SUNDAY SCHOOL OF FREE DISCUSSION,

62, FLEET STREET.

ON Sunday evening last, the Rev. Robert Taylor opened the business of the school with a sermon on the Gospels, taking his text from Matthew, chapter i. verse 24. Then Joseph being raised from sleep, did as the angel of the Lord had bidden

him.

On the assumption that the Gospel Drama begins with a dream, the preacher showed that it could not be of Jewish origin, as the Jewish laws forbad all respect to dreams: and as to a Jew having told the story of the astrological journey of the wise men of the East, it was more likely that he would have eaten pork sausages, inasmuch as it was an offence among the Jews to respect a stargazer or astrologer.

The Persian angels, Gabriel and others, having been shown to be the personification of the months' of the year, was another proof that the Christian religion was not of Jewish origin, for the Jews had not adopted the Persian personification of the months. No Jew would have written anything about the angel Gabriel. The whole Gospel story being founded upon Gabriel's visit to Joseph and Mary, to the one in a dream, and to the other in a more suspicious way, bespeaks the absence of Jewish origin, and in addition to that stamps the whole as a fable.

The preacher treated of Gabriel's visit to Mary as a fabled specimen of the "Loves of the Angels;" and was very happy in pouring over the whole of this rather indelicate scene, a very delicate wit.

We have not room to report his sermon further. The gist has been given; and these Gospel expoundings will be continued for some time.

The business of the school commences at seven o'clock.— Ladies free. Gentlemen who are unknown, charged one shilling for admission, for the purpose of keeping up a select and respectble company.

a

REV. JAMES BROMLEY'S HUDDERSFIELD SERMON

Oh, that mine enemy had written a book.-Persian Drama of Job. Oн, that all my enemies would write books, for then should I triumph over them. I have received Mr. Bromley's printed sermon, which was preached on the Sunday after the Infidel Missionaries left Huddersfield. I have a right to presume, that what is here put forth, is all that Mr. Bromley could have done against us in discussion. I will therefore print his sermon, and answer it in a parallel column; and this 1 will do in an early No. of "The Lion," next week, if nothing more urgent come in the way.

I have closed the mouth of Thomas Brook this week, unless he be one of Prometheus' unfired men, and such also as are curiously alluded to in the Gospel Drama, in precisely the same words, as

having eyes but could not see, and ears that could not hear, and the unused or unstrung capacity for intellect or understanding. Humphrey Boyle's correspondence with John Foster, the reading-scissars man of the Leeds Patriot, is intended for insertion as early as convenient. I shall insert it to show the contemptible character of John Foster, compared with the good disposition, the talent and honesty of Humphrey Boyle. R. C.

A HAND-BILL.

I FIND the saints indefatigable, in putting into the people's hands their ETERNITY-TURN OR BURN-and WARNING VOICE bills. I propose the grappling with them at their own weapon. Let the friends of our cause order a few bills to be struck off, as short as pithy, and to be distributed as cheaply as their own.-Here is one for a sample:

BEWARE OF PRIESTCRAFT! And what does priestcraft consist in, but in the old trick of making solemn faces, and telling dreadful stories, about hell-fire, the devil, and raw head and bloody bones coming to life again, to frighten women and children, and persons of weak nerves, or weak understandings; and telling you that you shall go to heaven if you believe, and that you shall be eternally damned if you use your own reason?

Ask your pretended ambassadors of God to show you their credentials?-Ask them, if you cannot read, as well as they?— Ask them, why it is that they are ashamed or afraid to answer the objections of men as clever and as learned as themselves, who can prove that their gospel is altogether a cheat and a forgery? Ask them, why it is that they can rail, and abuse, and revile, but cannot answer you?-Ask them, why it is that they won't let any body speak in a public meeting but themselves, and would send you to jail if you attempted to hold an argument with them in a chapel or church? Ask them, where are the originals of their gospels?-Ask them, who translated them? who brought them together? when? where? and by whom? and for what reason where they fixed on rather than any other out of fifty gospels that were as good as they ?-Ask them, why they call that the book of God, which, on its title-page, purports to be no more than the book of King James the First ?-Ask them, why they enforce you to take that book for true, which in every page of it appears to be romance?-Ask them, why you must believe, what you may see with your own eyes, that the writers did not believe themselves?-Ask them, what one single argument they can bring for the trash they would make you swallow, which might not as well be pretended for the falsest and grossest superstitions that ever were in the world; they will not, they cannot, they dare not answer you. Then use your own reason; be virtuous-be happy; and beware of the craftiness of the craftiest of all crafts, the craft of priestcraft. ROBERT TAYLOR.

ANIMISTS AND CORPISTS.

THE SOUL and THE BODY once held a dispute:
Says the Soul," Dare you spurn my favours, you brute;
Made up of vile matter, mere gases, and clay,
Pray what would you be if I were away?

If you were deprived of my essence divine,

In what way could you walk, or how could you dine?
How could your muscles, designed for an end,
Give death to a foe or lend help to a friend;
Did not 1, your carcase, base reptile, control,
And my mighty power inspire the whole

Of the dust which composes your Body and brains?
And you threaten eternal repose for my pains!
Can my immaterial essence decay,

When of God himself, I am surely a ray ?

GOOD WIFE cease your pother, and stop this damned rout,
Lest I, in my rage, should turn you right out.

