Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History

by Annie Besant

SECTION II.—ITS ORIGIN PAGAN.

There are two ancient and widely-spread creeds to which we must chiefly look for the origin of Christianity, namely, Sun-worship and Nature-worship. It is doubtful which of the twain is the elder, and they are closely intertwined, the central idea of each being the same; personally, I am inclined to think that Nature-worship is the older of the two, because it is the simpler and the nearer; the barbarian, slowly emerging into humanity, would be more likely to worship the force which was the most immediately wonderful to him, the power of generation of new life; to recognise the sun as the great life producer seems to imply some little growth of reason and of imagination; sun-worship seems the idealisation of nature-worship, for the same generative force is adored in both, and round the idea of this production of new life all creeds revolve. Christian symbols and Christian ceremonies speak as plainly to the student of ancient religions as the stars speak to the astronomer, and the rocks to the geologian; Christian Churches are as full of the fossil relics of the old creeds as are the earth's strata of the bones of extinct animals. We shall expect to find, then, a family resemblance running through all Eastern creeds—of which Christianity is one—and we shall not be surprised to find similar symbols expressing similar ideas; there are, in fact, cardinal symbols re-appearing in all these allied religions; the virgin and child; the trinity in unity; the cross; these have their roots struck deep in human nature, and are found in every Eastern creed. So also can we trace sacraments and ceremonies, and many minor dogmas. In looking back into those ancient creeds it is necessary to get rid of the modern fashion of regarding any natural object as immodest. Sir William Jones justly remarks that in Hindustan "it never seems to have entered the heads of the legislators, or people, that anything natural could be offensively obscene; a singularity which pervades all their writings and conversation, but is no proof of depravity in their morals" ("Asiatic Researches," vol. i., p. 255). Gross injustice is sometimes done to ancient creeds by contemplating them from a modern point of view; in those days every power of Nature was thought divine, and most divine of all was deemed the power of creation, whether worshipped in the sun, whose beams impregnated the earth, or in the male and female organs of generation, the universal creators of life in the animal world; thus we find in all ancient sculptures carvings of the phallus and the yoni, expressed both naturally and symbolically, the representations becoming more and more conventional and refined as civilisation advanced; of the infant world it may be said that it was "naked, and was not ashamed;" as it grew older, and clothed the human form, it also draped its religious symbols, but as the body remains unaltered under its garments, so the idea concealed beneath the emblems remains the same.

The union of male and female is, then, the foundation of all religions; the heaven marries the earth, as man marries woman, and that union is the first marriage. Saturn is the sky, the male, or active energy; Rhea is the earth, the female, or receptive; and these are the father and the mother of all. The Persians of old called the sky Jupiter, or Jupater, "Ju the Father." The sun is the agent of the generative power of the sky, and his beams fecundate the earth, so that from her all life is produced. Thus the sun becomes worshipped as the Father of all, and the sun is the emblem which crowns the images of the Supreme God; the vernal equinox is the resurrection of the sun, and the sign of the zodiac in which he then is becomes the symbol of his life-producing power; thus the bull, and afterwards the ram, became his sign as Life-Giver, and the Sun-god was pictured as bull, or as ram (or lamb), or else with the horns of his, emblem, and the earthly animals became sacred for his sake. Mithra, the Sun-god of Persia, is sculptured as riding on a bull; Osiris, the Sun-god of Egypt, wears the horns of the bull, and is worshipped as Osiris-Apis, or Serapis, the Sun-god in the sign of Apis, the bull. Later, by the precession of the equinoxes, the sun at the vernal equinox has passed into the sign of the ram (called in Persia, the lamb), and we find Jupiter Ammon, Jupiter with ram's horns, and Jesus the Lamb of God. These symbols all denote the sun victorious over darkness and death, giving life to the world. The phallus is the other great symbol of the Life-Giver, generating life in woman, as the sun in the earth. Bacchus, Adonis, Dionysius, Apollo, Hercules, Hermes, Thammuz, Jupiter, Jehovah, Jao, or Jah, Moloch, Baal, Asher, Mahadeva, Brahma, Vishnu, Mithra, Atys, Ammon, Belus, with many another, these are all the Life-Giver under different names; they are the Sun, the Creator, the Phallus. Red is their appropriate colour. When the sun or the Phallus is not drawn in its natural form, it is indicated by a symbol: the symbol must be upright, hard, or else burning, either conical, or clubbed at one end. Thus—the torch, flame of fire, cone, serpent, thyrsus, triangle, letter T, cross, crosier, sceptre, caduceus, knobbed stick, tall tree, upright stone, spire, tower, minaret, upright pole, arrow, spear, sword, club, upright stump, etc., are all symbols of the generative force of the male energy in Nature of the Supreme God.

