* * * * * Have infidels been martyred on account of their infidelity? Men are not so foolish as to have themselves devoured by wild beasts or perish in slow fires rather than recant from a theory they never espoused, Col. Ingersoll to the contrary, _notwithstanding_. Men do not prefer red-hot iron chains to denying a Lord in whom they never believed. Infidels have nothing to lose by recanting. Colonel Ingersoll says, "I think I would. There is not much of the martyr about me," _so we think of the Colonel_! THE JEWISH RELIGION AND INSTITUTIONS KNOWN AMONG HEATHEN WRITERS. BY HENRY KETT, B.D., _Fellow and Tutor of Trinity College, Oxford. Published first in 1812._ "The transactions and literature of the ancient Jews were too remarkable to escape the attention of the learned and inquisitive Pagans when Judea became a province of the Roman Empire. Many particulars relative to the eminent character of Joseph as a minister to Pharaoh, and as an inspired prophet, to the emigration of the Jews from Egypt, their miraculous passage through the Red Sea, their settlement in the Holy Land, the institutions and ceremonies of the law, the splendor of Jerusalem in its most flourishing times, the magnificence of the temple, and the supreme, eternal and immutable nature of their worship, are related by Diodorus Siculus, Strabo, Pliny the Elder, Tacitus and Justin." CENTURIES BEFORE CHRIST. The fragments of Sanchoniathon, the most ancient historian of Phenicia, who is supposed to have flourished not long after the death of Moses, confirms the Bible account of the origin of the world and of many men and places mentioned in the Pentateuch. Berosus, the Chaldean, and Manetho, the Egyptian, who lived in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, represent several circumstances known in the accounts given by Moses. They wrote about the time when the Old Testament was translated into Greek. Their evidence, to say the least, shows the honor that was paid by the most learned persons of the East to the records of the Bible. * * * * * I know the Bible is inspired, because it finds me at greater depths of my being than any other book.--_Coleridge._ Transcriber's Note The punctuation and spelling from the original text have been faithfully preserved. Only obvious typographical errors have been corrected.