered many of the

Christians. The emperor Justinian sent troops against him; battle was

given to the false Christ; he was taken, and condemned to the most

ignominious death.

At the beginning of the eighth century, Serenus, a Spanish Jew, gave

himself out as a Messiah, preached, had some disciples, and, like them,

died in misery.

Several false Messiahs arose in the twelfth century. One appeared in

France in the reign of Louis the Young; he and all his adherents were

hanged, without its ever being known what was the name of the master or

of the disciples.

The thirteenth century was fruitful in false Messiahs; there appeared

seven or eight in Arabia, Persia, Spain, and Moravia; one of them,

calling himself David el Roy, passed for a very great magician; he

reduced the Jews, and was at the head of a considerable party; but this

Messiah was assassinated.

James Zeigler, of Moravia, who lived in the middle of the sixteenth

century, announced the approaching manifestation of the Messiah, born,

as he declared, fourteen years before; he had seen him, he said, at

Strasburg, and he kept by him with great care a sword and a sceptre, to

place them in his hands as soon as he should be old enough to teach. In

the year 1624, another Zeigler confirmed the prediction of the former.

In the year 1666, Sabatei Sevi, born at Aleppo, called himself the

Messiah foretold by the Zeiglers. He began with preaching on the

highways and in the fields, the Turks laughing at him, while his

disciples admired him. It appears that he did not gain over the mass of

the Jewish nation at first; for the chiefs of the synagogue of Smyrna

passed sentence of death against him; but he escaped with the fear only,

and with banishment.

He contracted three marriages, of which it is asserted he did not

consummate one, saying that it was beneath him so to do. He took into

partnership one Nathan Levi; the latter personated the prophet Elias,

who was to go before the Messiah. They repaired to Jerusalem, and Nathan

there announced Sabatei Sevi as the deliverer of nations. The Jewish

populace declared for them, but such as had anything to lose

anathematized them.

To avoid the storm, Sevi fled to Constantinople, and thence to Smyrna,

whither Nathan Levi sent to him four ambassadors, who acknowledged and

publicly saluted him as the Messiah. This embassy imposed on the people,

and also on some of the doctors, who declared Sabatei Sevi to be the

Messiah, and king of the Hebrews. But the synagogue of Smyrna condemned

its king to be impaled.

Sabatei put himself under the protection of the cadi of Smyrna, and soon

had the whole Jewish people on his side; he had two thrones prepared,

one for himself, the other for his favorite wife; he took the title of

king of kings, and gave to his brother, Joseph Sevi, that of king of

Judah. He promised the Jews the certain conquest of the Ottoman Empire;

and even carried his insolence so far as to have the emperor's name

struck out of the Jewish liturgy, and his own substituted.

He was thrown into prison at the Dardanelles; and the Jews gave out that

his life was spared only because the Turks well knew he was immortal.

The governor of the Dardanelles grew rich by the presents which the Jews

lavished, in order to visit their king, their imprisoned Messiah, who,

though in irons, retained all his dignity, and made them kiss his feet.

Meanwhile the sultan, who was holding his court at Adrianople, resolved

to put an end to this farce: he sent for Sevi, and told him that if he

was the Messiah he must be invulnerable; to which Sevi assented. The

grand signor then had him placed as a mark for the arrows of his

_icoglans. _The Messiah confessed that he was not invulnerable, and

protested that God sent him only to bear testimony to the holy Mussulman

religion. Being beaten by the ministers of the law, he turned Mahometan;

he lived and died equally despised by the Jews and Mussulmans; which

cast such discredit on the profession of false Messiah, that Sevi was

the last that appeared.

METAMORPHOSIS.

It may very naturally be supposed that the metamorphoses with which our

earth abounds suggested the imagination to the Orientals--who have

imagined everything--that the souls of men passed from one body to

another. An almost imperceptible point becomes a grub, and that grub

becomes a butterfly; an acorn is transformed into an oak; an egg into a

bird; water becomes cloud and thunder; wood is changed into fire and

ashes; everything, in short, in nature, appears to be metamorphosed.

What was thus obviously and distinctly perceptible in grosser bodies was

soon conceived to take place with respect to souls, which were

considered slight, shadowy, and scarcely material figures. The idea of

metempsychosis is perhaps the most ancient dogma of the known world, and

prevails still in a great part of India and of China.

It is highly probable, again, that the various metamorphoses which we

witness in nature produced those ancient fables which Ovid has collected

and embellished in his admirable work. Even the Jews had their

metamorphoses. If Niobe was changed into a stone, Edith, the wife of

Lot, was changed into a statue of salt. If Eurydice remained in hell for

having looked behind her, it was for precisely the same indiscretion

that this wife of Lot was deprived of her human nature. The village in

which Baucis and Philemon resided in Phrygia is changed into a lake; the

same event occurs to Sodom. The daughters of Anius converted water into

oil; we have in Scripture a metamorphosis very similar, but more true

and more sacred. Cadmus was changed into a serpent; the rod of Aaron

becomes a serpent also.

The gods frequently change themselves into men; the Jews never saw

angels but in the form of men; angels ate with Abraham. Paul, in his

Second Epistle to the Corinthians, says that an angel of Satan has

buffeted him: "_Angelus Satanæ me colaphizet._"

METAPHYSICS.

"_Trans naturam,_"--beyond nature. But what is that which is beyond

nature? By nature, it is to be presumed, is meant matter, and

metaphysics relates to that which is not matter.

For example: to your reasoning, which is neither long, nor wide, nor

high, nor solid, nor pointed; your soul, to yourself unknown, which

produces your reasoning.

Spirits, which the world has always talked of, and to which mankind

appropriated, for a long period, a body so attenuated and shadowy, that

it could scarcely be called body; but from which, at length, they have

removed every shadow of body, without knowing what it was that was left.

