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SECTION. II.

date of the Veidam, of the Shanscrit, or The pious Madame de Bourignon was any other of the ancient Asiatic books. sure that Adam was an hermaphrodite, It is important to remark, that the Jews like the first men of the divine Plato. were not permitted to read the first chapter God had revealed a great secret to her; of Genesis before they were twenty-five but as I have not had the same revela-years old. Many rabbis have regarded tion, I shall say nothing of the matter. the formation of Adam and Eve and their The Jewish Rabbis have read Adam's adventure as an allegory. Every celebooks, and know the names of his pre-brated nation of antiquity has imagined some similar one; and, by a singular ceptor and his second wife; but as I have not read our first parent's books, I concurrence, which marks the weakness shall remain silent. Some acute and of our nature, all have endeavoured to very learned persons are quite astonished explain the origin of moral and physical The Chalwhen they read the Veidam of the ancient evil, by ideas nearly alike. Brahmins, to find that the first man was deans, the Indians, the Persians, and the created in India, and called Adimo, which Egyptians, have accounted, in similar signifies the begetter, and his wife, Pro-ways, for that mixture of good and evil criti, signifying life. They say that the sect of the Brahmins is incontestably more ancient than that of the Jews; that it was not until a late period that the Jews could write in the Canaanitish language, since it was not until late that they established themselves in the little country of Canaan. They say that the Indians were always inventors, and the Jews always imitators; the Indians always ingenious, and the Jews always rude. They say it is very hard to believe that Adam, who was fair and had hair on their head, was father to the Negroes, who are entirely black, and have black wool. What, indeed, do they not say? As for me, I say nothing: I leave these researches to the reverend Father Berruyer, of the Society of Jesus. He is the most perfect Innocent I have ever known: the book has been burned, as that of a man who wished to turn the Bible into ridicule; but I am quite sure he had no such wicked end inning animal, they had no great difficulty in endowing it with understanding a speech.

view.

SECTION III!

The age for enquiring seriously whether or not knowledge was infused into Adam, had passed by; those who so long agitated the question, had no knowledge, either infused or acquired.

It is as difficult to know at what time the book of Genesis, which speaks of Adam, was written, as it is to know the

which seems to be a necessary appendage to our globe. The Jews, who went out of Egypt, rude as they were, had yet heard of the allegorical philosophy of the Egyptians. With the little knowledge thus acquired, they afterwards mixed that which they received from the Phonicians, and from the Babylonians during their long slavery. But as it is natural and very common for a rude nation to imitate rudely the conceptions of a polished people, it is not surprising that the Jews imagined a woman formed from the side of a man, the spirit of life breathed from the mouth of God on the face of Adam-the Tigris, the Euphrates, the Nile, and the Oxus, having all the same source in a garden, and the forbidden fruit, which brought death into the world, as well as physical and moral evil. Full of the idea which prevailed among the ancients, that the serpent was a very cun

This people, who then inhabited only a small corner of the earth, which they believed to be long, narrow, and flat, could easily believe that all men came from Adam. They did not even know that the Negroes, with a conformation different from their own inhabited immense regions; still less could they have any idea of America.

It is, however, very strange that the Jewish people were permitted to read the books of Exodus, where there are so Thany miracles which shock reason, yet were not allowed to read, before the age of twenty-five, the first chapter of Genesis, in which all is necessarily miracle, since the creation is the subject. Perhaps it was, because God, after creating the man and woman in the first chapter, makes them again in another, and it was thought expedient to keep this appearance of contradiction from the eyes of youth. Perhaps it is, because it is said, that God made man in his own image, and this expression gave the Jews too corporeal an idea of God. Perhaps it was because it is said, that God took a rib from Adam's side to form the woman;

ADORATION.

Is it not a great fault in some modern languages, that the same word which is used in addressing the Supreme Being, is also used in addressing a mistress? We not unfrequently go from hearing a sermon, in which the preacher has talked of nothing but adoring God in spirit and in truth, to the Opera, where nothing is to be heard but the charming object of my adoration, &e.

