of the dead, and of making them speak.* The reader will not be displeased here to find the key of the occult languages, and to be ac quainted how magicians went about asking questions of hell, an2 conversing with the devils.

A respect for the human body whica was believed to be destined for a better state to come, and one day to rise from the dust, induced the first nations to inter the dead in a decent manner, and always to join to this melancholy ceremony, wishes and prayers, which were expressions or a profession of their expectation.

Funeral assemblies were the most frequent, because men died every day, and these meetings were repeated on every anniversary. They were not only the most common, but also the most regular.

Every thing was simple in the ancient feasts. Men met upon some high and remarkable place. They made there a small pit, wherein to consume the entrails of the victims by fire. They made the blood to flow into the same pit. Part of the flesh was presented to the ministers of the sacrifice. They boiled the rest of the offering immolated, and eat it, sitting near the fire. By degrees they swerved from this simplicity.

What had been approved on some important occasion, afterwards passed into custom, and became a law. The number, the characters, and the histories of the objects which men took for gods, afterwards gave birth to a thousand varieties, which appeared very important rites and necessary precautions. Whoever should have neglected one single point of the ceremonial prescribed, had nothing less than the plague or famine to apprehend. Whenever the gods in that case were contented with only sending a transitory tempest or some furious beast among them, the fault was reckoned very cheaply atoned for. Each feast having its proper service and decorations had a peculiar name. It was not thus with the funeral assemblies: nothing was changed in them. They were void of joy and decoration. Men went on with practising what had ever been done. The families in interring their dead, were accustomed to a common rubric which was perpetual. It is then in the service of the funerals especially, that we may again find the principal of the usages of primitive antiquity. At these solemnities they continued to make a ditch, to pour out wine, oil, honey, milk or some other liquors in use, to shed the blood of the victims,† to roast their flesh, to eat it in common sitting round the pit or hearth, and discoursing of the virtues of him they came to lament. These assemblies continued to bear the name given to all solemn convenings.

The science of communing with departed spirits, suprosea to have been lost for many centuries, is believed, by the Swedenborgians, to have been communicated vo the founder of their sect, Emmanuel Swedenborg. He asserts, that in the year 1743, the Lord manifested himself to him by a personal appearance, and at the same time opened his spiritual eyes, so that he was enabled constantly to see and converse with spirits and angels.-Edit.

Inferimus tepido spumantia cymbia lacte,
Sanguinis et sacri pateras.

See the same ceremonies in the anniversary of Anchises.

Eneid. 6.

An. 5.

While the other feasts, on account of the diversity of the ceremonies, were called Saturnalia, Dionisiaca, Palilia, etc. the funeral assemblies were simply called the Manes,* that is, the covering or regulation. That the Manes and the dead became two synonymous words, or were indifferently used, one for another. And as the things which gave names to the feasts, were generally become the objects of an extravagant worship; the Manes or the dead became likewise the object reverenced in the funeral ceremonies. The strange facility with which the minute parts of the universe were deified, is a hint to us how the custom was introduced of directing prayers, vows, and religious worship to the dead whom they had loved, whose praises were celebrated, and who were thought to enjoy the most refined knowledge, after they had, together with their body, cast off the frailties of humanity.

The ancient sacrifices were not only eucharistical. In the times when the Most High was as yet worshipped, they were looked upon as an alliance contracted with him, and whereby they engaged themselves to be faithful to him. I shall here mention neither the reasons nor any instances of it. The former are palpable, and the scripture abounds with the latter.

All nations, when they sacrificed either to the gods they had framed to themselves, or to the dead whose memory was dear to them, thought they entered into an alliance, conversed, and familiarly eat with them. But this familiarity engrossed their thoughts most particularly in the funeral assemblies, in which they were as yet full of the memory of the persons whom they had tenderly loved, and who, as they thought, took always a great part in the concerns of their family and country.

