Jew production called bible," you will find a key to these and all similar enormities, Through the mind-enslaving influence of this vile spawn of an accursed priesthood men are made the ready tools of churches, courts, and factions. God-worship, like party, is the "madness of many for the gain of the few," ties: the one asserting that man possesses a the Jew-begotten bible, peruse the Jew-respirit superadded to but not inherent in brainjected gospel. In that “revoltingly odions added to it, yet having no necessary connection with it-producing material changes yet immaterial-destitute of any of the known properties of matter-in fact, an immaterial something, which in one word means nothing, producing all the cerebral functions of man, yet not localised, not susceptible of proof; the other party contending that the belief in spiritualism fetters and ties down physiological investigation that man's intellect is prostrated by the domination of metaphysical speculation-that we have no evidence of the existence of an essence, and that organised matter is all that is requisite to produce the multitudinous manifestations of human and brute cerebrations. The concluding sentiment is still more strongly enunciated, in the following expres sion: "We contend that mind has but an imaginary existence-that we have to consider matter only." A more estimable contribution to phrenological and mental science generally does not exist, and it will fully repay not only perusal but study. T. P. A SCOURGE FOR THE GOD No crime in the calendar of vice has long lacked a votary among the blood-stained fol lowers of god-priests and priest-gods. The illustrious in immorality, those who have been execrated in heathen records as prodigals in vice--the Neros, Caligulas, and Dominitans of classic page, hide their diminished heads, and crouch bumiliated before the superior genius for turpitude of the favourites of god. The "Newgate Calendar" of modern time is innocence compared with the Newgate ca lendar of the Jew-book. A great nati should never engage in a little war, so the great rascals of holy writ would scorn to med. dle with minor peccadilloes. Old sins ex. out, and beaten track of crime had lost its hausted, they imagined new. The old, wordcharms. They sighed for new realms of vice, as for the "flesh-pots of Egypt." The or dinary gratification of a wholesome appeti ceased to attract. The stews and way-side harlots lost their power of pleasing. Hornd MONGERS.. self-pollutions, a loathsome intercourse, like "We'll lash the rascals naked through the world." with like, sprang up, which makes the imagi LIKE produces like. By the fruits you may nation recoil and the flesh creep to comment know the tree. From the holy Biblical tree upon! Unsated still with their abominations are abundantly displayed the fruits of Christ- these god-led miscreants traversed the bounds ian loving kindness. The upas tree of christ- of all preconceived impurities. The numerous ianity has produced by its pestilential miasma varieties of filthy commerce were even now hecatombs of victims. "Christianity is part found insufficient for the truculent goddites. and parcel of the law of the land," say its By these god-governed, priest-led pietists only, expounders. Right, it is the leaven of in their disgusting records alone, do we learn christianity that fouls and ferments the whole the horrors that the most prurient imagina mass. SOUTHWELL, HOLYOAKE, and the tions of modern days would not even have ADAMSES know it full well. They are conceived. This pattern people it was who "practical men." They know by experience descended to the region of the brute species, what it is to slake the Christians' thirst for instigated by those monstrous lusts, to gratify vengeance. They feel what it is to be the which all other imaginable devices had failed. last stimulants to the palled and jaded appe- A precious example of a chosen people, they tites of the bigot god-believers. They have --a notable specimen of a glorious godship, discovered what it is to be made a peacehe. "Sure such a pair were never seen." offering on the altar of the three-headed Cer- A holy ghost in the form of a pigeon, im. berus-god. Christians set a watch on them-pregnating a human virgin, producing a manChristians informed against them-Christians god or a god-man by the intercourse, 00prejudiced the public mind against them, fal- eternal with himself, the same as himsel!, sified, slandered, and defamed them-Christ-sitting at his own right hand, co-equal with ians instituted a mock trial, governed by mock laws-Christians surrounded them by legal fictions! By Christian pay were the hireling lawyers retained-by Christian witnesses confronted-by Christian scribes misrepresented-by Christian juries found guilty -by Christian judges condemned! Whence is this complicated machinery of cunning, fraud, force, meanness, espionage, tyranny, ignorance, and insolence ? Open 346 himself and the pigeon-yet not one god, and one man, and one pigeon, nor three gods, nor three men, nor three pigeons-but one god; inseparable yet separated; indivisible yet di vided; infinite yet sitting on a cloud; eternal yet begotten, suckled, and crucified; spiritual yet sweating blood; incomprehensible yet berry Diddle, who had hurried to be in time Let us suppose a Lord Fopdoodle, or a Sir Da grand dinner-party of corinthians of the highest clam expounded every seventh day by myriads of black-coated, red-coated, blue-coated, petti