The Greeks and Romans, at least, did not fall into this extravagant profanation. Horace does not say say that he adores Lalage; Tibullus does not adore Delia in Petronius. nor is even the term adoration to be found

If anything can excuse this indecency, and the young and inconsiderate, feeling it is the frequent mention which is made their sides, and finding the right number in our operas and songs of the Gods of of ribs, might have suspected the author ancient fable. Poets have said that their of some infidelity. Perhaps it was, be-mistresses were more adorable than these Cause God, who always took a walk at false divinities; for which no one could noon in the garden of Eden, laughed at blame them. We have insensibly become Adam after his fall, and this tone of familiarised with this mode of expression, ridicule might tend to give youth too until at last, without any perception of great a taste for pleasantry. In short, the folly, the God of the universe is adevery line of this chapter furnishes very dressed in the same terms as an operaplausible reasons for interdicting the read-singer. ing of it; but such being the case, one But to return to the important part of cat very clearly see how it was that our subject.-There is no civilized nation the other chapters were besides, surprising that the Jews were permitted. It is, which does not render public adoration to God. It is true, that neither in Asia not to read this chapter until they were nor in Africa is any person forced to the twenty-five. One would think that it mosque or temple of the place; each one should first have been proposed to child-goes of his own accord. This custom of hood, which receives everything without assembling together should tend to unite examination, rather than to youth, whose the minds of men, and render them more other hand, the Jews of twenty-five years raging against each other, even in the pride is to judge and to laugh. On the gentle in society; yet have they been seen

to receive this chapter than inexperienced zealots who murdered their brethren ; and and strengthened, might be more fitted of Jerusalem was deluged with blood by

minds.

our churches have more than once been

We shall say nothing here of Adam's defiled by carnage.

second wife, named Lillah, whom the

ancient Rabbis have given him. It must that the Emperor is the Chief Pontiff, be confessed that we know very few and that the worship is august and simple.

In the article China, it will be seen

anecdotes of our family.

There are other countries in which it is simple without any magnificence, a

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among the reformers of Europe and in British America. In others, wax-tapers must be lighted at noon, although in the primitive ages they were held in abomination. A convent of nuns, if deprived of their tapers, would cry out that the light of the faith was extinguished, and the world would shortly be at an end. The Church of England holds a middle course between the pompous ceremonies of the Church of Rome and the plainness of the Calvinists.

Throughout the East, songs, dances, and torches, formed part of the ceremonies essential in all sacred feasts. No sacerdotal institution existed among the Greeks without songs and dances. The Hebrews borrowed this custom from their neighbours; for David sung and danced before the ark.

St. Matthew speaks of a canticle sung by Jesus Christ himself, and by his apostles, after their Passover. This canticle, which is not admitted into the authorised books, is to be found in fragments in the 237th letter of St. Augustine to bishop Chretius; and, whatever disputes there may have been about its authenticity, it is certain that singing was employed in all religious ceremonies. Mahomet found this a settled mode of worship among the Arabs; it is also established in India; but it does not appear to be in use among the lettered men of China. The ceremonies of all places have some resemblance { and some difference: but God is worshipped throughout the earth. Woe, assuredly, unto them who do not adore him as we do! whether erring in their tenets or in their rites! They sit in the shadow of death; but the greater their misfortune, the more are they to be pitied and supported.

It is indeed a great consolation for us, that the Mahometans, the Indians, the Chinese, the Tartars, all adore one only God; for so far they are our kindred. Their fatal ignorance of our sacred mysteries can only inspire us with tender compassion for our wandering brethren. Far from us be all spirit of persecution

which would only serve to render them irreconcilable.

One only God being adored throughout the known world, shall those who acknowledge him as their father never cease to present to him the revolting spectacle of his children detesting, anathematising, persecuting, and massacreing one another by way of argument?

