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THE COMING OF THE BESSIAH.
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with the instinct of life, which causes a thrill of horror and impotent rage to pass through the human frame at the very idea of death. True salvation comes through a conquest of death, not by an unwilling submission to it.
A resurrection of the dead on a future day is like the draught of a physician which is to restore everlasting health after the patient is dead and buried; and it must be confessed that beyond the misinterpretation of certain difficult passages in the sayings of some of the founders of religion there is not the slightest evidence in support of it. The ancients only invented myths and legends to conceal their true philosophy from all but the thoughtful, but the moderns take them literally!
The legend of the emancipation of Israel from the rule of Pharaohs, the king of Egypt, is an instance in point. An historical interpretation of it is well calculated to lead the scholar and the historian to pronounce against its genuineness, on the one hand, while an unintelligent reading is enough, ou the other, to strike the pious devotee with awe and disgust at the character of the Lord God himself. Far from respecting age, sex, or innocence, the Lord God sends Moses, armed with supernatural signs, to Pharaoh to intercede in the cause of the chosen people, and then himself hardens the heart of tbe tyrant, as if he was purposely manoeuvring to bring about the bloodshed and carnage wrought among men and beasts in the land. The truth is that these accounts were written in this manner purposely to set the mind on an enquiry as to their hidden sense, so that if any one could understand that in what assumed the garb of history the substratum of truth was not
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