coated, surpliced, breeched, and turbaned plundering, hypocritical, bloodsucking, godly impostors ! Jehovah as a pigeon with the virgin, Jupiter as a swan with Leda! Pah! What filthy incongruities the goddites conjure up. The heathen mythology we laugh at or admire-it is no more. The Christian mythology we loath and detest-it is yet current. A stimulating, spirit-stirring fact is yet to be proclaimed. The god idea has sustained a terrific shock ! The JEW-GOD has been hurled from the clonds; pulled out of the "burning bush ;" his " glory has been stript from him; his face no more shines;" his loins no more have the "colour of amber," the " appearance of fire" and "brightness round about;" his flaming "sword" is drawn from between his teeth; his " arm " is no more "stretched" out; his back parts" are as mysterious and invisible as all his other parts. He is dethroned, he is a by-word, an impotent phantazm, conjured up by swindling priests to bally, amuse, or delude addle-pated gapers! The puppet destroyed, the pence will no longer Jingle in the money-box. ghost god is burked by them still more unceremoniously than the Christ-god. With many Christians of the first water he is becoming quite unfashionable. In the upper regions (no matter where I got the news) such is the state of public opinion, that he has been obliged to cage with Virgil's unclean birds, and if by accident he should ever come within eye-shot of St. Agnes, he is compelled to hop off with his head under his wing. Our own dear granny, Herald, would blush to her very boddice, her time-honoured visage would change from dusky yellow to brownish red were the doings of the Jew girl and holy pigeon transferred to an English ecclesiastical court, and an action for crim. con. were brought by Joseph, the carpenter, against "god the holy ghost." So much for the holy | ghost and his morality ! The fact is, the whole firm is becoming bankrupt, God, Christ, Ghost, and Co., and must speedily be erased from our mythological directory, as they have already been expunged from the pages of Reason, whose Oracle alone shall henceforth be consulted. I have another rod in pickle at their service next week. M. Q. R. THEORY OF REGULAR GRADATION, (Continued from page 295.) The CHRIST-GOD has been smothered in his swaddling clothes; discomfited in the temple with the doctors; treadwheeled for stealing the wheat and the donkey; confuted THE class reptilia, or the next but one in in the doctrines of self-prostration and passive which we find man, presents a tolerably per obedience. The Christ-god has been stript fect form of skeleton. In the anterior exof his title and his cross; has been denied his tremity of the chelonia (tortoises and turtles) identity, and deprived of a local habitation we distinguish scapula, and clavicle, united and a name. He has been bereft of his virgin by sutures, or seams (of these there are mother, of his heavenly father, and of his three called true, from having serrated or ghostly begetter. The remaining chance of jagged edges, and two called false or squahistorical personality, by concubinage, bas- mous sutures, from the bones which form tardy, or the peculiar Jew crime, commerce them, over-lapping each other, as in the with brutes, has been removed. The Jew-scales of fishes). There are also carpal and Christ has given way to the BrahminicalChrist. There remains but a name, vox et præterea nihil. What former doughty and matter-of-fact historians left unfinished Strauss has completed. The Christ-god is demolished, and a finishing-stroke put to his bombastical and mischievous pretences. metacarpal bones, and phalanges of the thumb and fingers. The femur, or thighbone, presents indications of trochanters, as in man (to run or roll, a process of the thigh bone, the muscles of which run a roll). The skeleton of the ophidia (serpents) consists of little more than a vertebral column, The HOLY-GHOST-GOD has lost his repu- possessing such a degree of mobility as enatation, no decent saint would be seen in his bles them to creep with speed along the surcompany, his character is clean gone. Se. face, to spring into the air, to climb trees, ducing an innocent girl is bad enough, but and to combat with and conquer their prey. the licentious libertinism of corrupting the The vertebræ are more numerous in this than carpenter's wife, and the unbounded impu- in any other class of animals, being 49 in the dence of swearing she was a virgin after being blind worm, 201 in the rattle-snake, and 316 "in the straw," is beginning to be fully un- in the coluber natrix. The ribs extend from derstood and appreciated. The Unitarians the atlas to the anus, and are 32 pairs in wont hear mention of his name. The holy - | the blind worm, 175 in the rattle-snake, and should arrive in a state of perspiration, wiping his phix, and exclaiming that he was in a bloody sweat, What a consternation and turning up of eyes it would casion, with the stamp of downright blackguard on haracter for ever after.- Yahoo. 