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When this moon rises, forsake me not. When I rise, I forsake not thee. Let the danger pass me by.

God my Lord! thou Sun with thirty rays! when the enemy comes, let not thy worm be killed upon the earth, but keep him off, as we, seeing a worm upon the earth, crush him, if we like, or spare him, if we like. As we tread upon and kill a worm on the earth, so thou, if it please thee, crushest us on the earth.

God, thou goest, holding the bad and the good in thy hand. My Lord! let us not be killed. We, thy worms, are praying to thee.

A man who knows not evil and good may not anger thee. But if once he knew it, and was not willing to know it, this is wicked. Treat him as it pleases thee.

If he formerly did not learn, do thou, God my Lord! teach him. If he hear not the language of men, yet will he learn thy language.

God! thou hast made all the animals and men that live upon the earth. The corn also upon the earth, on which we are to live, thou hast made. We have not made it. Thou hast given us strength. Thou hast given us cattle and corn. We worked with them and the seed grew up for us.

With the corn which thou hadst raised for us, men were satisfied. But the corn in the house hath been burnt up. Who hath burnt the corn in the house? Thou knowest.

If I know one or two men, I know them by seeing them with my eye but thou, even if thou didst not see them with the eye, knowest them by thy heart.

A single bad man has chased away all our people from their houses. The children and their mother hath he scattered, like a flock of turkeys, hither and thither.

The murderous enemy took the curly-headed child out of his mother's hand and killed him. Thou hast permitted all this to be done. But why so? Thou knowest.

Thou knowest.

The corn which thou raisest, thou showest it to our eyes. To it the hungry man looketh and is comforted. Yet when the corn bloometh, thou sendest into it butterflies and locusts and doves. All this comes from thy hand. Thou hast caused it. But why so? My Lord! spare those who pray to thee. As a thief stealing another's corn is bound by the owner of the corn, not so bind thou us, O Lord! But thou, binding the beloved one, settest him free by love.

If I am beloved by thee, so set me free, I entreat thee from my heart. If I do not pray to thee with my heart, thou hearest me not. But if I pray to thee with my heart, thou knowest it, and art gracious unto me.

The inquiry suggests itself, How old is this religion of the Gallas? It contains no trace of Mohammedan, nor yet of Christian influence. God is, in their belief, as Lorenz Tutschek observes, the One Supreme, almighty, all-knowing, all-wise, and all-good. No prophet, no angel appears. If the religion were an independent reform originated in modern times,-Theism, superseding Polytheism,-one might expect some prophet's name to be connected with it. Prima facie, the probability seems rather to be, that it is contemporaneous with Hebrew Theism and akin with the old Abyssinian religion; perhaps, also, with that of Sheba, which was the S.E. corner of Arabia.

In a paper read before the Philological Society of London in 1847, I tried to show the relation of the Galla Verb and Pronouns to those of other known tongues; and claimed for the language a place in the class which Prichard has styled HebræoAfrican. This class, besides the group related closely to Arabic and Hebrew, comprises the Abyssinian language, those of Mount Atlas and the Great Western Desert (of which the Zouave is now the best known), and perhaps even the ancient Egyptian.

We know that the old Abyssinian language, called the Gheez, differed little from Hebrew, and that there was an ancient sympathy between the Hebrews and Sheba (where Jewish princes ruled, in the time of the Maccabees), also between Judæa and Abyssinia. It may be thrown out for further inquiry, whether possibly a common Theism was maintained, a thousand years before the Christian era, in these three countries, and also in that of the Gallas.

ROMANISM

A CORRUPTION OF CHRISTIANITY.

[1872.]

TO THE EDITOR OF THE INDEX:

DEAR SIR,

You send to me your little pamphlet, "Truths for the Times,”

and invite me, if I understand you, to say whether I agree with it. I am sure you desire that every one will speak his mind out, and therefore I say, shortly, that I agree substantially, and in all that is properly religious; but I do not agree in all that is historical and critical, concerning which, it crosses my mind (but I say it diffidently and under correction), that the element called odium theologicum may unawares sway you. Of course you understand this phrase.* Theologians are charged with hating most the doctrines which, without entire agreement, come nearest to them, and enduring more easily an extreme enemy than an almostfriend. So, it is my surmise, you ill endure Unitarian Christianity, and are better inclined to admire Romanism. I regard your opinions concerning Romanism to be unhistorical, unjust and pernicious. This is the point to which I address myself. My text naturally consists of the paragraphs which you number twenty-six and twenty-seven. In twenty-six you say that the process which developed the Catholic Theology and Hierarchy "was not, as is claimed, a corruption, but a natural and logical development." Here, I maintain, there is a false contrast. Grant that it was "a natural and logical development;" it will not thence follow that it was not a corruption. Nothing is easier than that it should be both.

