first married. According to his Auto-biography, he was of the tribe of Levi, and of the fourth generation after the immigration of Jacob into Egypt. There was nothing supernatural, nor in anywise remarkable, about his birth, that being after the ordinary course of generation. He possessed like passions, and capacities, with other men. Auspicious circumstances attended him in his early life that did not surround his contemporary countrymen generally. From the third month of his existence, in his education, he was an Egyptian, being the protegé of the daughter of Pharaoh, the ruling Monarch of Egypt. In early life he only knew his contemporary countrymen, excepting his nurse, who was his own mother, as foreigners in a strange land-they were not his companions and associates. Like many others, in every age of the history of man, he was susceptible to mental impressions-to spiritual visions and presentiments of events that, sooner or later, were to transpire-but in this respect he in no way was a prodigy; nor was he an exception to others of mankind in either of these particulars.

SEC. 4. As a national leader, Moses was a Filibuster, Prince of that tribe. From the time of holding the first conference with his God, on Horeb, Moses' mind was set upon the despoiling and exterminating of, at least, six nations which never had done any man, woman or child of the Israelites the first injury. This filibustering expedition, and hopes of success in it-receiving the promise of his God therefor-was one of the chief inducements to Moses to assume Dictatorship over the tribes and people of Israel. And this prowling expedition was one of the principal inducements, if it was not the chief one, held out to the children of Israel by Moses, for them to accept him as their leader. In short, as a national leader, Moses was aggressive, and he not only disregarded the rights of man and overrode those which belonged to nations, but he inaugurated that policy through which unoffending nations, that were weaker than his own, were subjugated and destroved

despoiled of their possessions, and their goods confiscated and appropriated to the use and benefit of the despoilers.

SEC. 5. Moses, as a civil ruler, was predatory on the people's rights, and violent in defending himself in the possession of rights that he purloined from the people. As a jurist, reasoning from his stand point, and as he understood the rights of individuals, Moses was a lover of Justice between man and man of his own people. As a religionist, he was an Idolater, worshiping a false God, and teaching a false religion. As a religious teacher, after he became the ruling power of the Israelites, and while at the head of the nation, he was dogmatical, proscriptive and intolerant.

SEC. 6. If the bible record, popularly so-called, be correct in historical data, until he was forty years of age Moses was a protegé of the family of Pharaoh, if he was not the special ward of Pharaoh himself; and he was brought up, as has been before remarked, “in all the wisdom of the Egyptians." From the age of forty, to that of eighty years, he was a member of the family of Jethro, prince of Midian, and priest of the religion of the Midianites. He was married to the daughter of this Midianitish prince and priest, and she bore him two sons, while he was a member of her father's family. He was Jethro's herdsman, and tended his flocks about Horeb, called by Moses, afterwards, the mount of God. During the forty years that succeeded the time of his serving as Jethro's shepherd, he was engaged in conducting the children of Israel from the river Nile, in Lower Egypt, to the land of Canaan, or near to it, where he died, before crossing over the river Jordan into Palestine-the land long coveted by himself and the people that he so long alternately, cajoled and tyranized over, and led and ruled at his pleasure; and, on whose moral and religious natures he estamped his own indeliby.

SEC. 7. This love of despotic authority and arbitrary rule manifested by Moses, is not an anomaly, neither is it astonishing even, when it is remembered that his whole life, previous to his entering upon his public career, was spent

in schools and courts where he was instructed in all the primary elements of monarchy, and initiated into all the secrets of ruling the people by that system of government. And Pollytheism, and arbitrary God-ism, were indissolubly connected with each branch of his studies, scientific, political, moral and religious. From his infancy he was baptised into the spirit of arbitrary rule, and it permeated his inmost being in his juvenile years, while his entire nature was plastic. Then, by the instincts or forces of his material nature, like all the rest of mankind in their natural state, he came into the world having the primates of civil and religious despotic authority in him, and his education served to incubate them, and give them a healthy birth, and a subsequent vigorous growth.