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It is hard to determine precisely what the Greeks and Romans understood by adoring, or whether they adored Fauns, Sylvans, Dryads, and Naiads, as they adored the twelve superior Gods. It is not likely that Adrian's minion, Antinous, was adored by the Egyptians of later times with the same worship which they paid to Serapis; and it is sufficiently proved that the ancient Egyptians did not adore onions and crocodiles as they did Isis and Osiris. Ambiguity abounds everywhere and confounds everything we are obliged, at every word, to exclaim, What do you mean? we mus constantly repeat-Define your terms.

It is quite true that Simon, called the Magician, was adored among the Romans It is not more true that he was utterly unknown to them.

St. Justin, in his Apology, which wa as little known at Rome as Simon was tells us that this God had a statue erected on the Tyber, or rather near the Tyber between the two bridges, with this in scription-Simoni deo sancto. St Irenæu and Tertullian attest the same thing; bu to whom do they attest it? To peopl who had never seen Rome-to Africans to Allobroges, to Syrians, and to some o the inhabitants of Sichem. They ha certainly not seen this statue, the rea inscription on which was Semo sanco de fidio, and not Simoni sancto deo. They should at least have consulted Dionysiu of Halicarnassus, who gives this inscrip tion in his fourth book. Semo-sanco wa an old Sabine word, signifying half Go and half man: we find in Livy, Bon Semoni sanco censuerunt consecranda This God was one of the most ancient in Roman worship, having been consecrate

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by Tarquin the Proud; and was consi-
dered as the God of alliances and good
faith. It was the custom to sacrifice an
ex to him, and to write any treaty made
with a neighbouring people upon the skin.
He had a temple near that of Quirinus:
ferings were sometimes presented to
ham under the name of Semo the father,
and sometimes under that of Sancus fidius;
whence Ovid says in his Fasti-

Querelam nomas Sanco, Fidiove referrem,
As tibi, Semo pater.

to be a magician, as it is certain, that there was an Apollonius of Tyana. It is also true that this Simon, who was born in the little country of Samaria, gathered together some vagabonds, whom he persuaded that he was one sent by God; he baptized, indeed, as well as the Apostles, and raised altar against altar.

The Jews of Samaria, always hostile to those of Jerusalem, ventured to oppose this Simon to Jesus Christ, acknowledged by the Apostles and Disciples, all of whom were of the tribe of Benjamin or that of Judah. He baptised like them; but to the baptism of water he added fire, saying, that he had been foretold by John the Baptist in these words "He that cometh after me is mightier procured the erection of this statue, toge-than I; he shall baptise you with the ther with that of his Helena, by order of Holy Ghost and with fire." the emperor and senate.

Such was the Roman divinity, which, for so many ages, was taken for Simon the Magician. St. Cyril of Jerusalem had no doubts on the subject; and St. Augustin, in his first book of Heresies, ells us that Simon the Magician himself

This strange fable, the falsehood of which might so easily have been discovered, was constantly connected with another fable, which relates that Simon and St. Peter both appeared before Nero, and challenged each other which of them should soonest bring to life the corpse of a near relative of Nero's, and also raise himself highest in the air; that Simon caused himself to be carried up by devils in a fiery chariot; that St. Peter and St. Paul brought him down by their prayers; that he broke his legs, and in consequence died; and that Nero, being enraged, put

both St. Peter and St. Paul to death.

Simon lighted a lambent flame over the baptismal font with naptha, from the Asphaltic lake. His party was very strong; but it is very doubtful whether his disciples adored him; St. Justin is the only one who believes it.

Menander, like Simon, said he was

sent by God to be the saviour of men. All the false Messiahs, Barcochebas especially, called themselves sent by God; but not even Barcochebas demanded to be adored. Men are not often erected into divinities while they live; unless, indeed, they be Alexanders, or Roman emperors, who expressly order their

slaves so to do. But this is not, strictly

Abdias, Marcellinus, and Hegesippus, have each related this story, with a little difference in the details. Arnobius, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Sulpicius Severus, lavished on Octavius by Virgil and Philaster, St. Epiphanius, Isidorus of Horace. Damietta, Maximus of Turin, and several other authors, successively gave currency to this error, and it was generally adopted; until, at length, there was found at Rome a statue of Semo suncus deus fidius, and the learned father Ma

speaking, adoration; it is an extraordinary homage, an anticipated apotheosis, a flattery as ridiculous as those which are

billon dug

up

an ancient monument with the inscription, Semoni sanco deo fidio.

