SECTION XII.

THAT THE GOSPEL NARRATIVES ARE DERIVED FROM THE IDOLATROUS FICTIONS OF INDIA, EGYPT, GREECE, AND ITALY.

HERE the reverend Doctor's Christian indignation loses all bounds -'tis evident that there is something in the Manifesto that stings him into madness. Its writer, he says, 66 seems determined to post himself as the most false of all that have ever disgraced the use of language." Alas! that the reverend Doctor should seem so determined to dispute that pre-eminence! I believe it would cost a cleverer man than I am, a struggle to win the paragonship of lying from the professor of Homerton College. For instance, were an ordinary hatchet-thrower to do his best in this way, he could only tell his lie off and off, and the first fool he met with would find it out, and there's an end on't; but the Doctor-the Reverend Doctor of Divinity, beats all the Bachelors and Masters of Arts in Europe; and in the very act, and by the very means of making your hair stand at end with horror at the charges he brings against others, is doing it himself all the while his way being to set Gawkey's mouth open with wonderment at the accusation that he alleges, and then down his throat, in a trice, goes-"far more than sufficient."

For your life, you would have thought that he was honest,

END OF SECTION XII.

SECTION XIII.

THE INDIAN JESUS CHRIST.

1." SOME, many, or all of these events (scil. the events related in the New Testament) had been previously related of the gods and goddesses of Greece and Rome, and more especially of the Indian idol, CHRISHNA, whose religion, with less alteration than time and translations have made in the Jewish scriptures, may be traced in every dogma, and every ceremony of the evangelical mythology." Such are the words of the fourth proposition of the Manifesto. Now, how are they answered by the Reverend D.D.? Why, in the perfectly evangelical way of doing it. They are at once, without any shadow of attempted disproof, rudely and d'sgustingly pronounced-" an impudent falsehood;" even in the very sentence which the Doctor has cast on purpose to carry down a falsehood of such transcendent impudence, as nothing but the hurly-burly of ruffianly abuse could have screened from our detection, and sheltered from our scorn.

2. The numerous and well-known school-books, entitled Pantheons, Mythological Dictionaries, &c. do not contain refutations, much less ample ones, of the proposition of the Manifesto; nor is it possible that they could have done so, they themselves being of earlier date than the Manifesto. Nor do they affect to refute the sense and purport of the proposition, as it may have been previously maintained by other writers. Nor was it compatible with any purpose of those dictionaries, that they should have done so ; nor would they have been admitted into schools, or have been proper for the use of schools if they had, as being rendered thereby books of polemical controversy, rather than of classical instruction. Moreover, being generally edited by clergymen, or persons directly concerned and interested in the universal cheat of "training up a child in the way he should go"-they have all of them the most direct and constraining interest to oblige them laboriously and vigilantly to stand off and forbear, even from the outermost purlieus of such a refutation. To have refuted, would have been to have suggested the resemblance. And as the modest asterisks in the Delphin classics, indicating the passages which are too indecent and obscene to be translated, always serve to direct the boy's eye to the very passages which he is sure to understand better than any other part of the book, even because his research is provoked by the effort made to elude it so an attempt in any way to have shown that there was no resemblance between the Apollo of mythology and the Jesus of the New Testament, the Bacchus and the Moses, would have shown more than the reverend editors could wish to be seen. It was to their purpose to put forth so much of the Pagan mythology as was necessary to enable the stupid lout to make some hold-together sense of the text of Pagan authors, but nothing was further from their purpose than to play at asterisks with him on such a delicate subject, or to have startled him into perceptions, suspicions, and investigations, that would have been fatal at once to his loutishness and to his faith.

The Doctor's assertion then, is not only NOT TRUE, as he knows himself, but not within the measures of a probability of being true, as any body else may know.

3. And to tell his readers, as he does," that if they receive the proposition of the Manifesto as true (which really is so) they must have sacrificed reason and conscience to the darkest depravity of soul," (p. 54.) only shews that he must have calculated upon finding readers as patient of being insulted, as they were easy to be deceived. He offers them blustering for their understandings, and defiance for their feelings. His style betrays his habits, his language tanks of his shop. He is used to address a congregation for whom ANY THING will do-a congregation delighted to be deceived, and charmed to be abused. Go it, Doctor! tell 'em, he that believeth not may be damned-tell 'em what "hell-de

serving sinners" they are-tell 'em that it's of the Lord's mercy only that they are not consumed-tell 'em that they are all as an unclean thing, and all their righteousnesses are as filthy rags! Give it 'em-lay it on. In one word, for every thing that is suitable, both for them and you-GOSPEL them. Those who will read both sides of the question, will not endure to be charged with depravity of soul, whatever their decision may be.

4. CHRISHNA. So is spelt the name of the favourite god of the Indian women, in the Manifesto; but Krishna, or Krishnu, is the way in which the Doctor chooses to spell it; charging the Manifesto Writer with" having altered the spelling of the word, apparently with the base design of giving it a closer resemblance to the sacred name of our Divine Lord." (p. 54.) Oh! for the sacred name of our Divine Lord! But here again with all this cant, this severe charge of "altering with a base design," is brought against the Writer of the Manifesto, like all the other charges in this scurrilous answer, to cheat and bilk the reader out of the exercise of his impartiality, and to make his own falsehood slip down unperceived in the torrent of his invective against another. For, all the alteration in the spelling of the name, and consequently all the baseness and design of that altered spelling, happens to be his own. And his apparent design, too apparent, indeed, to be concealed, was, by altering the spelling, which he has done, and I have not, to suppress and keep back from observance, the close resemblance of the names of the idol of the Indian, and the Divine Lord of the European women.

