It is not extraordinary that we should find these absurdities in a human composition. It would be more extraordinary if we did not; but it remains to be explained, why the discourses of Jesus exhibit no similar traces of a mind bewildering itself among things of which it had no experience, and representing as heavenly truths the dreams of an earthly imagination.

With regard to the punishments of another world, we find the same discreet reserve in the Christian Scriptures. The most awful retribution is declared; and the fears of unbelieving man are excited by allusions to all those miseries which we here most shudder at; but hell is not described. We are told of "the fire that never shall be quenched; where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched;" of "outer darkness, where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth;" of "the everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels;" of "the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, whence the smoke of their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever: and they have no rest day nor night." But the subject

heaven. Mohammed, however, to enhance the value of paradise with his Arabians, chose rather to imitate the indecency of the Magians, than the modesty of the Christians, in this particular."-Sale's Prelim. Disc. p. 101. See Koran, ch. lv.; to quote which would greatly corroborate my argument, if I were not unwilling to disgust the reader.

1 Mark ix. 44. Matt. viii. 12. Matt. xxv. 41. 2 Rev. xiv. 11.

is left in these obscure generalities; and the Apostles, instead of enlarging, as a natural temptation might have led them to do, upon the texts thus left them by their Master, confine themselves to the most modest and prudent statements upon this tremendous theme. They denounce, as was their commission, the "terrors of the Lord," "indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil;" but they wrap up these terrors and this anguish in the general expressions of the forfeiture of the heavenly inheritance, "the blackness of darkness for ever," and "everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord." In short, instead of yielding to imagination, and giving way to the allurements of ambitious descriptions, either of future punishment or future reward, they rather surprise us by their reserve.

Not so Mohammed. He has, "in his Koran and traditions, been very exact in describing the various torments of hell, which, according to him, the wicked will suffer, both from intense heat and excessive cold."1

"Unto those who treasure up gold and silver, and employ it not for the advancement of God's true religion, denounce a grievous punishment. On the day of judgment their treasures shall be intensely heated in the fire of hell, and their foreheads, and

1 Sale's Prelim. Disc. 92.

their sides, and their backs shall be stigmatized therewith; and their tormentors shall say, This is what ye have treasured up for your souls; taste, therefore, that which ye have treasured up."1

"Those who believe not, shall have garments of fire fitted to them; boiling water shall be poured on their heads; their bowels shall be dissolved thereby, and also their skins; and they shall be beaten with maces of iron. So often as they shall endeavour to get out of hell, because of the anguish of their torments, they shall be dragged back into the same; and their tormentors shall say unto them, Taste ye the pain of burning.” "Woe be, on that day, unto those who accused the prophets of imposture! It shall be said unto them, Go ye into the punishment which ye denied as a falsehood: go ye into the shadow of the smoke of hell, which shall arise in three columns, and shall not shade you from the heat, neither shall it be of service against the flame; but it shall cast forth sparks as big as towers, resembling yellow camels in colour." 3

This is a specimen, and only a short specimen,

1 Koran, ch. ix. p. 153.

2 Koran, ch. xxii. p. 276.

3 Koran, ch. lxxviii. p. 478. I have made these quotations the more freely, because I believe few persons, comparatively, know what the Koran really contains. They understand that it is a successful imposture, which, like Christianity, has covered a wide surface of the earth; and this operates to injure Christianity, by familiarizing us to an idea of successful imposture. But if the original records were consulted, if Mohammed were read instead of Gibbon, the imposture would become a powerful auxiliary to the truth.

compared with the numerous passages to the same effect, which occur in the Koran, of the manner in which the imagination is likely to wanton and riot, when it enters upon the mysterious field of future reward and punishment. The Christian writers themselves of the second and third century often afford us a similar example, and appal us by the minuteness with which they delineate the undescribable transactions of the day of judgment, and its awful consequences.1 Scripture alone is temperate; -intelligible, as far as its religious effects require that the subject should be explained: yet neither alluring the fancy by luxuriant images, nor disgusting it by terrific descriptions. Yet, apart from his divinity, there seems no reason why Jesus and his followers should have differed from those whose inferiority to him every reader must acknowledge. The subject is a favourite with the vulgar; and he addressed his instructions to the poor. The Eastern writers delight in allegory, and figures, and highly-coloured representations. And he was an Oriental teacher. Even Mohammed's descriptions are, in many instances, traced to Jewish origin: and Jesus was brought up in the midst of those ideas and fables which the Jews had engrafted upon their authentic Scriptures. So that if we persist in supposing that all set out under

1 See, in particular. Tertull. de Spectaculis, c. 30. Lactant. Instit. vii. 21.

the same circumstances, no rational account can be given why he should be free from the errors which we immediately detect in others.1

2. Another subject of great delicacy and difficulty which meets us at the entrance of religion, is the degree of human liberty, and its compatibility with divine foreknowledge and government. Our reason tells us that we must be free, "else how shall God judge the world?" Yet our reason assures us likewise, that the governor of the world could not maintain his supremacy, if the agency of man were subject to no restraint, or bounded by no limits. Again, we are conscious of freedom, conscious that we do of our own voluntary determination choose or refuse the

1 Dr. Hey has made a similar observation respecting the character and the miracles of Jesus. He speaks of the danger of detection when any one undertakes to draw a character of a superior; and the greater the superiority, the greater the difficulty. "The absurdities," he adds, "into which a fictitious narrative would run, would be greater still, if the character feigned was something more than human : here the author's taste for prodigies would display itself: his deity would be sure to do nothing that a mere man could do, nothing that would be dictated by plain common sense." With respect to miracles, he observes; " It seems undeniable, that if the Evangelists had in. vented the account of the miracles they related, those miracles would have been as idle and foolish as those related by some of the ancient fathers; for the fathers had many of them much better education than the Evangelists. Inventing miracles is treading on dangerous ground; I know no one, who would not, in such an attempt, even with the greatest improvements the world has ever had, run into absurd pomp and ostentation, something remote from human nature and common sense."-Lectures, B. I. ch. xiii. sect. x.