and not in the least prophetical. The whole is in the preter tense. It speaks of things that had been accomplished at the time the words were written, and not of things to be accomplished afterwards.

As then the passage is in no possible sense prophetical, nor intended to be so, and that to attempt to make it so is not only to falsify the original, but to commit a criminal imposition, it is matter of no concern to us, otherwise than as curiosity, to know who the people were of which the passage speaks that sat in darkness, and what the light was that had shined in upon them.

If we look into the preceding chapter, the 8th of which the 9th is only a continuation, we shall find the writer speaking at the 19th verse of "witches and wizards who peep about and mutter,” and of people who made application to them; and he preaches and exhorts them against this darksome practice. It is of this people, and of this dark some practice, or walking in darkness that he is speaking at the 2d verse of the 9th chapter; and with respect to the light that had shined in upon them it refers entirely to his own ministry, and to the boldness of it, which opposed itself to that of the witches and wizards who peeped about and muttered.

Isaiah is upon the whole, a wild disorderly writer, preserving, in general, no clear chain of perception in the arrangement of his ideas, and consequently producing no defined conclusions from them. It is the wildness of his stile, the confusion of his ideas, and the ranting metaphors he employs, that have afforded so many opportunities to priest-craft in some cases, and to superstition in others, to impose those defects upon the world as prophecies of Jesus Christ. Finding no direct meaning in them, and not knowing what to make of them, and supposing, at the same time, they were intended to have a meaning they supplied the defect by inventing a meaning of their own, and called it his. I have, however, in this place, done Isaiah the justice to rescue him from the laws of Matthew, who has torn him unmercifully to pieces, and

from the imposition or ignorance of priests and commentators, by letting Isaiah speak for himself.

If the words walking in darkness, and light breaking in, could, in any case, be applied prophetically, which they cannot be, they other. would better apply to the times we now live in, than to any The world has “walked in darkness" for eighteen hundred years, both as to religion and government, and it is only since the American revolution began that light has broken in. The belief of one God, whose attributes are revealed to us in the book or scripture of the creation which no human hand can counterfeit or falsify, and not in a written or printed book, which, as Matthew has shewn, can be altered or falsified by ignorance or design, is now making its way among us; and as to government, the light is already gone forth, and whilst men ought to be careful not to be blinded by the excess of it, as at a certain time in France, when every thing was Robespierean violence, they ought to reverence, and even to adore it, with all the firmness and perseverance that true wisdom can inspire.

I pass on to the seventh passage, called a prophecy of Jesus

Christ.

Matthew, chap. S, v. 16. "When the evening was come, they brought unto him, (Jesus) many that were possessed with "devils, and he cast out the spirit with his word, and healed all that were sick-That it might be fulfilled, which was spoken "by Esaias, (Isaiah) the prophet saying, himself took our infir"mities, and bear our sicknesses.”

This affair of people being possessed by devils, and of casting them out, was the fable of the day, when the books of the NewTestament were written. It had not existance at any other time. The books of the Old Testament mention no such thing; the people of the present day know of no such thing; nor does the histo

ry of any people or country speak of such a thing. It starts upon us all at once in the book of Matthew; and is altogether an invention of the New-Testament-makers and the Christian church. The book of Matthew, is the first book where the word Devil is mentioned, as a being in the singular number.* We read in some of the books of the Old Testament, of things called familiar spirits, the supposed companions of people called witches and wizards. It was no other than the trick of pretended conjurors to obtain money from credulous and ignorant people; or the fabricated charge of superstitious malignancy against unfortunate and decripid old age.

But the idea of a familiar spirit, if we can affix any idea to the term, is exceedingly different to that of being possessed by a devil. In the one case the supposed familiar spirit is a dextrious agent, that comes and goes and does as he is bidden: in the other, he is a turbulant roaring monster, that tears and tortures the body into convulsions. Reader, whoever thou art, put thy trust in thy creator, make use of the reason he endowed thee with, and cast from thee all such fables.

