mythological, and similar books, an account of what is and has been entertained as religious belief by others, with whom, or with whose opinions, they have not come in contact. have no special wish to prove that my opinions are right and the prevailing ones wrong; my chief aim is to give data by which others may form a judgment for themselves. With this view I have systematically endeavoured to satisfy myself of the trustworthiness of the witnesses whom I call upon to testify to facts; to my knowledge, nothing has been suppressed which seems to me to bear upon my subject, nor is aught set down in malice.

In my next chapter I shall institute an inquiry into another important doctrine, held by Christians from their first existence until the present day, namely, the Existence and Ministration of Angels. Since the chapter was originally written, Dr. Kalisch has published an essay upon the same subject in the second part of his commentary upon Leviticus. I shall probably take the liberty of quoting from his pages; but, as we treat the matter from different points of view, I do not feel called upon to suppress my own work because he has preceded me. It gives me pleasure to feel and to know that fellow-workers in the same toilsome task, not only may help each other, but rejoice in the opportunity of so doing.

CHAPTER IX.

Angels. The ideas associated therewith. Why winged. Wishing-caps. Jehovah and His Angels made to walk by the historian. The belief in Angels incompatible with that of an omnipresent and omniscient God. Pictorial representations. Absurd conceptions of angelic wings. Angels want birds' tails. Men have tried to fly. Difference between birds and men. Arms and wings. A writer at fault about this world is not to be trusted in his accounts of another. Bats and similar mammals. The Devil better winged than Michael.-Yet Satan, a roaring lion, goes about as a bull with bat's wings. Angels and beetles. Harmony in creation. Strange idea of spirits. Spiritualism. Varieties of angelic forms. Not the products of lunacy. Angels and demigods. Egyptian ideas. Assyrian notions. Christian fancies. Birds and Men united in human celestialism. Persian Angels. Mithra winged. Angels in Persia twelve in number. Job, the work of a Persian Jew. Angels referred to therein. Darius had a consecrated table. Babylonian belief. Daniel. Greece and Rome. Gods, Demigods, Angels, and Saints. Christian demigods. Angels' duties. Book-keeping, clerks of wind and weather;-policeagents. The inventor of Heaven admired centralization. Babylonian tutelary Angels. Christian ones. Christian saintly imagery. The bleeding heart of Mary. A funny Chaldean goddess to match. Popish saints have an aureole, but no wings. Francis of Assisi could make stigmata but could not change his arms into pinions. Babylonian and Papal emblems identical. Development of Angels amongst the Jews in Babylon. Angelic mythology founded upon Astronomy and Astrology. Planets are Archangels. Angels and Devils mentioned on bowls found in Mesopotamia by Layard. The probable meaning of their names. Hebrews adopted Chaldee beliefs: evidence. Juvenal. Jews and Chaldeans. Sadducees and Pharisees. Sadducees and our Reformers compared. A legal anecdote. Angels in Ancient Italy. Our angelic forms are of Etruscan origin. Some such beings had three pairs of wings. Etruscans had guardian angels for infants and children. Angels carry various matters. Angels of marriage. Angels for heirs of salvation. Etruscan angel of marriage. Jewish match-maker. Raphael. Description of an Etruscan painting in tomb of Tarquin. The angel of death. The Greek theology. The Greeks taught the Jews. The Jews never taught other nations. Greeks had a supreme god and a host of inferior deities. War in heaven. Titans-giants. Children of the sons of God

and daughters of men.

Greek origin of Christian and Miltonian angelic mythology. The begotten Son of God (Hercules born to Jupiter by Alcmena). Restores the kingdom to his father. Greek ideas of demons. Hebrew and Christian ideas of good and bad spirits. The recording angel. Demigods and archangels. Greek deities not winged except Mercury. Some minor gods have pinions.-Pegasus has wings. Hymen, the angel of the covenant of marriage. Genius loci and cherubim. Alcmena and Mary. Jupiter and "the power of the Highest." Roman mythology. Romans adopted the Etruscan form of angels. Christians adopted it from Romans. The Christian crozier is the Etruscan and Roman lituus, or "divining staff." Rome and London both avid of religious novelty. Instability in religion a proof of infidelity in the old. Hence a desire for infallibility, to crush doubt. Angelic mythology of the Bible. Christians use words in parrot fashion. Words ought not to stand for ideas. Prayer-cylinder in Thibet. Contradictions. Figures and metaphors are theologian cities of refuge. Prophet who says that he converses with an angel-is he to be credited? A spirit without flesh and bones, cannot move his tongue to utter words. Drunkards see "blue devils"-they are unreal. If the appearance of a man in a dream is an illusion, his words are so too. Absurd ideas about phantoms. Notice of the deeds of a few Hebrew angels. A resume of their history. Inspiration did not reveal angels. Human fancy did. Conspiracy in Heaven! The Genesis of Hell. What sort of a place it is supposed to be. God made the Devil, so man must multiply his imps! Lucifer taught Elohim! Old Testament less knowing than the New. The Devil not a fallen angel. The book of Enoch. Deductions drawn.