The manner in which these spirits perceive, without any embarrassment,

from the five senses; in which they think, without a head; and in which

they communicate their thoughts, without words and signs.

Finally, God, whom we know by His works, but whom our pride impels us to

define; God, whose power we feel to be immense; God, between whom and

ourselves exists the abyss of infinity, and yet whose nature we dare to

attempt to fathom.

These are the objects of metaphysics. We might further add to these the

principles of pure mathematics, points without extension, lines without

width, superficies without thickness, units infinitely divisible, etc.

Bayle himself considered these objects as those which were denominated

"_entia rationis,_" beings of reason; they are, however, in fact, only

material things considered in their masses, their superficies, their

simple lengths and breadths, and the extremities of these simple lengths

and breadths. All measures are precise and demonstrated. Metaphysics has

nothing to do with geometry.

Thus a man may be a metaphysician without being a geometrician.

Metaphysics is more entertaining; it constitutes often the romance of

the mind. In geometry, on the contrary, we must calculate and measure;

this is a perpetual trouble, and most minds had rather dream pleasantly

than fatigue themselves with hard work.

MIND (LIMITS OF THE HUMAN).

Newton was one day asked why he stepped forward when he was so inclined;

and from what cause his arm and his hand obeyed his will? He honestly

replied, that he knew nothing about the matter. But at least, said they

to him, you who are so well acquainted with the gravitation of planets,

will tell us why they turn one way sooner than another? Newton still

avowed his ignorance.

Those who teach that the ocean was salted for fear it should corrupt,

and that the tides were created to conduct our ships into port, were a

little ashamed when told that the Mediterranean has ports and no tide.

Muschembrock himself has fallen into this error.

Who has ever been able to determine precisely how a billet of wood is

changed into red-hot charcoal, and by what mechanism lime is heated by

cold water?

The first motion of the heart in animals--is that accounted for? Has it

been exactly discovered how the business of generation is arranged? Has

any one divined the cause of sensation, ideas, and memory? We know no

more of the essence of matter than the children who touch its

superficies.

Who will instruct us in the mechanism by which the grain of corn, which

we cast into the earth, disposes itself to produce a stalk surmounted

with an ear; or why the sun produces an apple on one tree and a chestnut

on the next to it? Many doctors have said: "What know I not?" Montaigne

said: "What know I?"

Unbending decider! pedagogue in phrases! furred reasoner! thou inquirest

after the limits of the human mind--they are at the end of thy nose.

MIRACLES.

SECTION I.

A miracle, according to the true meaning of the word, is something

admirable; and agreeable to this, all is miracle. The stupendous order

of nature, the revolution of a hundred millions of worlds around a

million of suns, the activity of light, the life of animals, all are

grand and perpetual miracles.

According to common acceptation, we call a miracle the violation of

these divine and eternal laws. A solar eclipse at the time of the full

moon, or a dead man walking two leagues and carrying his head in his

arms, we denominate a miracle.

Many natural philosophers maintain, that in this sense there are no

miracles; and advance the following arguments:

A miracle is the violation of mathematical, divine, immutable, eternal

laws. By the very exposition itself, a miracle is a contradiction in

terms: a law cannot at the same time be immutable and violated. But they

are asked, cannot a law, established by God Himself, be suspended by its

author?

They have the hardihood to reply that it cannot; and that it is

impossible a being infinitely wise can have made laws to violate them.

He could not, they say, derange the machine but with a view of making it

work better; but it is evident that God, all-wise and omnipotent,

originally made this immense machine, the universe, as good and perfect

as He was able; if He saw that some imperfections would arise from the

nature of matter, He provided for that in the beginning; and,

accordingly, He will never change anything in it. Moreover, God can do

nothing without reason; but what reason could induce him to disfigure

for a time His own work?

It is done, they are told, in favor of mankind. They reply: We must

presume, then, that it is in favor of all mankind; for it is impossible

to conceive that the divine nature should occupy itself only about a few

men in particular, and not for the whole human race; and even the whole

human race itself is a very small concern; it is less than a small

ant-hill, in comparison with all the beings inhabiting immensity. But is

it not the most absurd of all extravagances to imagine that the Infinite

Supreme should, in favor of three or four hundred emmets on this little

heap of earth, derange the operation of the vast machinery that moves

the universe?

But, admitting that God chose to distinguish a small number of men by

particular favors, is there any necessity that, in order to accomplish

this object, He should change what He established for all periods and

for all places? He certainly can have no need of this inconstancy in

order to bestow favors on any of His creatures: His favors consist in

His laws themselves: he has foreseen all and arranged all, with a view

to them. All invariably obey the force which He has impressed forever on

nature.

For what purpose would God perform a miracle? To accomplish some

particular design upon living beings? He would then, in reality, be

supposed to say: "I have not been able to effect by my construction of

the universe, by my divine decrees, by my eternal laws, a particular

object; I am now going to change my eternal ideas and immutable laws, to

endeavor to accomplish what I have not been able to do by means of

them." This would be an avowal of His weakness, not of His power; it

would appear in such a being an inconceivable contradiction.

Accordingly, therefore, to dare to ascribe miracles to God is, if man

can in reality insult God, actually offering Him that insult. It is

saying to Him: "You are a weak and inconsistent Being." It is,

therefore, absurd to believe in miracles; it is, in fact, dishonoring

the divinity.

