Experimental investigation of the spirit manifestations, [electronic ...

408 RELIGIOUS ERRORS OF MR. MAIIAN.have been willing to lay down their lives for religious truth !—and yet thispretended favourite of Jehovah, by his own account, spent his time ingetting baubles, making the Almighty his agent. It may be that thewhole is a fable, and that the account originated in the time of Ililkiah,when the Pentateuch was acknowledged to have been found accidentally.But if Moses and the ciders really ascended the mount, and representedthemselves as seeing God, and receiving those directions, evidently theywere all a set of impostors, who resorted to thismode of obtaining furniturefor the tabernacle.Great Importance attached to a Belief in Immortality hi/ Ci/rus theGreat, King of Persia, as contrasted with the recldessness of Mosesrespecting the same Belief1979. Among the errors propagated industriously by fanatical sectarians,is that of representing the Old and New Testament asof inestimable importance,as the only source of our knowledge of a future state of existence,of which heathen writers are mentioned as deficient. In refutationof the calumny thus promulgated, I deem itexpedient to quote the followingsentiments ascribed by Xenophon to Cyrus, King of Persia, in addressinghis children1980. '^ Think not, my dearest children, that when I depart from you,I shall be no more : remember that my soul, even while I lived amongyou, was invisible ;yet by my actions you were sensible it existed in thisbody. Believe it, therefore, existing still, though it still be unseen. Howquickly would the honours of illustrious men perish after death, if theirsouls performed nothing to preserve their fame ! For my part, I couldnever think that the soul, which, while in a mortal body, lives, when departedfrom it, dies ; or that its consciousness is lost when it is dischargedout of an unconscious habitation; on the contrary, it most truly existswhen it is freed from all corporeal alliance.^'1981. Let this be compared with the inexcusable inattention of Moses,taking his own narrative to be true, in communicating with God aboutevery thing else, almost, excepting that which concerns immortal life.Ifthe despicablecriminality of Abraham in putting his wife at the pleasureof two heathen kings successively, and their repugnance to have violatedhis connubial rights, be taken as a fit test of comparative morality, ifthese sentiments of King Cyrus be compared with those of the Jewishlawgiver as respects immortality, the chosen people of God were muchbelow some neighbouring heathens both in morality and religion.1982. This inference will be fortified by comparing the portraiture ofthe Deity as given by Moses (1140) and Samuel, (1091,) with that givenby Seneca, (1224.)