THERE is scarcely a single article in our current belief which does not prove, on examination, to have descended to us from Pagan sources, or to be identical with heathen beliefs older than the Hebrew. The idea of a personal God dwelling in some locality, vaguely described as "Heaven," in which He reigns, and rules, like a modern emperor, has been found to exist in almost every nation whose language we know, and whose history has descended to us. Human weakness makes it so. Such a ruler has been called Brahma, Siva, Vishnu, Mahadeva, Bel or Baal, Melech or Moloch, Ormazd, Elohim, Jah, Jehovah, Jupiter, Yahu, God, and a variety of other names; but He has always been hailed as king, and lord of all creation, having a throne beside which attend a number of servitors, standing before and around him, all ready to do

his bidding and to go wherever they are sent. As a potentate rules on earth over provinces far distant from the central government, so the heavenly monarch was, and is yet, supposed to have "viceroys," "lieutenants," or "vicars," who have authority delegated to them, and exercise it under his superintendence.

A scheme such as we have described does not seem to have existed from the first amongst the Jews; for, when men of reasoning powers conceived the idea of a Creator, He was regarded as omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent. It became gradually interwoven with theology; for when men of limited capacity thought of such a vast empire as the universe, they, under the influence of a grovelling anthropomorphism, recognized, as they imagined, the necessity of furnishing it with a system of acquiring intelligence, and promulgating decrees which should be far superior to any postal plan devised by human kings. Amongst the Kaffirs, men with missives race against time, and by means of relays, messages are sent to vast distances in a comparatively short period. By means of horses, skilfully engaged beforehand, an ancient Persian tyrant could make his commands known all over his vast empire in the course of a few days, and moderns, by means of railways and the electric wire, can forward information at a still more rapid rate.

Yet, to old theologians, and even to observant men of the present day, all these means of communication between God and his subjects seemed to be slow. We may, for example, notice a fly buzzing round the head of the running Kaffir, or the ears of the fleetest of Persian steeds, and a swallow on the wing outstrips a railway express. The velocity of the carrierpigeon has long been known. All these were, therefore, regarded as swift-winged creatures, and fit for message bearers. As then, it was observed, that of all beings who could move, the bird is the swiftest in its movement from

place to place, it was very natural that dogmatists should represent the messengers of the great king with powerful pinions, like those of the eagle or the albatross. In this manner the addition of wings to any mythological character sufficed to show that he who bore them was a celestial being; one who stood before the supreme ruler, and received from him delegated power-either as vicar, viceroy, or messenger.

Thus the Greeks depicted Mercury with wings on his legs and elsewhere, and the Hebrews gave large pinions to their seraphim-sometimes as many as six being used by each (Isa. vi. 2.) The Etruscans pictured their angels with two wings only, and we have followed, implicitly, their lead. But the Hindoos did not in early times adopt ideas such as this. They noticed the speed of the sunbeam, the velocity of the hurricane, and the rapidity of thought; and since they saw many birds borne away by the wind, they imagined that celestial messengers must travel in a corresponding fashion. For one who rode upon the clouds of the typhoon, pinions were useless. I have in my possession a plate,* in which the celestial attendants on the god are all wingless, but have sex. The name given to the attendants referred to is "Apsaras," who are described as having been produced in myriads when the ocean was churned. They are said to reside between the waters above the firmament and those below it, and are represented as being of consummate beauty and elegance of form, their business being to attend upon the gods and give them pleasure, by singing, music, dancing, and in every possible way. They are sometimes represented as being of both sexes, all having the power to change their gender. Generally, they are described as females, and take the business of Venus in the Greek heaven, and of the Houris in that

* Plate x., vol. 1, "Recherches sur l'origine, &c., des Arts de la Grèce," D'Harcanville, London, 1785. The author states that the plate is copied from Le Voyage de Niebuhr, T. 1, Tab. vi.