These philosophers, however, are not suffered thus to declaim without

opposition. You may extol, it is replied, as much as you please, the

immutability of the Supreme Being, the eternity of His laws, and the

regularity of His infinitude of worlds; but our little heap of earth

has, notwithstanding all that you have advanced, been completely covered

over with miracles in every part and time. Histories relate as many

prodigies as natural events. The daughters of the high priest Anius

changed whatever they pleased to corn, wine, and oil; Athalide, the

daughter of Mercury, revived again several times; Æsculapius

resuscitated Hippolytus; Hercules rescued Alcestes from the hand of

death; and Heres returned to the world after having passed fifteen days

in hell. Romulus and Remus were the offspring of a god and a vestal. The

Palladium descended from heaven on the city of Troy; the hair of

Berenice was changed into a constellation; the cot of Baucis and

Philemon was converted into a superb temple; the head of Orpheus

delivered oracles after his death; the walls of Thebes spontaneously

constructed themselves to the sound of a flute, in the presence of the

Greeks; the cures effected in the temple of Æsculapius were absolutely

innumerable, and we have monuments still existing containing the very

names of persons who were eye-witnesses of his miracles.

Mention to me a single nation in which the most incredible prodigies

have not been performed, and especially in those periods in which the

people scarcely knew how to write or read.

The philosophers make no answer to these objections, but by slightly

raising their shoulders and by a smile; but the Christian philosophers

say: We are believers in the miracles of our holy religion; we believe

them by faith and not by our reason, which we are very cautious how we

listen to; for when faith speaks, it is well known that reason ought to

be silent. We have a firm and entire faith in the miracles of Jesus

Christ and the apostles, but permit us to entertain some doubt about

many others: permit us, for example, to suspend our judgment on what is

related by a very simple man, although he has obtained the title of

great. He assures us, that a certain monk was so much in the habit of

performing miracles, that the prior at length forbade him to exercise

his talent in that line. The monk obeyed; but seeing a poor tiler fall

from the top of a house, he hesitated for a moment between the desire to

save the unfortunate man's life, and the sacred duty of obedience to his

superior. He merely ordered the tiler to stay in the air till he should

receive further instructions, and ran as fast as his legs would carry

him to communicate the urgency of the circumstances to the prior. The

prior absolved him from the sin he had committed in beginning the

miracle without permission, and gave him leave to finish it, provided he

stopped with the same, and never again repeated his fault. The

philosophers may certainly be excused for entertaining a little doubt of

this legend.

But how can you deny, they are asked, that St. Gervais and St. Protais

appeared in a dream to St. Ambrose, and informed him of the spot in

which were deposited their relics? that St. Ambrose had them

disinterred? and that they restored sight to a man that was blind? St.

Augustine was at Milan at the very time, and it is he who relates the

miracle, using the expression, in the twenty-second book of his work

called the "City of God," "_immenso populo teste_"--in the presence of

an immense number of people. Here is one of the very best attested and

established miracles. The philosophers, however, say that they do not

believe one word about Gervais and Protais appearing to any person

whatever; that it is a matter of very little consequence to mankind

where the remains of their carcasses lie; that they have no more faith

in this blind man than in Vespasian's; that it is a useless miracle, and

that God does nothing that is useless; and they adhere to the principles

they began with. My respect for St. Gervais and St. Protais prevents me

from being of the same opinion as these philosophers: I merely state

their incredulity. They lay great stress on the well-known passage of

Lucian, to be found in the death of Peregrinus: "When an expert juggler

turns Christian, he is sure to make his fortune." But as Lucian is a

profane author, we ought surely to set him aside as of no authority.

These philosophers cannot even make up their minds to believe the

miracles performed in the second century. Even eye-witnesses to the

facts may write and attest till the day of doom, that after the bishop

of Smyrna, St. Polycarp, was condemned to be burned, and actually in the

midst of the flames, they heard a voice from heaven exclaiming:

"Courage, Polycarp! be strong, and show yourself a man"; that, at the

very instant, the flames quitted his body, and formed a pavilion of fire

above his head, and from the midst of the pile there flew out a dove;

when, at length, Polycarp's enemies ended his life by cutting off his

head. All these facts and attestations are in vain. For what good, say

these unimpressible and incredulous men, for what good was this miracle?

Why did the flames lose their nature, and the axe of the executioner

retain all its power of destruction? Whence comes it that so many

martyrs escaped unhurt out of boiling oil, but were unable to resist the

edge of the sword? It is answered, such was the will of God. But the

philosophers would wish to see and hear all this themselves, before they

believe it.

Those who strengthen their reasonings by learning will tell you that the

fathers of the Church have frequently declared that miracles were in

their days performed no longer. St. Chrysostom says expressly: "The

extraordinary gifts of the spirit were bestowed even on the unworthy,

because the Church at that time had need of miracles; but now, they are

not bestowed even on the worthy, because the Church has need of them no

longer." He afterwards declares, that there is no one now who raises the

dead, or even who heals the sick.

St. Augustine himself, notwithstanding the miracles of Gervais and

Protais, says, in his "City of God": "Why are not such miracles as were

wrought formerly wrought now?" and he assigns the same reason as St.

Chrysostom for it.

"_Cur inquiunt, nunc illa miracula quæ prædicatis facta esse non fiunt?

Possem quidem dicere necessaria prius fuisse, quam crederet mundus, ad

hoc ut crederet mundus._"

It is objected to the philosophers, that St. Augustine, notwithstanding

this avowal, mentions nevertheless an old cobbler of Hippo, who, having

lost his garment, went to pray in the chapel of the twenty martyrs, and

on his return found a fish, in the body of which was a gold ring; and

that the cook who dressed the fish said to the cobbler: "See what a

present the twenty martyrs have made you!"

To this the philosophers reply, that there is nothing in the event here

related in opposition to the laws of nature; that natural philosophy is

not contradicted or shocked by a fish's swallowing a gold ring, or a

cook's delivering such ring to a cobbler; that, in short, there is no

miracle at all in the case.