The passage alluded to by Matthew, for as a quotation it is false, is in Isaiah, chap. 53, v. 4. which is as follows;

Surely he (the person of whom Isaiah is speaking,) hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." It is in the preter tense.

Here is nothing about casting out devils, nor curing of sicknesses. The passage, therefore, so far from being a prophecy of Christ, is not even applicable as a circumstance.

Isaiah, or at least the writer of the book that bears his name, employs the whole of this chap. the 53, in lamenting the sufferings of some deceased person of whom he speaks very pathetically. It is a monody on the death of a friend; but he mentions not the name of the person, nor gives any circumstance of him by which

The word devil is a personification of the word evil.

he can be personally known; and it is this silence, which is evidence of nothing, that Matthew has laid hold of, to put the name of Christ to it; as if the chiefs of the Jews, whose sorrows were then great, and the times they lived in big with danger, were never thinking about their own affairs, nor the fate of their own friends, but were continually running a Wild-Goose chase into futurity.

To make a monody into a prophecy is an absurdity. The characters and circumstances of men, even in different ages of the world, are so much alike, that what is said of one, may with propriety be said of many; but this fitness does not make the passage into a prophecy; and none but an impostor, or a bigot, would call

it so.

Isaiah, in deploring the hard fate and loss of his friend, mentions. nothing of him but what the human lot of man is subject to. All the cases he states of him, his persecutions, his imprisonment, his patience in suffering, and his perseverance in principle, are all within the line of nature; they belong exclusively to none, and may with justness be said of many. But if Jesus Christ was the person the church represents him to be, that which would exclusively apply to him, must be something that could not apply to any other person; something beyond the line of nature; something beyond the lot of mortal man; and there are no such expressions in this chapter, nor any other chapter in the Old Testament.

It is no exclusive discription to say of a person, as is said of the person, Isaiah is lamenting in this chapter. "He was oppressed, "and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth, he is brought as a "Lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before his sheerers, is dumb,

so he opened not his mouth." This may be said of thousands of persons, who have suffered oppression and unjust death with patience, silence and perfect resignation.

Grotius, whom the bishop esteems a most learned man, and

who certainly was so, supposes that the person of whom Isaiah is speaking, is Jeremiah. Grotius is led into this opinion, from the agreement there is between the discription given by Isaiah, and the case of Jeremiah, as stated in the book that bears his name. If Jeremiah was an innocent man, and not a traitor in the interest of Nebuchadnezer, when Jerusalem was besieged, his case was hard; He was accused by his countrymen, was persecuted, oppressed, and imprisoned, and he says of himself, (see Jeremiah chap. 11, v. 19.) "But as for me, I was like a lamb or an Ox "that is brought to the slaughter."

I should be inclined to the same opinion with Grotius, had Isaiah lived at the time when Jeremiah underwent the cruelties of which he speaks; but Isaiah died about 50 years before; and it is of a person of his own time, whose case Isaiah is lamenting in the chapter in question, and which imposition and bigotry, more than seven hundred years afterwards, perverted into a prophecy of a person they call Jesus Christ.

I pass on to the eighth passage called a prophecy of Jesus

Christ.

Matthew, chap. 12, v. 14. "Then the Pharisees went out and "held a council against him, how they might destroy him-But "when Jesus knew it he withdrew himself; and great numbers "followed him and he healed them all-and he charged them they "should not make him known: That it might be fulfilled which "was spoken by Esaias (Isaiah) the prophet, saying,

"Behold my servant whom I have chosen; my beloved in whom "my soul is well pleased, I will put my spirit upon him, and he shall "shew judgment to the gentiles; he shall not strivenor cry; neither "shall any man hear his voice in the streets, a bruised reed shall he "not break, and smoaking flax shall he not quench till he sends "forth judgment unto victory-and in his name shall the Gentiles "trust."