204 in the coluber natrix. They are all false, there being no rudiment of sternum, or breast bone, to which the true ribs in man are joined. In the blind worm only are faint traces of shoulder and pelvis. In the sauria (lizards) we meet with a more perfect development of skeleton than in the last, as they possess a sternum, a scapula, and pelvic apparatus. The humerus is expanded at its extremities, the same form as in man. In the skeletons of the crocodiles of the Nile, alligators, and other reptiles that swim by lateral movements of a muscular tail and long webbed feet, their long bones are filled with a thin oily matter. The muscles of the head are strong; and in the rattle-snake and others, a portion of the temporal extends forward to embrace the poison-gland, and force its secretion into the perforated fang. A rudiment of diaphragm (the transverse muscle which separates the thorax from the abdomen) may be perceived in the dragons and geckos; and in the prehensile tongue of the chameleon there resides a beautiful muscular apparatus which governs its stealthy movements in obtaining his food, and as Sir C. Bell aptly describes it, he lies more still than the dead leaf, his skin is like the bark of a tree, and takes the hue of surrounding objects. Whilst other animals have excitement conforming to their rapid motions, the shrivelled face of the chameleon hardly indicates life; the eyelids are scarcely parted; he protrudes his tongue with a motion so imperceptible towards the insect, that it is touched and caught more certainly than by the most lively ac tion. In the chelonia, the muscles of the extremities together with those of the shoulders and pelvis are well marked, whilst those of the jaws, lips, and chest are almost wholly absent. In this class of animals we perceive a still higher grade of development than was met with in the amphibia; the ventricle is partly divided by a septum (a hedge, the fleshy substance which divides the right and left ventricles of the heart) into two compartments corresponding in most particulars to the two ventricles of warm-blooded animals. In some the septum is so imperfect as to be incapable of preventing the admixture of the blood derived from both auricles. In others, however, as the crocodile, the ventricles are separated completely, or communicate by a small orifice provided with a valve which prevents the blood passing from one compartment to the other. In fact, the heart in this singular animal is double, as in the higher vertebrata, so that the venous blood returned to the right auricle, passes from the right ventricle through the pulmonary artery to the lungs, while the pure blood returned from this organ to the left auricle is directed from the left ventricular compartment through the systemic arteries. It is curious, however, that in the whole of this class the descending aorta is formed by the union of two branches, the right branch arises from the left ventricular compartment, couse. quently carries pure, or nearly pure blood, which it distributes to the head, neck, chest, and upper extremities. The left branch, on the contrary, arises either from the right ventricular compartment, or what is tanta mount to it, from the pulmonary artery. It is obvious, then, that the descending aorta carries a mixed quality of blood to the parts it supplies; but it is interesting to observe, that previous to the junction of the two aortic arches, the left gives off the cœlix (the belly, the name of an artery in the abdomen) axis which supplies the entire alimentary caual and digestive organs with venous blood. In the turtle, lizard, and some serpents, where the septum ventriculorum is imperfect, the pulmonary artery and aorta at once carry mixed blood, and in some of the chelonia, as the tortoise, the existence of arterial chau. nels ensures a more complete mixture of venous and arterial blood. In lizards and serpents the lung is a mere cavity with cellular walls, having perforations which communicate with the neighbouring cells. Turtles have a more complicated structure approaching that of warm-blooded animals. CHRISTIANITY AGAINST 'ATHEISM. Carlile versus Southwell. I HAVE somewhere read that there are three conditions of man in which he should not be held too closely responsible for his words and deeds, one of them I remember is when he is in prison, the other too were, if my memory be accurate, when hungry, and when mad. CHARLES SOUTHWELL is a prisoner. My esteem for him began with that circumstance. My christianity has led me to visit him in prison, and my passion with him is to convert him from atheism. I find him with a mistaken conceit that no man has avowed atheism before himself. I have been such a fool before him, and I had before him brought hundreds, perhaps thousands, to the same folly. I am wiser and renounce it, honester, 1 will not say, but as honest, and I am a Christian, and HOLYOAKE is a Christian, but I will not offend Charles Southwell nor the truth by calling him a Christian. The time is not yet come for that, for it I am in hope labouring. I was to him the herald of his published unchristian private letter, and I thought I saw a blush of smitten conscience, and a complaint that it was published. But I remembered that he was not yet a Christian, and I was not angry. Christianity is not jesuitry. Christianity is a principle and a science, atheism is not. Christianity is the principle of human moral, founded upon the sciences of the natural and spiritual worlds. Physi-theism is no science, nor can its negation be scientific. Science and superstition are two principles of the human mind, the one of truth the other of error. Atheism belongs to neither, it is neither active science nor active superstition. When theism may be superstition its atheism may be science; but when the theism is science as in my case, any general abstract of atheism must be superstition, or a word