We have heretofore observed, how cupidity and ignorance having rendered all men indifferent as to justice, had led them astray as to the object of their worship, and had afterwards converted every part of it into so many means of being relieved of in their illness, instructed in futurity, and provided all proper means to succeed in all their undertakings. Every object in nature spoke to them. The birds in the heaven, the serpents and other animals on the earth, a simple rod in the hand of their minister, and all the instruments of religion, were so many oracles and prophetical signs. They read the stars, and the gods spoke or revealed their intentions to them from one end of nature to the other. This covetousness and gross religion, which applied to the gods merely to ask them questions in matters of interest, was no less inquisitive and thought it had a right to be still better served in the funeral sacrifices than in all the rest. Men in these ceremonies thought they had to deal with affectionate gods, which, on account of the concern they still had in the prosperity of their family, could not but inform them in time, of whatever might be of service or detrimental to them. The whole apparatus of the funerals was then again interpreted in

From manim, distributiones, vices, reditus, solemnitas. This name was given to the symbolical figures. In particular it remained the name of the image of the dead person which characterized a funeral assembly.

the same manner, as that of the other feasts, and the whole was converted into so many methods of divination.

The ceremonies of the Manes, though they were but the bare practices of the assemblies of the primitive times, being, in every respect different from those observed in the other feasts, appeared so many different methods of conversing with the dead, and of obtaining the desired information from them. Who then could doubt but it was in order familiarly to converse with their ancient friends, that men sat down round a pit, into which they had thrown the oil, the flour, and the blood of the victim they had killed to their honor? How could it be doubted, but that this pit so different from the altars set up and pointing towards heaven, was a suitable ceremony, and peculiarly belonging to the dead? The dead evidently took pleasure in these repasts, and especially in what was poured into the pit for them.. Doubtless they came to consume the honey and the liquors which disappeared from thence; and if their friends were contented with offering them liquors only, no doubt it was because their condition as dead persons would not admit of gross foods. Men were then so extravagantly credulous as to believe that the phantoms came to drink and voluptuously to relish these liquors, while their relations feasted on the rest of the sacrifice around the pit. After the repast in common between the dead and the living, came the interrogation, or particular calling up of the soul, for which the sacrifice was appointed, and who' was to explain her mind. Every body is sensible that an inconvenience attended the ceremony, it being to be apprehended that the dead might crowd about the ditch, to get a share in this effusion which they were so very greedy of, and leave nothing for the dear soul, for whom the feast was designed. This was provided against. The relations made two ditches. In one they threw in wine, honey, water and flour, to amuse the generality of the dead: in the other they poured out the blood of the victim then to be eaten in common by the family. They sat upon the brink of the latter, and with their swords near them, they kept off by the sight of these instruments, the crowd of dead who had no concern in their affairs. They on the contrary invited and called up by his name the deceased, whom they had a mind to cheer and consult. They desired him to draw near. The dead seeing that there was there no security for them, flocked and swarmed round the ditch, the access to which was free, and politely abandoned the other to the privileged soul, who had a right to the offering, and who knew the bottom of the affairs about which she was to be consulted.

The questions made by the living were distinct and easy to be understood. The answers, on the contrary, though very certain, were neither so quick, nor so easy to be unravelled. But the priests who had been taught in their labyrinth how to understand the voice of the gods the, answers of the planets, the language of the birds, the serpents and the mutest instruments, casily understood the dead, and became their interpreters. They reduced it into an art, whose most necessary point and what best suited the condition of the dead, was silence

silence and darkness. They retired into the deeper caves: they fasted fe and lay upon the skins of the sacrificed beasts When they waked or after a watch, which was fitter to turn their brains than to reveal hidden things to them, they gave for answers the thought or dream which had most affected them. Or they opened certain books appointed for that use:* and the first words which offered at the opening of them, were precisely those of the prophecy expected: or in short, the priest and sometimes the person himself who came to consult, took care, at going out of the cave, to listen with attention to the very first words he could possibly hear, from what part soever they proceeded, and they were to him in lieu of an answer. These words for certain had no manner of relation || or connexion with the business in hand; but they were turned so many ways, and the sense of them so violently wrested, that they must needs have given way some small matter. Commonly enough they had in appearance some relation to it. They sometimes, instead of the foregoing methods, had recourse to what they called sortes, viz: a number of tickets on which there were some words written at random, or some verses already current or newly coined. These tickets being thrown into an urn, they were stirred very well together, and the first ticket that was drawn was gravely given to the distressed family, as the means to make them easy. Methods of divination were multiplied without end. The whole of religion was almost converted into so many methods of knowing futurity. See the dissertation of Vandale upon the heathen oracles. See the history of the oracles. This matter has been sufficiently treated upon by the learned: it would be needless to resume it.