One of the most common, and the most universally used, is THE CROSS. Carved at first simply as phallus, it was gradually refined; we meet it as three balls, one above the two; the letter T indicated it, which, by the slightest alteration, became the cross now known as the Latin: thus "Barnabas" says that "the cross was to express the grace by the letter T" (ante, p. [233]). We find the cross in India, Egypt, Thibet, Japan, always as the sign of life-giving power; it was worn as an amulet by girls and women, and seems to have been specially worn by the women attached to the temples, as a symbol of what was, to them, a religious calling. The cross is, in fact, nothing but the refined phallus, and in the Christian religion is a significant emblem of its Pagan origin; it was adored, carved in temples, and worn as a sacred emblem by sun and nature worshippers, long before there were any Christians to adore, carve, and wear it. The crowd kneeling before the cross in Roman Catholic and in High Anglican Churches, is a simple reproduction of the crowd who knelt before it in the temples of ancient days, and the girls who wear it amongst ourselves, are—in the most innocent unconsciousness of its real signification—exactly copying the Indian and Egyptian women of an elder time. Saturn's symbol was a cross and a ram's horn. Jupiter bore a cross with a horn. Venus a circle with a cross. The Egyptian deities a cross and oval. (The signification of these will be dealt with below.) The Druids sought oak trees with two main arms growing in shape of a cross, and, if they failed to find such, nailed a beam cross-wise. The chief pagodas in India are built, like many Christian churches, in the form of a cross. I have read in a book on church architecture that churches should be built either in the form of a cross, or else in that of a ship, typifying the ark; i.e., they should either be built in the form of the phallus or the yoni, the ship or ark being one of the symbols of the female energy (see below, p. [361]).

The CRUCIFIX, or cross with human figure stretched upon it, is also found in ancient times, although not so frequently as the simple cross. The crucifix appears to have arisen from the circle of the horizon being divided into four parts, North, South, East, and West, and the Sun-god, drawn within, or on, the circle, came into contact with each cardinal point, his feet and head touching, or intersecting, two, while his outstretched arms point to the other quarters. Plato says that the "next power to the Supreme God was decussated, or figured in the shape of a cross, on the universe." Krishna is painted and sculptured on a cross. The Egyptians thus drew Osiris, and sometimes we find a circle drawn with the dividing lines, and in the midst is stretched the dead body of Osiris. Robert Taylor gives another origin for the crucifix: "The ignorant gratitude of a superstitious people, while they adored the river [Nile] on whose inundations the fertility of their provinces depended, could not fail of attaching notions of sanctity and holiness to the posts that were erected along its course, and which, by a transverse beam, indicated the height to which, at the spot where the beam was fixed, the waters might be expected to rise. This cross at once warned the traveller to secure his safety, and formed a standard of the value of land. Other rivers may add to the fertility of the country through which they pass, but the Nile is the absolute cause of that great fertility of the Lower Egypt, which would be all a desert, as bad as the most sandy parts of Africa without this river. It supplies it both with soil and moisture, and was therefore gratefully addressed, not merely as an ordinary river-god, but by its express title of the Egyptian Jupiter. The crosses, therefore, along the banks of the river would naturally share in the honour of the stream, and be the most expressive emblem of good fortune, peace, and plenty. The two ideas could never be separated: the fertilising flood was the waters of life, that conveyed every blessing, and even existence itself, to the provinces through which they flowed. One other and most obvious hieroglyph completed the expressive allegory. The Demon of Famine, who, should the waters fail of their inundation, or not reach the elevation indicated by the position of the transverse beam upon the upright, would reign in all his horrors over their desolated lands. This symbolical personification was, therefore, represented as a miserable emaciated wretch, who had grown up 'as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground, who had no form nor comeliness; and when they should see him, there was no beauty that they should desire him.' Meagre were his looks; sharp misery had worn him to the bone. His crown of thorns indicated the sterility of the territories over which he reigned. The reed in his hand, gathered from the banks of the Nile, indicated that it was only the mighty river, by keeping within its banks, and thus withholding its wonted munificence, that placed an unreal sceptre in his gripe. He was nailed to the cross, in indication of his entire defeat. And the superscription of his infamous title, 'THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS,' expressively indicated that Famine, Want, or Poverty, ruled the destinies of the most slavish, beggarly, and mean race of men with whom they had the honour of being acquainted" ("Diegesis," p. 187). While it may very likely be true that the miserable aspect given to Jesus crucified is copied from some such original as Mr. Taylor here sketches, we are tolerably certain that the general idea of the crucifix had the solar origin described above.