If indeed a system is perfectly harmonious within itself, all truly logical deductions from parts of it will for ever be in harmony with it, and cannot be corruptions. Yet even so, a disproportionate dwelling on one side of a moral system may so distort its practical results, as to have quite the effect of positive error. But if (as happens to all human systems) inconsistencies are admitted into a

* Wonderful to say, Mr. Abbott by his reply showed that he did not. 1887.

If

religion unaware to the founder, then the most logical develop. ments may be most unjust and disastrous corruptions. John Wesley firmly believed in ghosts; Jonathan Edwards in reprobation; Calvin in the right and duty of religious persecution; Paul saw nothing in slavery that needed a religious protest. you choose to select the weak points of great and good men, and "logically develop" them, you may produce portentous and hideous errors, which they would have been the first to disown and denounce; which also are violently opposed to their most cardinal teachings. This, I maintain, is to corrupt their doctrine. Their sound sentiment kept a controul over their erring intellect; the mere logician who " develops" their errors overthrows the balance. He may do good service in confuting them; but if he pretend that his "developments" are what the preacher intended, he is false and absurd.

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Next, the pretended logical developments which produced Romanism are in the most vital points utterly illogical. Coleridge admirably said that the worst errors of the Church of Rome were generated by mistaking rhetoric for logic. This bread is my body; this cup is my blood." If Jesus ever actually used these words (which is not to me a historical certainty), he undoubtedly meant it as a strong metaphor. The author of the Fourth Gospel, apparently wishing to reprove the very gross interpretation already rising in the church, represents Jesus as saying it on a wholly different occasion (John vi. 33, 51, 53, 54) and as reproving the material literalism (vi. 63) with which he was understood. Although the Catholic Church has accepted the Fourth Gospel as the writing of the Apostle John, and as pre-eminently valuable, nay, as the sole sufficient basis for Trinitarianism, yet with the grossest stupidity, if not base policy, it has built up Transubstantiation on the texts in the first three gospels.

Again, the worship of the Virgin, and her elevation to an almost divine position, is a logical development out of their other development, which had made a God of Jesus; but it has not a shadow of foundation in Biblical Christianity. I surely need not argue this point.

Then, Trinitarianism took nearly four centuries to elaborate, and nothing can be more illogical than the processes used. First a "Canon" of Scripture is arbitrarily settled, and every part pronounced of equal value and certainty. Books wholly anonymous, and claiming for themselves no special dictation by God,

are pronounced to be the divine handiwork; and then are commented on and interpreted in the illogical spirit of Rabbinism. The plainest words are forced out of their sense to make them agree with other texts somewhere else. The Hebrew Scriptures are pressed into the service, and all their rhetoric is accepted as logic, whenever convenient, and applied quite uncritically, and, as every Jew will say, falsely. The most positive texts which declare the human nature of Jesus are set aside by the most illogical assumption that contradictions can be and must be simultaneously believed. Human ignorance and weakness (it is pretended) do not exclude Divine omniscience and power. Read the "Athanasian" creed, and ask whether it is "logical." That spurious creed is pre-eminently the creed of the Latin Church of Catholic Rome; the Greek Church was never so frankly illogical. How any opponent of Rome can praise her for her consistent logic, I have never been able to understand, except in the sense of our acute Scotch divine, Dr. Campbell, of Aberdeen, (author of "Lectures on Ecclesiastical History,") who says that Rome, with eminent consistency, in a long series of ages, always took that side in every controversy which would best aid in building up her Power.

When you say (paragraph twenty-two): "Christianity is the historical religion taught in the Christian Scriptures and illustrated in the history of the Christian Church," I find a double fallacy. First, you assume that the history of the Christian Church illustrates the religion taught in the Christian Scriptures. I judge, on the contrary, that it most certainly obscures and depraves it. Next, you speak of "the religion" taught, as if a consistent system were taught. I allow and maintain that much was held in common; but the most prominent doctrines held by James and Paul in common have been thrown over entirely by the Christian Church for sixteen centuries. (To this I shall return.) Also there were strong diversities between James and Paul. Here the Catholic Church and the Roman Church have laid hold of just so much as they pleased, to incorporate and develop. Moreover the Historical Church, since the second century, stands on a totally different foundation from the Apostolic Church-I might perhaps say from the Church of the first five generations. Spiritual freedom and absence of an authoritative letter was the apostolic basis; a Canon and an authoritative Hierarchy are the Catholic basis. The religion preached by Jesus, by James, by Paul, by Peter, by John, so far as we can

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