If these philosophers are reminded that, according to St. Jerome, in his

"Life of Paul the Hermit," that hermit had many conversations with

satyrs and fauns; that a raven carried to him every day, for thirty

years together, half of a loaf for his dinner, and a whole one on the

day that St. Anthony went to visit him, they might reply again, that all

this is not absolutely inconsistent with natural philosophy; that satyrs

and fauns may have existed; and that, at all events, whether the

narrative be a recital of facts, or only a story fit for children, it

has nothing at all to do with the miracles of our Lord and His apostles.

Many good Christians have contested the "History of St. Simeon

Stylites," written by Theodoret; many miracles considered authentic by

the Greek Church have been called in question by many Latins, just as

the Latin miracles have been suspected by the Greek Church. Afterwards,

the Protestants appeared on the stage, and treated the miracles of both

churches certainly with very little respect or ceremony.

A learned Jesuit, who was long a preacher in the Indies, deplores that

neither his colleagues nor himself could ever perform a miracle. Xavier

laments, in many of his letters, that he has not the gift of languages.

He says, that among the Japanese he is merely like a dumb statue: yet

the Jesuits have written that he resuscitated eight persons. That was

certainly no trifling matter; but it must be recollected that he

resuscitated them six thousand leagues distant. Persons have since been

found, who have pretended that the abolition of the Jesuits in France is

a much greater miracle than any performed by Xavier and Ignatius.

However that may be, all Christians agree that the miracles of Jesus

Christ and the apostles are incontestably true; but that we may

certainly be permitted to doubt some stated to have been performed in

our own times, and which have not been completely authenticated.

It would certainly, for example, be very desirable, in order to the firm

and clear establishment of a miracle, that it should be performed in the

presence of the Academy of Sciences of Paris, or the Royal Society of

London, and the Faculty of Medicine, assisted by a detachment of guards

to keep in due order and distance the populace, who might by their

rudeness or indiscretion prevent the operation of the miracle.

A philosopher was once asked what he should say if he saw the sun stand

still, that is, if the motion of the earth around that star were to

cease; if all the dead were to rise again; and if the mountains were to

go and throw themselves together into the sea, all in order to prove

some important truth, like that, for instance, of versatile grace? "What

should I say?" answered the philosopher; "I should become a Manichæan; I

should say that one principle counteracted the performance of another."

SECTION II.

Define your terms, you will permit me again to say, or we shall never

understand one another. "_Miraculum res miranda, prodigium, portentum,

monstrum._"--Miracle, something admirable; prodigy, implying something

astonishing; portentous, bearing with it novelty; monster, something to

show ("_à montrer_") on account of its variety. Such are the first ideas

that men formed of miracles.

As everything is refined and improved upon, such also would be the case

with this definition. A miracle is said to be that which is impossible

to nature. But it was not considered that this was in fact saying all

miracle is absolutely impossible. For what is nature? You understand by

it the eternal order of things. A miracle would therefore be impossible

in such an order. In this sense God could not work a miracle.

If you mean by miracle an effect of which you cannot perceive the cause,

in that sense all is miracle. The attraction and direction of the magnet

are continual miracles. A snail whose head is renewed is a miracle. The

birth of every animal, the production of every vegetable, are miracles

of every day.

But we are so accustomed to these prodigies, that they have lost their

name of admirable--of miraculous. The Indians are no longer astonished

by cannon.

We have therefore formed for ourselves another idea of a miracle. It is,

according to the common opinion, what never has happened and never will

happen. Such is the idea formed of Samson's jawbone of an ass; of the

conversation between the ass and Balaam, and that between a serpent and

Eve; of the chariot with four horses that conveyed away Elijah; of the

fish that kept Jonah in its belly seventy-two hours; of the ten plagues

of Egypt; of the walls of Jericho, and of the sun and moon standing

still at mid-day, etc.

In order to believe a miracle, it is not enough merely to have seen it;

for a man may be deceived. A fool is often called a dealer in wonders;

and not merely do many excellent persons think that they have seen what

they have not seen, and heard what was never said to them; not only do

they thus become witnesses of miracles, but they become also subjects of

miracles. They have been sometimes diseased, and sometimes cured by

supernatural power; they have been changed into wolves; they have

travelled through the air on broomsticks; they have become both _incubi

_and _succubi. _

It is necessary that the miracle should have been seen by a great number

of very sensible people, in sound health, and perfectly disinterested in

the affair. It is above all necessary, that it should have been solemnly

attested by them; for if solemn forms of authentication are deemed

necessary with respect to transactions of very simple character, such as

the purchase of a house, a marriage contract, or a will, what particular

and minute cautionary formalities must not be deemed requisite in order

to verify things naturally impossible, on which the destiny of the world

is to depend?

Even when an authentic miracle is performed, it in fact proves nothing;

for Scripture tells you, in a great variety of places, that impostors

may perform miracles, and that if any man, after having performed them,

should proclaim another God than that of the Jews, he ought to be stoned

to death. It is requisite, therefore, that the doctrine should be

confirmed by the miracles, and the miracles by the doctrine.

Even this, however, is not sufficient. As impostors may preach a very

correct and pure morality, the better to deceive, and it is admitted

that impostors, like the magicians of Pharaoh, may perform miracles; it

is in addition necessary, that these miracles should have been announced

by prophecies.

In order to be convinced of the truth of these prophecies, it is

necessary that they should have been heard clearly announced, and seen

really accomplished. It is necessary to possess perfectly the language

in which they are preserved.

It is not sufficient, even, that you are a witness of their miraculous

fulfilment; for you may be deceived by false appearances. It is

necessary that the miracle and prophecy should be verified on oath by

the heads of the nation; and even after all this there will be some

doubters. For it is possible for a nation to be interested in the

forgery of a prophecy or a miracle; and when interest mixes with the

transaction, you may consider the whole affair as worth nothing. If a

predicted miracle be not as public and as well verified as an eclipse

that is announced in the almanac, be assured that it is nothing better

than a juggler's trick or an old woman's tale.

SECTION III.