The spelling of the name in the Asiatic Researches, by Sir William Jones (the fountain-head, and first and highest authority, from which I quoted it) will be found to be, not Krishna, nor Krishnu, but as it is exhibited in the Manifesto, CHRISHNA. Sir William Jones is, on all hands, admitted to be the most competently informed, and most learned investigator of this recondite subject; and in addition to his being on all hands admitted to be one of the most accomplished philologers and prodigies of intellectual acquirements that ever breathed, if not the facile princeps of the whole world, in these respects; he was also a sincere and ardent Christian. He expressly avows and maintains his conviction as a Christian, in so many words" the adamantine pillars of our faith cannot be shaken by any investigation of Heathen Mythology." And in another passage" I, who cannot help believing the divinity of the Messiah, from the undisputed antiquity, and manifest completion of many prophecies, &c. am obliged, of course, to believe the sanctity of the venerable books to which that SACRED PERSON refers."—Vol. 1, p. 233.

Yet the words of Sir William Jones, this unquestionably first, highest and best authority on the subject, are-and I pray the readers observance, that I give even his spelling of the words;

"That the name of CHRISHNA, and the general outline of his story, were long anterior to the birth of our Saviour, and probably to the time of Homer, we know very certainly."—Asiatic researches, Vol. I. p. 259. I ask the reader then to direct his researches to those researches! I ask the Christian to say, whether he can suspect, that this Christian writer would have spelt the name CHRISHNA rather than Krishna, or Krishnu, with a base design of producing an apparent resemblance where there was none in reality? I ask his candour to decide, whether this unquestionably sincere Christian would have spelt the name as he has done, without the most constraining evidence to determine his mind, that that was the essentially correct spelling? and whether, after his long residence in India, and laborious studies into the Asiatic Mythologies, he would have spoken so positively, without having grounds and reasons for doing so, that are not to be yielded to the arbitrary conjectures or impudent denials of subsequent critics, of interested, crafty quibblers, who want to get out of it now at any rate, and who smarting under the irresistible inferences which we have drawn; wish their own man at the devil, for having given us such good ground for our inferences; and now forsooth, that the spell tells against them, they won't give their prodigy of learning credit for knowing how to spell. Mr. Beard, the Unitarian opponent of my forty-fourth oration, in which I first put forth this important argument, had consulted the authority. He presumed not to deny that the original name of the Indian idol was indeed spelt CHRISHNA, but denies the resemblance. It was too bold a stroke, with the text of Sir William Jones before him, to let down his sledge hammer upon CHRISHNA -so he claps the Latin termination us, to CHRIST, making it CHRISTUS, and thus gets a syllable further off from the suspicious resemblance. "In the names CHRISHNA and CHRISTUS, there are four letters similar, and six dissimilar" says he, "and therefore the two words are not identical." See his 3d Letter to the Rev. Robert Taylor, p. 85. Reader! see what Latin can do! though by the bye it seems to spoil a man's arithmetic. Six and four used to be ten, but an' if a man had not more learning than wit, he could count but eight in Christus, even with its Latin termination. But, take away the Asiatic termination na from Chrishna, and let Christ stand in plain English, and Chrish and Christ are like enough to pass, the one for the ghost of the other. But, Oh no! is the cry-out of the Evangelical mystics, "Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves should never tremble."

"5. From a few and distant resemblances," says our author, in the midst of" a chaos of acts and qualities the most opposite, it would be highly unreasonable to draw the conclusion that there was any real conformity in history or character."

This is admitting something. The Rev. Mr. Beard, an infinitely more formidable opponent, and it would be no compliment to any man to say a more respectable one than Dr. Smith, admits the resemblance of four good points out of the round dozen for which I had, in my Clerical Review-a work which I published in Ireland-stoutly contended. He admits that

I. Chrishna was in danger of being put to death in his infancy, a tyrant at the time of his birth having ordered all new-born males to be slain.

II. Chrishna performed miracles.

III. Chrishna preached.

IV. Chrishna washes the feet of the Brahmins.

Now the reader has only to recollect the fable of the Lion and the Statuary, and its moral will admonish him, that as the man would certainly not have been uppermost, if the beast had been the carver; so in this exhibition of the rival claims of Christ and Chrishna, he is to be on the qui-vive, for the opposite motives and interests of the opposing parties, and so make the corresponding deductions for the colourings they will severally lay on their respective pictures, according as they wish to conceal or to expose the resemblance in question. Not only will the Christian artists lay on the vermilion upon the cheek of their God, but they'll lose no sly opportunity of throwing me over a patch of lampblack upon mine. I shall have hard work to get an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth from them: the very same line which they shall say is crooked upon my canvass, shall pass for straight on theirs. Exempli gratia-Does my Chrish wash the feet of the Brahmins his disciples? Why to be sure it was an obscene, disgraceful, and contemptible action, and none but a slave or a fool would have done it, and I cannot deny it. But, catch we their Chrish in the self same act,-Oh, then it was infinite condescension and divine humility.

Does my Chrish spend a little of his leisure time with the milkmaids and rustic damsels in dancing, sporting, and playing on the flute? why the very worst construction is put on it, and they declare that notwithstanding his own preaching to the contrary, he exhibited an appearance of excessive libertinism.

But their Chrish may have his sweethearts, Mary and Martha: his Magdalene, (none of the most reserved of ladies) his Joan and Susan and many others, who whatever other attentions they may have paid him " did also minister to him of their substance ;" and scandal must not hint what it mustn't hint.-Luke viii. 3.

Does my Chrish breathe a vein occasionally, or cut a throat or

*Nobody knows much about this Susan, but Joan was certainly another man's wife. A good example this, for our itinerant preachers to set before the ladies of their congregations, to rob their husbands to support a vagabond; would'nt it have been more honourable of Jesus, to have made a few loaves and fishes for ni own use?