xpressed by his casting out devils. But without entering into
explanations respecting the historical miracles belonging to
Christianity, it is sufficient to say that its truth is attested by a
constantly existing miracle, the present state of the Jews, which was
predicted by Jesus; their temple and city were destroyed, and all
attempts made to rebuild it have been vain, and they remain the despised
and outcasts of the world.

_Onu_.--But you have not answered my objections with respect to the
cruelties exercised by the Jews under the command of Jehovah, which
appear to me in opposition to all our views of divine justice.

_Amb_.--I think even Philalethes will allow that physical and moral
diseases are hereditary, and that to destroy a pernicious unbelief or
demoniacal worship it was necessary to destroy the whole race root and
branch. As an example, I will imagine a certain contagions disease which
is transmitted by parents to children, and which, like the plague, is
communicated to sound persons by contact; to destroy a family of men who
would spread this disease over the whole earth would unquestionably be a
mercy. Besides, I believe in the immortality of the sentient principle
in man; destruction of life is only a change of existence, and supposing
the new existence a superior one it is a gain. To the Supreme
Intelligence the death of a million of human beings is the mere
circumstance of so many spiritual essences changing their habitations,
and is analogous to the myriad millions of larvae that leave their coats
and shells behind them and rise into the atmosphere, as flies in a summer
day. When man measures the works of the Divine Mind by his own feeble
combinations, he must wander in gross error; the infinite can never be
understood by the finite.

_Onu_.--As far as I can comprehend your reasoning, the priests of
Juggernaut might make the same defence for their idol, and find in such
views a fair apology for the destruction of thousands of voluntary
victims crushed to pieces by the feet of the sacred elephant.

_Amb_.--Undoubtedly they might, and I should allow the justness of their
defence if I saw in their religion any germs of a divine institution
fitted to become, like the religion of Jehovah, the faith of the whole
civilised world, embracing the most perfect form of theism and the most
refined and exalted morality. I consider the early acts of the Jewish
nation as the lowest and rudest steps of a temp