A theocracy can be founded only upon miracles. Everything in it must be

divine. The Great Sovereign speaks to men only in prodigies. These are

his ministers and letters patent. His orders are intimated by the

ocean's covering the earth to drown nations, or opening a way through

its depths, that they may pass upon dry land.

Accordingly you perceive, that in the Jewish history all is miracle;

from the creation of Adam, and the formation of Eve, who was made of one

of the ribs of Adam, to the time of the insignificant kingling Saul.

Even in the time of this same Saul, theocracy participates in power with

royalty. There are still, consequently, miracles performed from time to

time; but there is no longer that splendid train of prodigies which

continually astonishes and interrupts nature. The ten plagues of Egypt

are not renewed; the sun and moon do not stand still at mid-day, in

order to give a commander time to exterminate a few runaways, already

nearly destroyed by a shower of stones from the clouds. No Samson again

extirpates a thousand Philistines by the jaw-bone of an ass. Asses no

longer talk rationally with men; walls no longer fall prostrate at the

mere sound of trumpets; cities are not swallowed up in a lake by the

fire of heaven; the race of man is not a second time destroyed by a

deluge. But the finger of God is still manifested; the shade of Saul is

permitted to appear at the invocation of the sorceress, and God Himself

promises David that he will defeat the Philistines at Baal-perazim.

"God gathers together His celestial army in the reign of Ahab, and asks

the spirits: Who will go and deceive Ahab, and persuade him to go up to

war against Ramoth Gilead? And there came forth a lying spirit and stood

before the Lord and said, I will persuade him." But the prophet Micaiah

alone heard this conversation, and he received a blow on the cheek from

another prophet, called Zedekiah, for having announced the ill-omened

prodigy.

Of miracles performed in the sight of the whole nation, and changing the

laws of all nature, we see no more until the time of Elijah, for whom

the Lord despatched a chariot of fire and horses of fire, which conveyed

him rapidly from the banks of the Jordan to heaven, although no one knew

where heaven was.

From the commencement of historical times, that is, from the time of the

conquests of Alexander, we see no more miracles among the Jews.

When Pompey comes to make himself master of Jerusalem--when Crassus

plunders the temple--when Pompey puts to death the king of the Jews by

the hands of the executioner--when Anthony confers the kingdom of Judæa

on the Arabian Herod--when Titus takes Jerusalem by assault, and when it

is razed to the ground by Arian--not a single miracle is ever performed.

Thus it is with every nation upon earth. They begin with theocracy; they

end in a manner simply and naturally human. The greater the progress

made in society and knowledge, the fewer there are of prodigies.

We well know that the theocracy of the Jews was the only true one, and

that those of other nations were false; but in all other respects, the

case was precisely the same with them as with the Jews.

In Egypt, in the time of Vulcan, and in that of Isis and Osiris,

everything was out of the laws of nature; under the Ptolemies everything

resumed its natural course.

In the remote periods of Phos, Chrysos, and Ephestes, gods and mortals

conversed in Chaldee with the most interesting familiarity. A god warned

King Xissuter that there would be a deluge in Armenia, and that it was

necessary he should, as soon as possible, build a vessel five stadii in

length and two in width. Such things do not happen to the Dariuses and

the Alexanders.

The fish Oannes, in former times, came every day out of the Euphrates to

preach upon its banks; but there is no preaching fish now. It is true

that St. Anthony of Padua went and preached to the fishes; however, such

things happen so very rarely that they are scarcely to be taken any

account of.

Numa held long conversations with the nymph Egeria; but we never read

that Cæsar had any with Venus, although he was descended from her in the

direct line. The world, we see, is constantly advancing a little, and

refining gradually.

But after being extricated out of one slough for a time, mankind are

soon plunged into another. To ages of civilization succeed ages of

barbarism; that barbarism is again expelled, and again reappears: it is

the regular alternation of day and night.

Of Those Who Have Been So Impiously Rash As To Deny The Miracles Of

Jesus Christ.

Among the moderns, Thomas Woolston, a learned member of the University

of Cambridge, appears to me to have been the first who ventured to

interpret the Gospels merely in a typical, allegorical, and spiritual

sense, and boldly maintained that not one of the miracles of Jesus was

actually performed. He wrote without method or art, and in a style

confused and coarse, but not destitute of vigor. His six discourses

against the miracles of Jesus Christ were publicly sold at London, in

his own house. In the course of two years, from 1737 to 1739, he had

three editions of them printed, of twenty thousand copies each, and yet

it is now very difficult to procure one from the booksellers.

Never was Christianity so daringly assailed by any Christian. Few

writers entertain less awe or respect for the public, and no priest ever

declared himself more openly the enemy of priests. He even dared to

justify this hatred by that of Jesus Christ against the Pharisees and

Scribes; and he said that he should not, like Jesus Christ, become their

victim, because he had come into the world in a more enlightened age.

He certainly hoped to justify his rashness by his adoption of the

mystical sense; but he employs expressions so contemptuous and abusive

that every Christian ear is shocked at them.

If we may believe him, when Jesus sent the devil into the herd of two

thousand swine, He did neither more nor less than commit a robbery on

their owners. If the story had been told of Mahomet, he would have been

considered as "an abominable wizard, and a sworn slave to the devil."

And if the proprietor of the swine, and the merchants who in the outer

court of the temple sold beasts for sacrifices, and whom Jesus drove out

with a scourge, came to demand justice when he was apprehended, it is

clear that he was deservedly condemned, as there never was a jury in

England that would not have found him guilty.

He tells her fortune to the woman of Samaria, just like a wandering

Bohemian or Gypsy. This alone was sufficient to cause His banishment,

which was the punishment inflicted upon fortune-tellers, or diviners, by

Tiberius. "I am astonished," says he, "that the gypsies do not proclaim

themselves the genuine disciples of Jesus, as their vocation is the

same. However, I am glad to see that He did not extort money from the

Samaritan woman, differing in this respect from our clergy, who take

care to be well paid for their divinations."