It is evident that the practices above mentioned were extremely fit every where to spread this extravagant persuasion, which is still preserved among the people, that we may converse with the dead, and that they often come to give us advices.

If I can again supply my readers with the proofs of this custom, or rather of this perverse abuse of the funeral ceremonies, I shall, methinks, have sufficiently shown, that the opinions of men upon the gods, the dead, and the answers that may be obtained from either of them, are nothing but a literal and gross interpretation made of very plain signs, and of still plainer ceremonies, whose purport was to express certain truths, and to fulfil certain duties.

Because all nations flocked to high places, there to shed the blood of the victims into a trench, and to converse with a dead person, by 'keeping off others by the sight of a sword, it is, that scripture so often, and in so express a manner, forbids the Israelites to assemble upon high places, or, (which was frequently the same thing) to hold their assembly near the blood, or to eat sitting round any pit sprinkled with the blood of the victims. The seventy interpreters knowing per

A similar custom is still practised by some superstitious people; who, when in doubt what they ought to determine in particular circumstances, open the biblo, and the first passage that strikes their eyes, is expected to intimate the proper course.-Edit.

fectly that this was what drew the people to the high places, having very well translated this passage of Leviticus, xix. 26. and other the like by these words -ye shall not go and eat upon the mountains. Here to eat is the same thing as to sacrifice.

In concluding my extracts and remarks on the interesting works of the Abbe Pluche, I will take some notice of what he says of the dog days; which are continually recorded in Almanacs, when probably neither the authors nor readers, know any thing of their origin or the propriety or use of their being retained in such registers.

According to our author, the rising of the dog-star was generally accompanied with what the Egyptians called the Etesian northern wind that continued to blow for about forty days in succession. When this wind failed to occur at this period, or was too light to be of use in causing the swelling of the Nile to a sufficient height, a general sadness of the people ensued. The probability, therefore, is, that while the inhabitants remained idle on the high ground, watching the progress of the inundation, these forty days were passed very much in fasting and other acts of devotion to gain the favour of their gods in this respect. Indeed the author relates a story that prevailed among the Cretians, that corroborates this opinion; which is, that through the displeasure of the gods, this wind was not permitted to blow for a considerable time; "but after repeated sacrifices, the gods at length granted the return of the Etesian wind, and its constant blowing, during the forty days that followed the rising of the dog star, called the dog-days which again brought abundance upon the earth." The people he says in another place "were warned to observe the dog-days.'

Volney remarks that, "about the end of July, during all the month of August, and half of September, the winds in Egypt remain constantly in the north, and are moderate; brisker in the day, however, and weaker at night."

The dog-days, in calendars calculated for the United States, are generally noted as commencing on the 30th of July, and ending on the tenth of September, making forty-two days.

It is highly probable that the Roman Catholic Lent has grown out of this ancient custom in regard to the dog-days; accommodated however, in respect to the time of its observance, to the circumstances of countries differently situated to that of Egypt. Such an essential change in the

* Masonic writers say, "their brethren used to meet on the highest hills." This declaration applies to the predecessors of freemasons, but not to the craft; who so assemblies always held in a lodge-room, guarded by a member at the door, with a drawn sword.

were

The first word spoken, on raising the dead body of Hiram, was to be sabstituted for the lost master mason's word, provided it was not found upon him. This idea is evidently copied from the superstitious practices mentioned above, at the funeral anniversaries.-Edit.