the Law has never been repealed, because the will of God must needs be immutable." Supp. Notes, p. 1.

"The Mexicans styled Tezcatlipoca, "Valiant Lord," because they considered him the God of battles, by which title He is expressly designated in the prayer which the Mexicans addressed to Him, beseeching of Him victory over their enemies, which prayer will be found entire in the third chapter of the sixty-sixth of Sahagun. A short extract is here inserted, not only because it contains the above mentioned title, but on account of the Jewish tone and sentiment which pervades it, and its scriptural phraseology,2 and likewise it serves to illustrate an observation of Torquemeda, in the note to page 245 of the volume: And inasmuch as your Majesty is Lord of battles, on whose will depends victory, who forsakest when thou wilt, and standest in need of no counsel from any one; since thus it is, I supplicate your Majesty to deprive our enemies of reason-to make them as drunkards, in order that they may throw themselves into our hands, and without harm to us, may all fall into the hands of our men of war, who endure poverty and hardship. O may it please thy Majesty, since thou art God, and canst do all things, and ordainest all things, and art ever employed in directing the affairs of the universe, and in ordering and providing for the prosperity, and glory, and honor, and fame of this thy commonwealth, &c."—p. 523.

"The notion of Tezcatlipoca protecting the people beneath His wings which metaphor was employed by the ancient Mexicans, who emphatically styled themselves "His People,"

"Think not that I am come to abrogate the Law." "Sooner shall heaven earth pass, than one jot or tittle of the law fail." Matt. v. 17. Malachi iv. 4. 2 The Mexican oath was as follows:-" I swear by the sun, and by the existance of our sovereign mother the earth, that nothing which I affirm is false, and in confirmation of my oath I partake of this earth. The adjuration of Moses is analogous. " I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, &c."

and their kingdoms, and the throne of their kings, God's throne and His seat of judgment, strongly assimilates itself to the language of David in the fourth verse of the ninetyfirst Psalm. They likewise considered the supreme God their shield and buckler, the proper name of Chimalman, 1 which is derived from the Mexican name for shield, and being compounded of that term by the elision of the final syllable li and man (devoid of signification) as is most probably here the case, and which would perhaps have been Mar, but that the Mexican language wants the letter r, may not unreasonably be supposed to have been the virgin of Tula, the mother of Quetzalcoatl.”—p. 523.

2

Du Pratz, who had a special intimacy with one of the guardians of a Temple in a tribe near the Mississippi, was informed that " By their word expressive of the Deity, they mean a SPIRIT surpassing other spirits as much as the sun surpasses a taper." "The guardian said in comparison of this GREAT ONE, all else were as nothing. He made all that we see and all that we cannot see! His is perfect goodness! He made all things by His word, or will; that subordinate spirits are his servants. The superior order of these they call His Free Servants'—those being the spirits always in the presence of the MASTER OF LIFE-and ready to execute His will with an extreme diligence. That the air is the region of many good and evil spirits-that the latter have a chief who is more mighty in evil power than all the rest-who had become so daring, that the GREAT SPIRIT had bound him, so that he could do the less harm."

Adair, who lived long among the Northern Indians, says,

1 A curious feature of identity in the Hebrew and Aztec Migration, is with reference to Miriam, who under the name of Chimalman, was shut out several days from the Aztlan camp in consequence of her quarrel with her brothers, the leaders of the Aztecs, or Mexicans," Numb. xii. 15.-Antiq. Mex. vol. vi. p. 367. The Mexican language wants the B, D, F, G, R, and S.

"These tribes believe the higher regions to be inhabited by good spirits, whom they call Holy Ones, or relatives of the GREAT SPIRIT, or HOLY ONE. They say accursed beings possess a dark region-the former attend to favour the virtuous and just amongst men-the latter accompany and instigate by their malice, the vicious. Several warriors have told me that the concomitant holy spirits have forewarned them by intimation, of danger of which they were not aware at the time, but which afterwards they have found to have been inevitable.