I follow the order of the pages in his book. The author goes on to the

entrance of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem. It is not clear, he says,

whether He was mounted on a male or female ass, or upon the foal of an

ass, or upon all three together.

He compares Jesus, when tempted by the devil, to St. Dunstan, who seized

the devil by the nose; and he gives the preference to St. Dunstan.

At the article of the fig-tree, which was cursed with barrenness for not

producing figs out of season for them, he describes Jesus as a mere

vagabond, a mendicant friar, who before He turned field-preacher was "no

better than a journeyman carpenter." It is surprising, he says, that the

court of Rome has not among all its relics some little fancy-box or

joint-stool of His workmanship. In a word, it is difficult to carry

blasphemy further.

After diverting himself with the probationary fish-pool of Bethesda, the

waters of which were troubled or stirred once in every year by an angel,

he inquires how it could well be, that neither Flavius Josephus, nor

Philo should ever mention this angel; why St. John should be the sole

historian of this miracle; and by what other miracle it happened that no

Roman ever saw this angel, or ever even heard his name mentioned?

The water changed into wine at the marriage of Cana, according to him,

excites the laughter and contempt of all who are not imbruted by

superstition.

"What!" says he, "John expressly says that the guests were already

intoxicated, '_methus tosi_'; and God comes down to earth and performs

His first miracle to enable them to drink still more!"

God, made man, commences His mission by assisting at a village wedding.

"Whether Jesus and His mother were drunk, as were others of the company,

is not certain. The familiarity of the lady with a soldier leads to the

presumption that she was fond of her bottle; that her Son, however, was

somewhat affected by the wine, appears from His answering His mother so

'waspishly and snappishly' as He did, when He said, 'Woman, what have I

to do with thee?' It may be inferred from these words that Mary was not

a virgin, and that Jesus was not her son; had it been otherwise, He

would not have thus insulted His father and mother in violation of one

of the most sacred commandments of the law. However, He complied with

His mother's request; He fills eighteen jars with water, and makes punch

of it." These are the very words of Thomas Woolston, and must fill every

Christian soul with indignation.

It is with regret, and even with trembling, that I quote these passages;

but there have been sixty thousand copies of this work printed, all

bearing the name of the author, and all publicly sold at his house. It

can never be said that I calumniate him.

It is to the dead raised again by Jesus Christ that he principally

directs his attention. He contends that a dead man restored to life

would have been an object of attention and astonishment to the universe;

that all the Jewish magistracy, and more especially Pilate, would have

made the most minute investigations and obtained the most authentic

depositions; that Tiberius enjoined all proconsuls, prætors, and

governors of provinces to inform him with exactness of every event that

took place; that Lazarus, who had been dead four whole days, would have

been most strictly interrogated; and that no little curiosity would have

been excited to know what had become, during that time, of his soul.

With what eager interest would Tiberius and the whole Roman senate have

questioned him, and not indeed only him, but the daughter of Jairus and

the son of the widow of Nain? Three dead persons restored to life would

have been three attestations to the divinity of Jesus, which almost in a

single moment would have made the whole world Christian. But instead of

all this, the whole world, for more than two hundred years, knew nothing

about these resplendent and decisive evidences. It is not till a hundred

years have rolled away from the date of the events that some obscure

individuals show one another the writings that contain the relation of

those miracles. Eighty-nine emperors reckoning those who had only the

name of "tyrants," never hear the slightest mention of these

resurrections, although they must inevitably have held all nature in

amazement. Neither the Jewish historian Josephus, nor the learned Philo,

nor any Greek or Roman historian at all notices these prodigies. In

short, Woolston has the imprudence to say that the history of Lazarus is

so brimful of absurdities that St. John, when he wrote it, had outlived

his senses.

Supposing, says Woolston, that God should in our own times send an

ambassador to London to convert the hireling clergy, and that ambassador

should raise the dead, what would the clergy say?

He blasphemes the incarnation, the resurrection, and the ascension of

Jesus Christ, just upon the same system; and he calls these miracles:

"The most manifest and the most barefaced imposture that ever was put

upon the world!"

What is perhaps more singular still is that each of his discourses is

dedicated to a bishop. His dedications are certainly not exactly in the

French style. He bestows no flattery nor compliments. He upbraids them

with their pride and avarice, their ambition and faction, and smiles

with triumph at the thought of their being now, like every other class

of citizens, in complete subjection to the laws of the state.

At last these bishops, tired of being insulted by an undignified member

of the University of Cambridge, determined upon a formal appeal to the

laws. They instituted a prosecution against Woolston in the King's

Bench, and he was tried before Chief-Justice Raymond, in 1729, when he

was imprisoned, condemned to pay a fine, and obliged to give security to

the amount of a hundred and fifty pounds sterling. His friends furnished

him with the security, and he did not in fact die in prison, as in some

of our careless and ill-compiled dictionaries he is stated to have done.

He died at his own house in London, after having uttered these words:

"This is a pass that every man must come to." Some time before his

death, a female zealot meeting him in the street was gross enough to

spit in his face; he calmly wiped his face and bowed to her. His manners

were mild and pleasing. He was obstinately infatuated with the mystical

meaning, and blasphemed the literal one; but let us hope that he

repented on his death-bed, and that God has showed him mercy.

About the same period there appeared in France the will of John Meslier,

clergyman ("_curé_") of But and Entrepigni, in Champagne, of whom we

have already spoken, under the article on "Contradictions".