ADULTERY.

We are not indebted for this expression cheia, from which came the Latin machus, to the Greeks; they called adultery moiwhich we have not adopted. We owe it neither to the Syriac tongue nor to the Hebrew, a jargon of the Syriac, in which

was a Simon, whom the Jews believed adulteratio signified alteration-adulterIt is nevertheless certain, that there adultery is called niuph. In Latin,

ation, one thing put for another—a { The women of Lacedæmon, we are counterfeit, as false keys, false bargains, told, knew neither confession nor adulfalse signatures; thus he, who took posses- tery. It is true that Menelaüs had exsion of another's bed, was called adulter.perienced the intractability of Helen; but In a similar way, by antiphrasis, the Lycurgus set all right by making the name of coccyx, a cuckoo, was given to women common, when the husbands were the poor husband into whose nest a willing to lend them and the wives constranger intruded. Pliny, the naturalist, sented. Every one may dispose of his says, "Coccyx ova subdit in nidis alienis; own. In this case a husband had not to ita plerique alienas uxores faciunt matres" apprehend that he should foster in his -“ "the cuckoo deposits its eggs in the house the offspring of a stranger; all chilnests of other birds; so the Romans not dren belonged to the republic, and not to unfrequently make mothers of the wives any particular family, so that no one was of their friends." The comparison is not injured. Adultery is an evil only in as over just. Coccyx signifying a cuckoo, much as it is a theft; but we do not steal we have made of it cuckold, What a that which is given to us. The Lacedænumber of things do we owe to the monians, therefore, had good reason for Romans! But as the sense of all words saying that adultery was impossible among is subject to change, the term applied to them. cuckold, which, according to good grammar, should be the gallant, is appropriated to the husband. Some of the learned assert, that it is to the Greeks we owe the emblem of the horns, and that they bestowed the appellation of goat upon a husband, the disposition of whose wife resembled that of a female of the same species. Indeed, they used the epithet son of a goat in the same way as the modern vulgar do an appellation which is

much more literal.

not now say,

These vile terms are no longer made use of in good company. Even the word adultery is never pronounced. We do "Madame la Duchesse lives in adultery with Monsieur le Chavalier- Madame la Marquise has a criminal intimacy with Monsieur l'Abbé;" but we say, "Monsieur l'Abbé is this week the lover of Madame la Marquise."{ When ladies talk of their adulteries to their female friends, they say, "I confess I have some inclination for him." They used formerly to confess that they felt some esteem; but since the time when a certain citizen's wife accused herself to her confessor of having esteem for a counsellor, and the confessor inquired as to the number of proofs of esteem afforded, ladies of quality have esteemed no one, and gone but little to confession.

It is otherwise in our modern nations, where every law is founded on the principle of meum and tuum.

It is the greatest wrong, the greatest injury, to give a poor fellow children which do not belong to him, and lay upon him a burden which he ought not to bear. Races of heroes have thus been utterly bastardised. The wives of the Astolphos and the Jocondos, through a depraved appetite, a momentary weakness, have become pregnant by some deformed dwarf-some little page, devoid alike of heart and mind: and both the bodies and souls of the offspring have borne testimony to the fact. In some countries of Europe the heirs to the greatest names are little insignificant apes, who have in their halls the portraits of their pretended fathers, six feet high, handsome, well-made, and carrying a broad-sword which their successors of the present day would scarcely be able to lift. Important offices are thus held by men who have no right to them, and whose hearts, heads, and arms, are unequal to the burden.

In some provinces of Europe, the girls make love, without their afterwards becoming less prudent wives. In France, it is quite the contrary; the girls are shut up in convents, where, hitherto, they have

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