SEC. 8. By his own record, it is clear that from the day of his birth to that of his death, Moses never inhaled nor exhaled a breath impregnated with the universal man's son-ship of God as taught by Jesus, of Nazareth, nor with the spirit of universal Fraternity of man, as it is now understood, and taught, by all philanthropists, and true believers in the christian religion. Such a thing as democracy as the inherent right of the people to govern themselves, and to choose, at their pleasure, and whom they willed, out of their numbers for the various purposes of the public service and trust, is not so much as hinted at in the whole political and religious teachings of Moses. But contrary to this principle, every attempt of the people of his nation to inaugurate, during his lifetime, such a national policy was denounced by him as rebellion against God and his annointed, and by a "stiff-necked people." And every attempt made by the people to simplify their religious worship and allow individuals, out of the line of descent from Levi, Moses' own family line, to be their own priests unto God, was, in like manner denounced by Moses as being rebellion against God, stirring up his Lord's fierce anger and calling down upon them, immediately, his wrath, unless he (Moses), in some way, could compromise with

him the matter and squelch his fury or turn it aside. In acts of this kind, Moses often showed himself apparently much better-far less "jealous" and ferocious-than was his God.

SEC. 9. The principal interest that we of this time can have in the above condensed biographical sketch of Moses is this. it gives us a knowledge of his early education, his educational proclivities, and the way and manner that he acquired that knowledge which was manifested by him in his dealings with his countrymen, and with them for whom they did service in Egypt; also it gives us a knowledge of the source of his wisdom as a law-giver and civil ruler; of his skill as a conductor of masses, and of the source from whence flowed the spirit of his religion.

SEC. 10. I said above, that as a religionist, Moses was an Idolater, worshiping a false God and teaching a false religion. In this allegation I include his notion that the Father of spirit-life requires of man temples, built with their own hands, wherein they must worship him; altars whereon to offer sacrifices and burnt-offerings to him; censers for the offering of incense to appease his offended majesty, and to excite his olfactories, and administer to his pompous vanity; a high-priest for an intermediate between man and his heavenly Father; and an hereditary priesthood for temple service. All these belonged to Moses' religiondictated by his Lord. In this temple and temple-service, sacrifices and burnt-offerings, incense and priesthood, all, there was no God, no Christ, nor Savior, in them. They, one and all, were rebellion against the Father of spirit-life, and against his redemption; and they, with all their trappings and formalities, were the devices and the tomfooleries of the crafty and the designing-devised and inaugurated to deceive the credulous and the superstitious, and to please the vain and the ignorant.

CHAPTER III.

THE CREATION; OR, THE ASSEVERATIONS OF MOSES CONTRADICTED BY KNOWN FACTS.

SECTION 1. The Mosaic account of Creation is the standard of orthodoxy, on that question, throughout Jewry and Christendom. The dogmas of this account took rise away back in the night of time; and, they originated in the wild imaginings of the undeveloped rational faculties of some one of the unenlightened tribes of mankind, long anterior to the dawn of the light of Astronomy as now understood, and demonstrated, and before the science of Geology had made its revelations to man. That I may not appear too censorious and set down naught erroneously, I will extract a sentence from the orthodox records, so called, which set forth the how the material worlds were brought into being. The extract that I give is part and parcel of the expressed creed of the professedly Christian world, based on the Mosaic record which is believed to be divinely inspired. But to the promised extract:

"The work of Creation is God's making all things of nothing, by the word of his power, in the space of six days, and all very good."

SEC. 2. That there was a time when all worlds, including the one that we inhabit, had a beginning of formation, or, commenced to agglomerate; otherwise, when the conglomerate mass of which the worlds are composed, commenced to solidify, there cannot arise a doubt in any enlightened mind. All solidified matter, in its original condition, was in a state of fluidity, or gassy state, filling immensity, and in that state containing all the elementary principles, laws and forces that matter now contains. That matter was spoken into existence by the power of God's