It was both a wonderful and a melancholy spectacle to see two priests at

the same time writing against the Christian religion. Meslier is still

more violent than Woolston. He ventures to treat the devil's carrying

off our Lord to the top of a mountain, the marriage of Cana, and the

loaves and fishes, as absurd tales, injurious to the Supreme Being,

which for three hundred years were unknown to the whole Roman Empire,

and at last advanced from the dregs of the community to the throne of

the emperors, when policy compelled them to adopt the nonsense of the

people, in order to keep them the better in subjection. The declamations

of the English priest do not approach in vehemence those of the priest

of Champagne. Woolston occasionally showed discretion. Meslier never has

any; he is a man so sensitively sore to the crimes to which he has been

witness that he renders the Christian religion responsible for them,

forgetting that it condemns them. There is not a single miracle which is

not with him an object of scorn or horror; no prophecy which he does not

compare with the prophecies of Nostradamus. He even goes so far as to

compare Jesus Christ to Don Quixote, and St. Peter to Sancho Panza; and

what is most of all to be deplored is, that he wrote these blasphemies

against Jesus Christ, when he might be said to be in the very arms of

death--at a moment when the most deceitful are sincere, and the most

intrepid tremble. Too strongly impressed by some injuries that had been

done him by his superiors in authority; too deeply affected by the great

difficulties which he met with in the Scripture, he became exasperated

against it more than Acosta and all the Jews; more than Porphyry,

Celsus, Iamblichus, Julian, Libanius, Maximus, Simmachus, or any other

whatever of the partisans of human reason against the divine

incomprehensibilities of our religion. Many abridgments of his work have

been printed; but happily the persons in authority suppressed them as

fast as they appeared.

A priest of Bonne-Nouvelle, near Paris, wrote also on the same subject;

and it thus happened that at the very time the abbé Becheran and the

rest of the Convulsionaries were performing miracles, three priests were

writing against the genuine Gospel miracles.

The most clever work that has been written against the miracles and

prophecies is that of my Lord Bolingbroke. But happily it is so

voluminous, so destitute of method, so verbose, and so abounding in long

and sometimes complicated sentences, that it requires a great deal of

patience to read him.

There have been some minds so constituted that they have been enchanted

by the miracles of Moses and Joshua, but have not entertained for those

of Jesus Christ the respect to which they are entitled. Their

imagination--raised by the grand spectacle of the sea opening a passage

through its depths, and suspending its waves that a horde of Hebrews

might safely go through; by the ten plagues of Egypt, and by the stars

that stopped in their course over Gibeon and Ajalon, etc.--could not

with ease and satisfaction be let down again, so as to admire the

comparatively petty miracles of the water changed into wine, the

withered fig-tree, and the swine drowned in the little lake of Gadara.

Vaghenseil said that it was like hearing a rustic ditty after attending

a grand concert.

The Talmud pretends that there have been many Christians who, after

comparing the miracles of the Old Testament with those of the New

Testament, embraced Judaism; they consider it impossible that the

Sovereign Lord of Nature should have wrought such stupendous prodigies

for a religion He intended to annihilate. What! they exclaim, can it

possibly be, that for a series of ages He should have exhibited a train

of astonishing and tremendous miracles in favor of a true religion that

was to become a false one? What! can it be that God Himself has recorded

that this religion shall never perish, and that those who attempt to

destroy it shall be stoned to death, and yet that He has nevertheless

sent His own Son, Who is no other than Himself, to annihilate what He

was employed so many ages in erecting?

There is much more to be added to these remarks; this Son, they

continue, this Eternal God, having made Himself a Jew, adheres to the

Jewish religion during the whole of His life; He performs all the

functions of it, He frequents the Jewish temple, He announces nothing

contrary to the Jewish law, and all His disciples are Jews and observe

the Jewish ceremonies. It most certainly is not He who established the

Christian religion. It was established by the dissident Jews who united

with the Platonists. There is not a single dogma of Christianity that

was preached by Jesus Christ.

Such is the reasoning of these rash men, who, with minds at once

hypocritical and audacious, dare to criticise the works of God, and

admit the miracles of the Old Testament for the sole purpose of

rejecting those of the New Testament.

Of this number was the unfortunate priest of Pont-à-Mousson in Lorraine,

called Nicholas Anthony; he was known by no other name. After he had

received what is called "the four minors" in Lorraine, the Calvinistic

preacher Ferri, happening to go to Pont-à-Mousson, raised in his mind

very serious scruples, and persuaded him that the four minors were the

mark of the beast. Anthony, driven almost to distraction by the thought

of carrying about him the mark of the beast, had it immediately effaced

by Ferri, embraced the Protestant religion, and became a minister at

Geneva about the year 1630.

With a head full of rabbinical learning, he thought that if the

Protestants were right in reference to the Papists, the Jews were much

more so in reference to all the different sects of Christianity

whatever. From the village of Divonne, where he was pastor, he went to

be received as a Jew at Venice, together with a young apprentice in

theology whom he had persuaded to adopt his own principles, but who

afterwards abandoned him, not experiencing any call to martyrdom.

At first the minister, Nicholas Anthony, abstained from uttering the

name of Jesus Christ in his sermons and prayers; in a short time,

however, becoming animated and emboldened by the example of the Jewish

saints, who confidently professed Judaism before the princes of Tyre and

Babylon, he travelled barefooted to Geneva, to confess before the judges

and magistrates that there is only one religion upon earth, because

there is only one God; that that religion is the Jewish; that it is

absolutely necessary to become circumcised; and that it is a horrible

crime to eat bacon and blood pudding. He pathetically exhorted all the

people of Geneva, who crowded to hear him, no longer to continue

children of Belial, but to become good Jews, in order to deserve the

kingdom of heaven. He was apprehended, and put in chains.

