Osiris, Mithras, and several others, to have been respectively the same person as Zoroaster: with more probability Dr. Adam Clarke thinks him identical with Belteshazzar, or Daniel. Sir Walter Raleigh, in that work of infinite research, his "History of the World," lib. i. ch. 11, seems inclined to consider him a genuine Chaldæan sage of the most remote antiquity.

By way of giving the reader a specific instance of the teaching of this ancient worthy, the following apt extract from Lord Lindsay's entertaining book on Egypt, (i. 185,) is here added: “The God, says the patriarchal Zoroaster, in his noble enumeration of the Almighty's attributes, is represented having a hawk's head: He is the Best, Incorruptiole, Eternal, Unmade, Indivisible, most unlike every thing, the Author of all good, the Wisest of the wise." The mystical part of such theology consisting of emblems, a hawk, for example, figuring perfection of sight, or omniscience, and swiftness of presence, or ubiquity, speedily, as was natural, degenerated into common idolatry; but assuredly the description given above of the Supreme Being by a native of heathen Babylon is among the most sublime ever penned by mortal hand. In fact, the worst conceptions of the Deity were most rife among men at that period of the world's history, which was equally remote from the patriarchal and the Christian eras. The idolatry of extreme antiquity was not the gross system which it afterwards became.

ABRAHAM.

HAIL, friend of God, the paragon of faith!
Simply to trust, unanswering to obey,

This was thy strength; and happy sons are they
Father, who follow thee thro' life and death,
Ready at His mysterious command

The heart's most choice affectionate hopes to slay With more than martyr's suicidal hand, Their sole sufficing cause,-Jehovah saith,

Their only murmured prayer,-His will be done : Ev'n so, thy god-like spirit did not spare

Thy cherished own, thy promised only son, Trusting that He, whose word was never vain,

Could raise to life the victim offered there,

And to the father give his child again.

Scripture is full of moral tests: it is capable of infinite misconceptions; it is easily perverted, if men will; and the things which should have been for their health, are unto them an occasion of falling. There is doubtless something of providential intent in the contemptible facility which the highest themes afford for the lowest humour; nothing is more easy than for a scoffer to draw poison from the fountain of truth.

In exemplification of this, it will be sufficient to take for a moment the infidel view of the case of Abraham's intended sacrifice, if only to act as a foil to the Christian's interpretation.-What? are we to receive for an exemplar of moral conduct a man, who could deliberately attempt the murder of his only child? are we to be told that a merciful Deity, and not some Moloch of a madman's heated fancy, commanded the bloody rite? are we to admire the duplicity of the speeches, "We will go yonder, and worship, and come again unto you,-My son, God will provide himself a lamb ?"-To these, and such objections our answer is uniform: the apparent evil is merely a reflection of the unbeliever's heart; if he will but see with our eyes, the dark picture will be as the brightness of noonday. Abra

ness.

ham, the only witness upon earth of a loving and true God, was called upon to give proof that he relied implicitly upon His promises, power, and goodHe was commanded to deliver up the child, in whom all the earth was eventually to be blessed, as a sacrifice to Him who gave him: and the patriarch cheerfully obeyed, though we may readily believe not without the struggles of paternal agony, first, because he questioned not for a moment the right of the Creator to command, nor the ultimate mercy, wisdom, and propriety of the mandate; and secondly, because (as we learn from Heb. xi. 19) he accounted that God was able to raise his son up even from the dead, and fully expected that it should be so. He meant what he said in "we will come back;" for he trusted in the restoration of his son: he stopped not to reason about moral fitness, for he knew that God had spoken: and he rightly regarded that the mercy of his Maker would provide himself a lamb, or if indeed the rite must be paid, and Isaac must be that lamb, He would restore uninjured the seed of promise. When to all this, we add the affecting beauty and aptitude of the whole scene as applicable to the persons of the adorable Trinity in the scheme of salvation, of which it is more than probable that the patriarch had a due conception, we see the sacrifice of Isaac in the light of an act at once most pious, most admirable and most heroic.

Many of the profane writers speak of Abraham: Berosus calls him "just, and great, and skilled in

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heavenly things;" Melo, the Jew hater, confirms Genesis in every particular of this patriarch's life: and so does Eupolemus, with other names little known to the general reader. Josephus, I. 8. § 2, informs us that Abraham "communicated to the Egyptians the art of arithmetic, and the science of astronomy, with which they were previously unacquainted; and that Egypt was indebted for its wisdom to Chaldæa, as Greece was to Egypt:" many fables of the East are full of allusions to this patriarch's knowledge, power, and piety.

The whole chapter of the great Jewish historian and general, which relates to the offering of Isaac, the 13th of the 1st book, is most beautiful, and places the conduct of both father and son in a very touching and amiable light: the father, in that "he thought it was not right to disobey God in any thing;" the son, in that being "twenty-five years old," he “went immediately of himself to the altar to be sacrificed" and Josephus adds the words of the Almighty, saying, "It is not out of a thirst for human blood thou wert commanded to slay thy son, neither because God wished to deprive thee of him as a father, but to try and prove thee, whether indeed thou wouldst obey to the uttermost." We may remark that Josephus makes no mention of the figurative resurrection, implied in the return of Isaac unharmed.

Bishop Warburton thinks, that the saying of our Lord, "Abraham saw my day," &c., is a proof that in the name Jehovah-jireh, given to the mount on