"Pachacamac is represented as sitting upon an animal not unlike a cherubim, the figures of bird, beasts, &c. may allude to Pachacama (or Creator), under which the Peruvians adored their Supreme God; for although they believed, as did also the Mexicans, that the supreme Deity was incorporeal, they still, like the Hebrews, acknowledged Him in the human form."

"God's promise to Jeremiah, "thou shalt be as My mouth," was known to the Mexicans, since the newly-elected King of Mexico, in a prayer of thanksgiving to Tezcatlipoca, there emphatically says of kings in general" they are thine instruments and thine images to govern Thy kingdom, Thou being in them and speaking from their mouth, and they declaring Thy words."

Kircher says, that none of their symbols were without secret meaning. The mirror in the hand of Tezcatlipoca denoted His prescience, which beheld every thing as in a mirror; and the skull and heart, according to Torquemeda, signified that He possessed equal power over life and death. p. 419.

1 The Peruvians regarded Pachacama as the Supreme Creator and preserver of all things here below: they adored him in their hearts as the invisible God. -Vega.

64 NAMES AND ATTRIBUTES OF THE CREATOR.

"HUITZILOPOCTLI was called YA-0. It is singular that he should have been called the ineffable."—p. 145.

"Huitzilopoctli is a compound name. Boturini derives it from Houitziton, the Lord of the tribes during their peregrination, and supposes that their Leader represented the Creator whom they have worshipped time immemorial before they commenced their wandering life under Honitziton. Some say this divinity is a pure Spirit: others represent Him embodied as a man: this God, having been the Protector of the tribes led them (according to their account) during many years of their wandering life, and at last settled them in the place where they built the city of Mexico."

'On his head was a beautiful plumage shaped like a bird; on his neck a breast-plate composed of ten figures of human hearts: in his right hand a rod1 in the form of a serpent, &c. This description, the human hearts, the compound name, the Divine leader, &c. and the story of His incarnation, compared with the medal which represents a Tree with the seven tribes, or houses springing from its root, are in the main, however, obscure and blended, just such fragments of tradition as might have been expected from the descendants of the Ten Tribes, without letters, for so many ages.'

1 Torquemeda observes in the forty-eighth chap. of the thirteenth book of his Ind. Mon. "that a wand was placed in their hands, which they believed would sprout on their arrival in Paradise."

Doctor Boudinot, in his 'Star in the West,' observes of the same traditionary rod or branch :-"The Indians have an old tradition, that when they left their own native land, they brought with them a sanctified rod, by order of an oracle, which they fixed every evening in the ground, and were to remove from place to place on the continent, till it blossomed in one night's time."-See Clavegero.

65

QUETZALCOATL.

'WHILST,' observes Humboldt, the Mexicans offer analogies sufficiently remarkable in their ecclesiastical hierarchy, in the number of the religious assemblies, in the severe austerity of their penitentiary rites, and in the order of their processions; it is impossible not to be struck with this resemblance, in reading with attention the recital which Cortez made to the Emperor, Charles V. of his solemn entrance into Cholula, which he1 calls the holy city of the Mexicans.' * *

A people who regulated its festivals according to the order of the stars, and who engraved its festivals on its public monuments, had no doubt reached a degree of civilization superior to that which has been allowed by De Pauw, Raynal, or Robertson. These writers considered every state of society barbarous that did not bear the type of civilization, which they, according to their systematic ideas had formed; these abrupt distinctions into barbarous and civilized, cannot be with truth admitted.'-Vol. i. pp. 408-9.

'Men with beards and with clearer complexions than the nations of Anahuac, make their appearance without any

"The motto taken by Cortez," observes the Commentator of the Mex. Antiq. "Judicium Domini apprehendit eos," seems obliquely to refer to the Mex. ican tradition of the destruction of Tulan, &c. In referring the motto of Cortez to the destruction of Jerusalem, which happened so many centuries before his day, we must suppose, entering into the feeling of the Spanish General, that he recognized in Mexico a second Jerusalem, and in his own conquests a triumph over the Hebrews of the New World, as Titus had before vanquished those of the old."

F