LUCIAN.--The learned Egyptian priests appear to have been decidedly Materialists. Infinitely above the minor deities which they invented for the ignorant populace, they believed in the great material principle,* acting by self-existing energies and properties; infinite, therefore causeless; and constituting the unity of the Supreme Power. They represent this power by no emblem, conceiving that to be impossible; but the Greeks personified it in the god Pan. Thus the unity of the Supreme Power was the basis of the hierarchical religion of Egypt, as is acknowledged by the learned Hyde, and also by Cudworth. As an Egyptian priest, Moses (admitting his existence) must have known this, and was therefore wishful of preserving this unity in his Theban deity; though that availed nothing when neutralised by the discordant and inconsistent qualities attributed to him. In order to be justified as an invader and plunderer of peaceful countries, Moses was under the necessity of endowing his god with fierce and barbarous passions, which on most occasions led him to be cruel and unjust; as when he issued his ferocious and bloody mandate to his priests, the sons of Levi, (Exod. xxxii., 27) to sacrifice about three thousand "_Brothers, companions, and neighbors_," in cold blood,* You say, "materiality cannot think--do you know of any thinking without it? Pray how does immateriality think?" * See also the inhuman mandate issued in Deut. xiii., 6th to 10th. This has justified every refinement in the cruelty of persecution throughout Christendom for more than fifteen hundred years. MOD.--That massacre was caused by the idolatry of the people, in setting up and worshipping the golden calf. LUCIAN.--Priest Aaron was herein the principal actor; yet he and his tribe not only go unpunished, but are employed to commit the shocking murders. MOD.--But theologists assure us that what is justice with god is injustice with man. Christians have ever drawn a line of distinction between divine and human justice: proving that what appears to man cruel, partial, and unjust, in the works of god, are, in reality, justice, impartiality, and mercy towards man. LUCIAN.--Robbery and murder are strange ways of showing mercy. It is by the hideous and pernicious dogmas you mention, that pretended supernatural revelations have poisoned the pure stream of morality; they utterly confound every idea or perception we can have of the natural principles of right and wrong; and have sanctioned or justified the foulest enormities throughout Christendom. The principles of truth, justice, and morality, are ever the same, and immutable from whatever source they emanate. MOD.--It is true that the Supreme Being is, upon the whole, not much beholden to the Jewish priests for the sketches of character in which he is portrayed in the Bible. But this is speaking according to human reason.