The little Council of Geneva, which at that period did nothing without

consulting the council of preachers, asked their advice in this

emergency. The most sensible of them recommended that poor Anthony

should be bled in the cephalic vein, use the bath, and be kept upon

gruel and broths; after which he might perhaps gradually be induced to

pronounce the name of Jesus Christ, or at least to hear it pronounced,

without grinding his teeth, as had hitherto been his practice. They

added, that the laws bore with Jews; that there were eight thousand of

them even in Rome itself; that many merchants are true Jews, and

therefore that as Rome admitted within its walls eight thousand children

of the synagogue, Geneva might well tolerate one. At the sound of

"toleration" the rest of the pastors, who were the majority, gnashing

their teeth still more than Anthony did at the name of Jesus Christ, and

also eager to find an opportunity to burn a man, which could not be done

every day, called peremptorily for the burning. They resolved that

nothing could serve more to establish genuine Christianity; that the

Spaniards had obtained so much reputation in the world only by burning

the Jews every year, and that after all, if the Old Testament must

prevail over the New Testament, God would not fail to come and

extinguish the flames of the pile, as he did at Babylon for Shadrach,

Meshac, and Abednego; in which case all must go back again to the Old

Testament; but that, in the meantime, it was indispensable to burn

Nicholas Anthony. On the breaking up of the meeting, they concluded with

the observation: "We must put the wicked out of the way"--the very words

they used.

The long-headed syndics, Sarasin and Godefroi, agreed that the reasoning

of the Calvinistic sanhedrim was admirable, and by the right of the

strongest party, condemned Nicholas Anthony, the weakest of men, to die

the same death as Calanus and the counsellor Dubourg. This sentence was

carried into execution on April 20, 1632, in a very beautiful lawn or

meadow, called Plain-Palais, in the presence of twenty thousand persons,

who blessed the new law, and the wonderful sense of the syndics Sarasin

and Godefroi.

The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not renew the miracle of the

furnace of Babylon in favor of poor Anthony.

Abauzit, an author of great veracity, relates in his notes, that he died

in the greatest constancy, and persisted in his opinions even at the

stake on the pile; he broke out into no passionate invective against his

judges when the executioner was tying him to the stake; he displayed

neither pride nor pusillanimity; he neither wept nor sighed; he was

resigned. Never did martyr consummate his sacrifice with a more lively

faith; never did philosopher contemplate a death of horror with greater

firmness. This clearly proves that his folly or madness was at all

events attended with sincere conviction.

Let us implore of the God of both the Old and the New Testaments that he

will grant him mercy.

I would say as much for the Jesuit Malagrida, who was still more

infatuated and mad than Nicholas Anthony; as I would also for the

ex-Jesuits Patouillet and Paulian, should they ever be brought to the

stake.

A great number of writers, whose misfortune it was to be philosophers

rather than Christians, have been bold enough to deny the miracles of

our Lord; but after the four priests already noticed, there is no

necessity to enumerate other instances. Let us lament over these four

unfortunate men, led astray by their own deceitful reason, and

precipitated by the gloom of their feelings into an abyss so dreadful

and so fatal.

MISSION.

It is far from our object in this article to reflect upon the zeal of

our missionaries, or the truth of our religion; these are sufficiently

known in Christian Europe, and duly respected.

My object is merely to make some remarks on the very curious and

edifying letters of the reverend fathers, the Jesuits, who are not

equally respectable. Scarcely do they arrive in India before they

commence preaching, convert millions of Indians, and perform millions of

miracles. Far be it from me to contradict their assertions. We all know

how easy it must be for a Biscayan, a Bergamask, or a Norman to learn

the Indian language in a few days, and preach like an Indian.

With regard to miracles, nothing is more easy than to perform them at a

distance of six thousand leagues, since so many have been performed at

Paris, in the parish of St. Médard. The sufficing grace of the Molinists

could undoubtedly operate on the banks of the Ganges, as well as the

efficacious grace of the Jansenists on those of the river of the

Gobelins. We have, however, said so much already about miracles that we

shall pursue the subject no further.

A reverend father Jesuit arrived in the course of the past year at

Delhi, at the court of the great Mogul. He was not a man profoundly

skilled in mathematics, or highly gifted in mind, who had come to

correct the calendar, or to establish his fortune, but one of those

poor, honest, zealous Jesuits, one of those soldiers who are despatched

on particular duty by their general, and who obey orders without

reasoning about them.

M. Andrais, my factor, asked him what his business might be at Delhi. He

replied that he had orders from the reverend father Ricci to deliver the

Great Mogul from the paws of the devil, and convert his whole court.

THE JESUIT.

I have already baptized twenty infants in the street, without their

knowing anything at all about the matter, by throwing a few drops of

water upon their heads. They are now just so many angels, provided they

are happy enough to die directly. I cured a poor old woman of the

megrims by making the sign of the cross behind her. I hope in a short

time to convert the Mahometans of the court and the Gentoos among the

people. You will see in Delhi, Agra, and Benares, as many good

Catholics, adorers of the Virgin Mary, as you now do idolaters, adoring

the devil.

M. ANDRAIS.

You think then, my worthy father, that the inhabitants of these

countries adore idols and the devil?

THE JESUIT.

Undoubtedly, as they are not of my religion.

M. ANDRAIS.

Very well. But when there are as many Catholics in India as idolaters,

are you not afraid that they will fight against one another; that blood

will flow for a long period, and the whole country be a scene of pillage

and devastation? This has happened in every country in which you have

obtained a footing hitherto.

THE JESUIT.

You make one pause for a moment; but nothing could happen better than

that which you suggest as being so probable. The slaughtered Catholics

would go to paradise--to the garden--and the Gentoos to the everlasting

fire of hell created for them from all eternity, according to the great

mercy of God, and for His great glory; for God is exceedingly glorious.

M. ANDRAIS.

But suppose that you should be informed against, and punished at the

whipping post?

THE JESUIT.

That would also be for His glory. However, I conjure you to keep my

secret, and save me from the honor and happiness of martyrdom.