to call upon ravenous beasts, and birds to come and fill themselves; it was a low kind of lying to tell those who never read, that the call was to men to come and fill themselves. I did not think it any more excusable be cause there were millions who were reading, and joyfully adopting all such statements without ever reading the prophets, or a sentence penned by any one in their favour. Still this was the kind and the only kind of reasoning written by any one, as far as I could discover, who had received admiration and applause beyond measure. I thought that if I could find nothing stronger among reputed giants, I should be under the necessity of reviewing my system, and noticing once more the objections which I myself had fabricated against Holy Writ, lest they should resemble, in some respects, that which I was reading in the works of my infidel brethren.

CHAPTER LI.

SEEMING TRUTH, BUT ACTUAL FALSEHOOD.

About this time, when passing from place to place, it was no uncommon night's occurrence, to meet a circle around the tavern fire, and before the evening passed, to hear remarks on Christianity.

I listened, and the objections were all of the same class of those I had been reading, or weaker. It is strange that I should have remained an unbeliever; but, as yet, I was only sufficiently shaken to cause me

to read, inquire, and listen. I observed that those who kissed at the Bible, were very impatient, if any one on the opposite side crossed them in argument. Even when talking with each other, their eyes flashed, and the countenance assumed an expression singularly vindictive. Others again chose irony for their weapon, and laughed aloud where others were not always able to discover any thing indubitably jocular. But that which gave me most pain was that which I met so frequently, and which occurred almost hourly, from day to day. I saw those who assumed the lordly look, as soon as the subject was mentioned. They put on the consequential air of high authority, and with the tone of emphatic decision, they pronounced others more than idiots, whilst at the time, it was evident that they did not know Alexander the great from Alexander the copper-smith. It was true of the most positive and the most overbearing in this controversy, that they were unacquainted with all ancient history, and would not know Peter the apostle from Peter the hermit, had you seriously tested the matter by particular examination. I was not surprised" that men should be uninformed. That this was so with most of our race, was no new discovery. Being igno. ant myself, to my own consciousness, I was not disposed to judge harshly of a man merely because he did not possess knowledge. I must have included myself in the same condemnation, had I spoken severely of the uninformed; but that those who had never read a hundred volumes of any thing, should so confidently, and so repeatedly sneer at the learned, and the gray-headed, and the meek, who had been toiling in a fifty years' research, began to make me suspect that men hated Christianity with a spontaneous and a special dislike. I

did not hear the ploughman deciding with oaths, sarcasm, and vehemence, in matters of navigation, wherein he was totally ignorant. I did not hear the apprentice boy pronouncing all who did not hold his theory of astronomy, deluded or hypocritical.

I doubted whether in any thing, (religion excepted,) men would so generally decide so quickly, and so haughtily, whilst they were uninformed.

After the most common order of objections against the Bible began to grow somewhat old and worn, a new class of jeers came into much admired fashion. I will give an example from the multitude.

In different parts of the world where fuel is scarce, there have been those of the poorest class who were in the habit of making a fire from dried manure and trash. This sun-dried manure did not only make a fire, but by such a fire their bread was often baked.

In order to apprise the Israelites of the poverty and wretchedness, to which they were certainly to be reduc. ed, Ezekiel was ordered to bake his bread with such fuel, and eat it in their sight. This was perhaps all in vision, but this does not matter, nor alter the case, nor change the point we have in view. The learned of France and of America, pretended to understand it, that the prophet was told to spread fresh manure on his bread and eat it. They wrote and so asserted it, again and again, for the perusal and the exultation of those who never would read the page of prophecy. They multiplied their joyous jests, and their untiring witticisms, on this favourite point, talking of the prophet's breakfast, of his sweetmeats, &c. &c. &c.

How much this (to those who used it,) pleasing and refined irony would have influenced me as I read it, Į

am unable to say; but unfortunately for my coadjutors, being the son of an old, praying man, who had compelled me to hear the book he loved, read twice every day, I knew that all the merriment and all the jeering was founded on a lie, and I do not remember that I ever laughed in the midst of our hilarity. I had built, what secmed to me, walls between me and Christianity. I had my strong objections, as I thought them, such as will be mentioned after a time, but those arguments which would have been powerful, only that they started in lies naked to all who had read the Bible thrice with attention, gave me more pain than pleasure.

But this example of a fondness for filthy jesting, is not the whole truth. It does not reach the summit of entire fact. A kind of indecent jesting still more indelicate, became much practised and more loved.

They would take some case of crime recorded in the Bible, some case of adultery, or of fornication, and name it, and repeat it, and place it in different attitudes with unusual delight. This was one more kind of warfare which did not fix my principles of infidelity. It rather rendered me more uneasy if I saw it settle the creed of others, for I knew well enough that the Bible nowhere enjoined adultery, praised incest, or recommended fornication. I remembered that if the book had given us the history of faultless men, we should have pronounced it lies, because the volume says there are none such, and because it would have contradicted our observation of the human race. I also recollected that if the history of individuals is given to us, we should prefer that the truth, and the whole truth, should be honestly narrated, rather than faults concealed and virtues extolled.

When I heard my companions of the hotel circle, seize upon some case of unchastity, recorded to the disgrace of a patriarch perhaps, and besmear it all over with the pollutions of a filthy imagination, and love to dwell upon it, and speak as though this was what the writers wished to teach, or what the scriptures recommended, I could not but see that there was an unfairness there, which proved that the alleged filthiness existed in the heart of the jester, and not on the page of scripture history. Indeed sometimes when I witnessed the self-esteem of my brethren in infidelity, their dictatorial puffing, united with ignorance visible to the unlearned, I could not help making secret and severe remarks upon them, for it was my day of haughty wickedness. I have said to myself in language yet more ungentle, that of which the following is the import: "Selfadmiring worm! an expert man could frame in half an hour, a more ingenious lie against any narrative that ever was written, than any which you are capable of repeating after the last one you heard talk."

Strange to tell, these discoveries, these facts, and even these feelings, had no further influence upon me than to strengthen my resolve to read further, and examine my old doubts with more accuracy.

CHAPTER LII.

MEANS OF RESCUE-VOLNEY'S RUINS.

After I had gone through all the writings of the renowned Voltaire, I could not find one argument or