For your SUBSTANCE, NO-MATTER, I know is so thin,
I can send you to Hell, with the prick of a pin,
Which lets you well out if you ever are in;
And where is the power you boast to control,
When you quit a great Body through a small hole?
When matter's great laws YOU CLEARLY OBEY,
How can
house far away?
live from your
you
And how can you see without any eyes,

What form can you take when your tenement dies?
If you are no-matter, HOW ACT YOU ON ME,
And how can I give any knowledge to thee?
And if you are matter diffused through each part,
As "bone of my bone," you must yield to fate's dart.

}

R. T. W.

RESTORATION OF THE JEWS!

THE following curious extract is reported as taken from a private letter from Smyrna :

"The confidence of the children of Israel, in the words of the prophet, has not been in vain; the temple of Solomon will be restored in all its splendour. Baron Rothschild, who was accused of having gone to Rome to abjure the faith of his fathers, has merely past through that city on his way to Constantinople, where he is about to negotiate a loan with the Porte. It is stated on good authority, that Baron Rothschild has engaged to furnish

to the Sultan the enormous sum of 350,000,000 piastres, at three instalments, without interest, on condition of the Sultan's engaging, for himself and his successors, to yield to Baron Rothschild for ever the sovereignty of Jerusalem and the territories of ancient Palestine, which was occupied by the twelve tribes.

"The Baron's intention is to grant to the rich Israelites who are scattered about in different parts of the world portions of that fine country, where he proposes to establish seiniorities, and to give them, as far as possible, their ancient and sacred laws.

"Thus, the descendants of the Hebrews will, at length, have a country, and every friend of humanity must rejoice at the happy event,

"The poor Jews will cease to be the victims of oppression and injustice. Glory to the great Baron Rothschild, who makes so noble a use of his ingots.

"A little army being judged necessary for the restored kingdom, measures have been taken for recruiting it out of the wrecks of the Jewish battalion raised in Holland by Louis Bonaparte.

"All the Israelites, who were employed in the various departments of the Dutch Administration, are to obtain superior posts under the Government of Jerusalem, and the expences of their journey are to be paid them in advance.

NOTE.

"COURT JOURNAL.”

I have long seen, and have before hinted, that the successive triumphs of the Russians over the Turks will lead to the liberation of that country from the rule of the Mohammedan power, which is commonly called the Holy Land. I set no value on the truth of the foregoing extract: it may be all a hoax. But the approach of some change, in the rule of the country alluded to, must strike every one, who has any knowledge of the geography and political circumstances of the neighbourhood. Egypt and Judea are likely soon to become independent provinces. But what follows? Can this be the consequence of a prophecy? The trial of the thing will show, that our wealthy Jews will not go there to dwell. The sterility of the country will deny to the future that which it has denied to the past, the possibility of forming there a respectable colony even, much less a respectable nation. The fables as to the past will not produce the realities of the future. The golden eggs of the goose were never found beyond the fable.Here is an answer to the pretended prophecy, and to all the pretended prophecies about the Jews. They were never an independent people in that country which is now called Judea. They were never there before the period called the Babylonian captivity. Their fabulous books are the growth of Alexandria, and their first appearance in Judea was a similar project to that which it is said the Baron Rothechild is about to institute.

Let my prophecy here stand against all the pretended Jewish prophecies. THE JEWS ARE NOT NOW KNOWN EVER TO HAVE BEEN AN INDEPENDENT NATION, AND THEY NEVER WILL BECOME AN INDEPENDENT NATION.

The stone-quarries and bitumen-beds of Judea are not the materials in which the Jews like to deal. Lebanon has now no cedars; the hills or valleys of Judea no fruits. There is not a river, not a fresh-water lake in which a fish is to be found. There is not a vegetable mould upon which corn can be grown; nor meadows, nor pasture lands. There are no sea coasts fit for harbours or for fisheries. There is not a copse or a forest to furnish even fuel for fire. There are no mines of metals, nor even of coals; and scarcely a good well of water.

The stories about the fishermen and the boats of the Gospels are all fabulous. The country was never inhabitable by a civilized and respectable people; and it cannot be hereafter made inhabitable to such a people. The curse of God is not upon it. It never contained any thing that was worth a damn or a curse.

RICHARD CARLILE.

SIMILARITY BETWEEN THE TRAGEDIES OF PROMETHEUS AND JESUS CHRIST, AS ASSERTED BY THE INFIDEL MISSIONARIES, AND CALLED IN QUESTION BY THOMAS BROOK, REV. MR. BEARD, AND OTHERS.

To the Editor of the Leeds Mercury.

SIR,-In a part of your impression of the Leeds Mercury, of September 26, and again on October 3, you have a long article, which is professedly a report of some proceedings, in which the Infidel Missionaries were engaged in Huddersfield, and is subscribed by a Thomas Brook of that town. This report is a mixture of true and false representation. It is one side of the question, in which the interested party makes a statement according to his inclination, rather than according to truth and facts. Thomas Brook was engaged in the discussion, and you cannot expect from him any thing that would read to his disadvantage. The same imputation would apply to myself, if I were not about to lay before your readers not my own opinions, but the very matter in dispute, on which they may exercise their individual judgments. Though I have, in the course of my peregrination in the West Riding of Yorkshire, found nothing that I could admire in your relation to society, still I must confess that, in relation to the two other editors of Leeds newspapers, I hold you to be respectable. I found from you a business-like candour; and though you were pleased to be an opponent, I cannot say