come, that the Deity of the Christian Religion is no other, nothing more, than a personification of the mental phenomena of the human race, which was the work of the philosophers and scientific men of the Pagan world: and noble was their task—important for man was their production. Not the thing called the Christian Religion now in existence, which is no other than a religion mistaken, a corruption and Pagan superstition, the dregs and drivellings of the gross ignorance and superstition of the dark ages; something two thousand times worse than the Paganism of the Millenium before the so-called Christian era. But a personification after deifications of the mental phenomena, is a sounding, preaching, writing, carving or painting God, as the perfection of knowledge; Christ, as the perfection of reason; and the Holy Spirit of communication, as the perfection of all attainable moral power by the human race: making those perfections to be things sought, the things worshipped, the best religion, as it undoubtedly is, for the whole human race. It was the best plan of scholastic improvement, when acted upon, that human wisdom could have devised, and to this I would have you bring our Church.

There is a two-fold way of reading the Bible, which I have before described, as it is described in the Second Epistle to the Corinthians, chap. iii. v. 6, a reading or a ministration according to the letter, and another according to the spirit. The Apostle or author of that Epistle declares himself to have been a minister of the New Testament according to the spirit, and complains, that the Jews, in his time, did not know how to read the Old Testament. I declare that the Church now existing ministers to nothing but the letter of the Bible, which is a ministration not to life, but to death; and such is the evidence of the whole era of such a ministration; such has been the cause of the dark ages, on which no dissenting sect has yet thrown a ray of light; and the reform that is now required throughout the Church, that established by law and all others, is the understanding of the Sacred Scriptures, that shall cause them to be taught according to the spirit, the spirit of knowledge, reason and constant human improvement. I now see, that none of the people called Jews or Christians know how to read either Old or New Testament according to the spirit.

To read the Bible according to the letter, is to make it a piece of human history; to make a creation of the world, and an attempt to account for everything past, present and future. I proclaim this conduct to be the folly of ignorance, opposed by all real history of the human race, and by all the developments of science, in relation to the earth's existence, its qualities, and its relation to the general planetary system.

I challenge the proof of any one apparent historical fact, in either Old or New Testament. I challenge the production of the existing mention of any one of the supposed facts about the personal or material Jesus Christ, within one hundred years of the time at which it is said to have happened, putting the disputed passages of Josephus and Tacitus out of the question.

I challenge the proof of the existence of the Jews, in any country, as a distinct nation, before the time of Alexander the Great.

No other contemporaneous history recognizes such an assumed history as that which I challenge.

And farther, I am prepared to prove that Christianity existed among Romans, Greeks, Persians, Hindoos, and Celtic Druids, or the northern nations, before the Christian era.

The present ministration of the Church entirely depends on the necessity of a clear historical proof of the literal contents of the Old and New Testaments.

But a spiritual reading of that volume solves every difficulty, and teaches us how to extract the truth, the system of religion that is a necessary and sure salvation for the human race, when reduced to practice, and to see it as a part of the wisdom of all ancient men of all times and countries.

It is ten years and upwards since I sent a petition to you, Sir, to be laid before the King, asking for a commission to examine my oppugnancy to the religion and administration of the existing Church. Will you now grant that commission? If you will not, you, while you remain in power, will blunder on in and through growing troubles and difficulties, until you, or some other person, be compelled to come to my school for information. It may be a galling pain, a conscience-smitten task to you to do so; but you have no alternative with honesty and wisdom. It is not a little of this cry for Church Reform, that has sprung out of my labours and sufferings. And here am I, though still in prison through that Church's iniquity, in the proud and triumphant position, clearly seeing that you can reform nothing in the Church that will satisfy the people without coming to my ground.

Your pledge is so to reform the Church as to make it meet the respect and affection of the people. I rejoiced when I read that sentiment; for I saw and felt, that I alone had proposed a reform equal to that end; and mine, as well as others, by the glorious power of the printing press, must come into consideration. I assure you that the correspondence with the Bishop of London, which I shall append to this letter, has been sold to the extent of many thousands, and is in great demand. This is but an enlargement of my second letter to the Bishop. So that my lamp has been constantly trimmed for your advent as a Reformer of the Church. It is not what you and others call "the rabble," "the destructives," "the mob," that I seek. I seek you and the Bishops, all the learned men in the country, as in application of mind to mind, learning to learning, and wisdom to wisdom.

I will now proceed to explain the distinction between the mystery and the revelation of Christ, between the letter and the spirit of the books of the Old and New Testament, between false and true religion, between superstition and idolatry on one side, and reason with growing knowledge in the Church on the other. I begin with the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.

The Church of the dark ages has taught the doctrine professedly founded upon the letter of the Sacred Scriptures: of God, as consisting of three persons in one person, coexistent, co-equal, and co-eternal, which, in expression, has been abridged, under the name of Trinity, and described as the Holy Trinity; and, in definition or distinction, as Father, Son and Holy Ghost. This doctrine has always been dissented from while dissent has been tolerated. It is no more a physical absurdity than the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, or the changing of water to wine, or the feeding of five thousand with five small loaves and two fishes, or any other narrated miracle: still it has been dissented from, and when dissented from, no defence could be made of it. In every other case of dissent, the Church could make no defence and no other apology than ancientness of the doctrine in the Church. Truly this has been a verification of the blind leading the blind, until both fell into the ditch together.

With a doctrine of personality in Deity, including the ideas of physical and moral power, this of the Trinity has been declared a mystery incomprehensible to the human mind; and I declare that a mystery incomprehensible to the human mind, pressed upon human attention, as of importance, is an absurdity, and must be an imposture; for who has comprehended it so to state? This is the matter-of-fact view of the subject.

But the subject being a declared mystery in the theological sense, there is a spiritual interpretation to be put upon the language of the letter; and that I take to be thus:—

That the Trinity is not to be considered as of persons, but of principles; and then we shall find it a philosophical doctrine, true to nature, and proved by science; true to physical and to moral science.

All the ideas that physical science can bring us of creation is the root of three in one. Whatever admits of analysis sets forth the