without a meaning. Need more be said about this "splutter and clatter" of god? If Sir Robert Peel will liberate Southwell, I will soon cure him of his atheism in public discussion. He may, if he like, knock his brains out against my head in discussion. Of the nonsense of socialism he has been cured, it is my task to cure him of the nonsense of atheism. This I have undertaken, and this I will accomplish when he ceases to be a prisoner. without morality or intelligence being affected thereby. The good I see in Mr. C.'s philosophy is, that it makes these facts so plain that he who runs may read them. The natural consequence of Mr. Carlile's plan is the retention of all old names under new ideas, and hence he makes me I know not what, when, according to his dictionary of terms, he styles me a Christian. Probably, he confers upon me a benefit, though one somewhat incomprehensible. But when he asserts, as I am told he has, that I am a "better Christian than Justice Erskine," he does me a positive harm and inflicts upon me public disgrace. In the opinion of some men that judge's "religion is his vice." To say, then, that I am a better Christian than he, is to say I am more vicious. Erskine sentenced Mr. Adams to imprisonment for a libel on christianity for the same reason that a century ago he would have punished him for a libel on witchcraft. The bible Erskine affects to reverence says, that "for every idle word men shall speak they must give an account in the day of judgment;" and he MY DEAR C.-In my domain it is easier to sentenced me to six months' imprisonment take the cholera than a newspaper, for the because I did not tell a wilful and public lie. portals of politics are more securely guarded The very name of Christian has become than those of pestilence. As far as the press synonymous with all that is mentally imbeis concerned I am kept alike ignorant of the cile and morally infamous. It is because compliments of my friends, and the calum. Christians feel that their system is false that nies of my enemies. But having learned they imprison men on account of opinion. through a correspondent who inquires how II own neither their religion nor their morallike my new cognomen of Christian, that my friend Mr. Carlile, has bestowed upon me that blessed sobriquet; I am anxious to show you how highly I estimate the bible. RICHARD CARLILE. Gloucester Gaol, Mr. By way of introduction, and to prevent misunderstanding, a few remarks upon Carlile are necessary. Since first becoming acquainted with the great services rendered by that gentleman to the cause of mental liberty, I have entertained the highest esteem for his character and merits, and whatever his subsequent conduct may be, my appreciation of what he has done will remain unaltered. His present plan of proceeding is, no doubt, founded on a deliberate conviction of its utility. Its being (as it certainly is) the antipodes of my taste, is no presumptive argument against its value. Mr. Carlile gives to scripture a scientific in terpretation. In my opinion, the bible is unworthy the compliment, and science is pollutted by its contact with religion. It is true the scriptures will bear a scientific interpretation as they have the thousand and oue with which we are already cursed. But Mr. C.'s interpretation has the merit of being directly opposite to all those now current so that when he makes a convert, men cannot help seeing that the story of the Bean Stalk would answer the purpose of the pentateuch, and the tale of Cinderella that of the gospels, ity, and should blush to draw my principles from the polluted sources whence theirs arise. Hence I cannot quietly be stigmatised as a Christian, nor willingly receive that as a compliment from a friend, which would be the worst insult of an enemy. With some people the name of Christian is inviting. But what can render it so in the nineteenth century? On what earthly or heavenly ground is it even tolerable? Christianity is called by some silly, or sadly mistaken people, moralising-humanisingcivilising! Yet the history of the English nation shows its professors to have ever been the subtlest deceivers. Where then is its morality? Christians have manifested more barbarity and remorseless ferocity than any other men. Are these the exponents of its humanity? Christianity itself co-existed with the ignorance of the darkest ages, and laboured hard to conserve it by guarding with spiritual thunders the grossest stupidity,* and continues to this day the deadly foe of truth and intelligence. Admirable proofs of its civilization! Introduced by Saint Augustine with fraud, it has been perpetuated ever since only by the dungeon and the sword! It is recorded by a great historian, that Henry II. pleaded his innocence of a crime charged upon him; his total ignorance of the fact was of no avail; he was sufficiently guilty if the church thought proper to esteem him such. The rampant spirit of piety is not more just in our day. It is not enough that blasphemy is an impossible crime, it is sufficient that the clergy assume it to be committable, and forthwith men and women are dragged from their homes and thrust into dungeons to expiate for the offence. Verily, Christians are an amiable race, and their name an acquisition devoutly to be desired. It is an oft repeated remark of Shakspere, that some men are born great-some achieve greatness-and some have it thrust upon them. I had the misfortune to be born a Christian-it