Ward had written the word culkee with c hard, for k had no existence in the first alphabets. The word culte, or worship, is common to all the languages of Europe. The Latin has cultor, cultores Apollonis, cultores Minervæ. The Scots have Culdees, an ancient religious sect; the word is also of frequent occurrence in the Icelandic Edda. What other etymon can this word have but the Christ, the anointed, the Messiah?

"The poets of Greece and Rome have the same ideas of the Messiah as the Brahmins of the east; for all the sons of Noah had the same hope and expectation. Old Hesiod, in his Theogony, verse 886, 924, 925, represents Jupiter as producing purely from his own intelligence, when, as yet, he had not produced anything, and begetting Minerva of his own brain. Coincident with this idea is another appellation of the Goddess, Tritona, from rgw, the head.

τρίτω,

"Pindar illustrates the same idea when singing the favours of Minerva to the Isle of Rhodes, which he represents by a shower of gold, which the father of the gods had rained upon the island, when, by a stroke of Vulcan's hatchet, he had caused Minerva to proceed from the summit of his brain. The shower of gold designates the flourishing of arts under the protection of the goddess. The begetting Minerva of his own brain is the Homoousion faith to the letter. Here is a son (the feminine gender being only a word of

Quando Vulcani arte æreo bipenni, Minerva ex supremo patris vertice prosiliit.-Pindarus in Olympia, Ode VII.

imagination) without a mother ;* a son not suckled, as the same poets admit was the case with Minerva; here is a son of one co-existent substance with the sire. Here is a Son who came out of the mouth or face of the Most High, who encompasses the circle of the heavens, and whose dwelling is in a pillary cloud.' Here is a Son 'in the bosom of the Father;' who 'came forth from the Father;' a Son whose generation is unutterable.' Eccles. xxiv. 3, 4.-Isa. liii. 8: John i. 18. The etymon of the word Minerva, according to the above authorities, is to the same effect; Min, the same; and ervon, derived, or drawn.

"Pausanius, a heathen writer of great probity, says, that he saw at Patras in the Morea, in the temple of Jupiter, a statue which represented him seated on a throne, with Minerva at his side. † This agrees with our Saviour's words, Rev. iii. 21. To him that overcometh, will I grant to sit down with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.'

"Plutarch says in his treatise on Isis and Osiris, that the Pythagoreans honouring mathematics with the names of the Gods, a practice common to early writers, have placed Minerva in the midst of the equilateral triangle. What can this sacred symbol of three equal lines import, but a sociality in the

*An quia de capitis fertur sine matre paterni

Vertice cum Clypeo prosiluisse suo.-Ovid. Fast. III.

+ In foro Jovis Olympii templum est, sedet ipse in solio prope adsistênte Minervâ.-In Achaicis, p. 426.

*

Godhead. Macrobius illustrates this idea by saying, that Jupiter was placed in the middle regions of the air, Juno in the lower, and Minerva in the higher regions. This is in perfect unison with our sacred books, which declare that the Lord Christ is from above, and ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things. John iii. 13: Psal. lxviii. 18: Eph. iv. 10.

"The names and titles which the ancients have conferred on Minerva, strikingly indentify themselves with those which the prophets have conferred on the Messiah. She is the Goddess of Wisdom, and wisdom itself; as Christ is called the Wisdom and Power of God.-She differs not in mind and intelligence from the sovereign God: so 'no man knoweth the Father, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him.'-She is the mighty, the powerful, the terrible Goddess of armies the Messiah, the leader of the Hebrews in the pillary cloud, appeared to Joshua as captain of the host: Josh. v. 13. vide Iliad iii. Isaiah saw Messiah, the king, the lord of hosts. Isa. vi. John xi. 40. In a word, she is the teacher of all arts, of all science; and thus she resembles the Saviour who has received gifts for men,

"Proclus and Marsilius write, that on the front of the temples of Minerva, in Egypt, they engraved and inlaid with gold this inscription: I am what is, what shall be, and what has been; no man can uplift the veil which hides: if any one would know my works, it is I who made the sun. I am *Saturnalia, Lib. iii. cap. 4.

† Ego sum quæ sunt, quæ erunt, et quæ fuerunt; velum meum

Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty-Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.' Rev, i. 8: Heb. xiii. 8: John viii. 58.

"The ancient patriarchs knew much of what they call the reign of Saturn, or golden age, say rather, the golden age restored in Christ. On this head, their ideas, and often their language, are so strikingly similar to the Hebrew prophets, as to induce a belief in some of the Christian fathers, that they had borrowed all they knew of the Jews, and that Plato is but another name for Moses, speaking Greek. It can scarcely be doubted, that the Jews communicated much sacred knowledge to the Gentiles; but how could they find means to communicate that knowledge to the Brahmins of India, and cause it to be inserted in their sacred books? how could the Druids, how could the northern poems or sacred prophecies be fraught with these expectations? And with regard to the Divine hero of those poesies, how could those men, whose fathers had instilled into their minds this first, this best, this only hope of man, possibly make it their wanton boast to be believers in the simple humanity of Jesus ?'

"From Phoenicia and Greece let us now proceed to Rome. Here we find the books of Sibyls, prophetesses of different nations, who had flourished in various ages. They were vestal virgins, secluded in the temples, and understood to utter revelavit nemo: quem ego fructum peperi ? sol est natus. Girald, D. Syntagm. xi. Confer par Lavaur, page 133.

predictive poësies by the Divine Afflatus. The name is sacred being compound of sios, or Jupiter, and boulè, equivalent to council; that is, persons admitted to the secrets or councils of the Divinity. The Christian fathers affirm, as Varro and Cicero had done before, that they delivered true narratives of the creation, and predictions of the resurrection, and the final judgment. They spake also of the advent and passion of the Messiah; and of the glory of the latter day, and of the fall of empires and monarchies, they spake with a perspicuity, according to Clement, as though the events had been past. The same father adds, (Strom. lib. vi.) that St. Paul exhorted the Christians to read their predictions, as containing the genuine traditions of the heathen temples.

"The number of these virgins is given by the learned Varro as ten: and in this he is followed by Jerome, and also by Lactantius, who has made a selection of their prophecies in the fourth book of his Institutes. These are the Cumeian or Italian, the Cumana, the Persian, the Lybian, the Samianian, the Delphic, the Phrygian, the Tiburtinian, and the Etythrian. Augustine in his book The City of God,' notices these predictions with approbation; (Lib. xviii. c. 23.) and Constantine recited and explained them in his oration, to the clergy.

"Virgil, in his fourth eclogue, gives an epitome of what related to the felicities of the future age, of which he thought some glimmering began to dawn his own time.

"He says, if you will excuse an English dress,