has been my achievement to throw off that degradation-and I protest against its being thrust upon me. I again repeat, I make not my opinions a standard for others. Any man may call himself a Christian who pleases. His conduct will neither induce my imitation, nor his tuste excite my envy. In calling me so, Mr. Carlile may mean something very good, though I cannot make it out. I know his intention is kind, and while his motive merits my respect, the title applied to me does not suit my fancy. Yours truly, G. JACOB HOLYOAKE. THE WORTH OF MAN. substance. The nobler gifts, I presume, alluded to are abundantly manifest in the so-called inferior animals, witness the elephant, dog, horse, bee, &c. Have not these the so-called nobler gifts of nature not only sufficient for their physical but also for their intellectual wants? Is it to supply a physical want that the song-bird warbles its pleasing notes the live long day? Does not the bird, the beaver, the bee, display intelligence suitable to their capaci ties in the construction of their homes-what does man do more than act according to his capacity and his wants?"For what purpose has he been endowed with senses, feelings, and mental organs?" Are not the so mis-called inferior animals similarly endowed, have they not senses, feelings, and mental organs? Surely they have, and apply them most rationally too. I shall now quit this writer and give the extract from Cuvier, mentioned above. He says "The most perfect animals are infinitely below man in respect to the degrees of their intellectual facul ties, but it is, nevertheless, certain that their understandings perform operations of the same kind. They move in consequence of sensations received, they are susceptible of lasting affections, and they acquire, by experience, a certain knowledge of external things sufficient to regulate their motions, by actually foreseeing their consequences, and independent of immediate pain or pleasure. When domesticated they feel their subordination, they know that the being who punishes them may refrain from doing so if he will, and they assume before him a supplicating air when conscious of guilt or fearful of his anger. The society of man either corrupts or improves them, they are susceptible of emulation and jealousy, and though possessed among themselves of a natural language capable of expressing the sensations of the moment, they acquire from man a knowledge of the much more complicated language through which he makes known his pleasure and urges them to execute it. We perceive, in fact, a certain degree of reason in the higher animal, and consequences resulting from its use and abuse similar to those observed in man. The degree of their intelligence is not far different from that pos sessed by the infant mind before it has learned to speak." THE second assumption is a divine author of man; Did the writer of this ever imagine a divine author of a louse? Man! man! man! it seems has ever been and continues to be the burden of the song. "Did the divine author of his being contemplate such a restriction of moral law in breathing life and intellect into his frame?" What! did moral law precede the breathing of life and intellect, or is the gift of moral law included as a necessary result of the breathing of life and intellect? If the latter, then other animals have a moral law, as I shall presently show, on the authority of Cuvier, for they have life and intellect breathed into them. Human nature knows nothing of the term moral law, human Whoever yet that has taken the subject in society may-who ever heard of a pack of dogs or a hand, but set out with the assumption that he was stud of horses violating a moral law? No one-perfectly qualified to judge, and what has been the therefore the term moral law is of human invention for human purposes but equally applicable to all animals having life and intellect. "Was he formed by the creator only to fulfil an animal destiny and to perform animal duties at the expense of every nobler gift with which nature has so bountiously supplied him?" I know of no noble gift in man which is not possessed by all animals, the faculties of thinking, reflecting, remembering, jndging, &c. But do not these depend wholly and solely upon the animal organisation? Certainly they do, without which they would be either inoperative or non-ex. istent-why then noble? About as noble as the socalled aristocracy of the country, depending for sustenance and support, most parasitically, upon the toil and blood of the industrious labourer. Why, it is attaching more value to the shadow than to the 350 standard wherewith to test the worth and importance of animal life? Why man, of course, as the paragon of animals assumes the post of honour. He has constituted himself the standard, but does he not always proceed in the inquiry with foregone conclusions, and does he not always make his inferences square with such conclusions? Invariably so, verbal. ly or implied. You may argue learnedly and logically on the subtilities of metaphysics, and your readers may acknowledge the force of your reasonings, but they cannot shake off absolutely the idea of a real and personal deity while they retain a belief in their own superior importance in the scale of natural productions. This erroneous belief, let us hope, will ere long make its exit from the stage of controversy in company with that trinity of incomprehensibles, a personal god, a future state, and the immmor |