Very closely joined to the notion of the cross is the idea of the TRINITY IN UNITY, and we need not delay upon it long. It is as universal in Eastern religions as the cross, and comes from the same idea; all life springs from a trinity in unity in man, and, therefore, God is three in one. This trinity is, of course, symbolised by the cross, and especially by the lotus, and any "three in one" leaf; from this has come to Christianity the conventional triple foliage so constantly seen in Church carvings, the fleur-de-lis, the triangle, etc., which are now—as of old—accepted as the emblems of the trinity. The persons of the trinity are found each with his own name; in India, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, and it is Vishnu who becomes incarnate; in Egypt different cities had different trinities, and "we have a hieroglyphical inscription in the British Museum as early as the reign of Sevechus of the eighth century before the Christian era, showing that the doctrine of Trinity in Unity already formed part of their religion, and that in each of the two groups last mentioned the three gods only made one person" ("Egyptian Mythology and Egyptian Christology," by S. Sharpe, p. 14). Mr. Sharpe might have gone to much earlier times and "already" have found the adoration of the trinity in unity; as far back as the first who bowed in worship before the generative force of the male three in one. Osiris, Horus, and Ra form one of the Egyptian trinities; Horus the Son, is also one of a trinity in unity made into an amulet, and called the Great God, the Son God, and the Spirit God. Horus is the slayer of Typhon, the evil one, and is sometimes represented as standing on its head, and as piercing its head with a spear, reminding us of Krishna, the incarnation of Vishnu, the second person of the Indian Trinity.

These trinities, however, were not complete in themselves, for the female element is needed for the production of life; hence, we find that in most nations a fourth person is joined to the trinity, as Isis, the mother of Horus, in Egypt, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, in Christendom; the Egyptian trinity is often represented as Osiris, Horus, and Isis, but we more generally find the female constituting the fourth element, in addition to the triune, and symbolised by an oval, or circle, typical of the female organ of reproduction; thus the crux ansata of the Egyptians, the "symbol of life" held in the hand by the Egyptian deities, is a cross or oval, i.e., the T with an oval at the top; the circle with the cross inside, symbolises, again, the male and female union; also the six-rayed star, the pentacle, the double triangle, the triangle and circle, the pit with a post in it, the key, the staff with a half-moon, the complicated cross. The same union is imaged out in all androgynous deities, in Elohim, Baalim, Baalath, Arba-il, the bearded Venus, the feminine Jove, the virgin and child. In countries where the Yoni worship was more popular than that of the Phallus, the VIRGIN and CHILD was a favourite deity, and to this we now turn.

Here, as in the history of the cross, we find sun and nature worship intertwined. The female element is sometimes the Earth, and sometimes the individual. The goddesses are as various in names as the gods. Is, Isis, Ishtar, Astarte, Mylitta, Sara, Mrira, Maia, Parvati, Mary, Miriam, Eve, Juno, Venus, Diana, Artemis, Aphrodite, Hera, Rhea, Cybele, Ceres, and others, are the earth under many names; the receptive female, the producer of life, the Yoni. Black is the special colour of female deities, and the black Isis and Horus, the black Mary and Jesus are of peculiar sanctity. Their emblems are: the earth, moon, star of the sea, circle, oval, triangle, pomegranate, door, ark, fish, ship, horseshoe, chasm, cave, hole, celestial virgin, etc. They bore first the titles now worn by Mary, the virgin mother of Jesus, and were reverenced as the "queen of heaven." Ishtar, of Babylonia, was the "Mother of the Gods," and the "Queen of the Stars." Isis, of Egypt, was "our Immaculate Lady." She was figured with a crown of stars, and with the crescent moon. Venus was an ark brooded over by a dove, or the moon floating on the water. They are "the mother," "mamma," "emma," "ummah," or "the woman." The symbols are everywhere the same, though given with different names. Everywhere it is Mary, the mother; the female principle in nature, adored side by side with the male. She shares in the work of creation and salvation, and has a kind of equality with the Father of all; hence we hear of the immaculate conception. She produces a child alone in some stories, without even divine co-operation. The Virgo of the Zodiac is represented in ancient sculptures and drawings as a woman suckling a child, and the Paamylian feasts were celebrated at the spring equinox, and were the equivalent of the Christian feast of the Annunciation, when the power of the highest overshadowed Mary of Nazareth. Thus in India, we have Devaki and Krishna; in Egypt, Osiris and Horus—the "Saviour of the World;" in Christendom, Mary and Christ; the pictures and carvings of India and Egypt would be indistinguishable from those of Europe, were it not for the differences of dress. Apis, the sacred Egyptian bull, was always born without an earthly father, and his mother never had a second calf. So the later Sun-god, Jesus, is born without sexual intercourse, and Mary never bears another child. Jupiter visits Leda as a swan; God visits Mary as an overshadowing dove. The salutation of Gabriel to Mary is curiously like that of Mercury to Electra: "Hail, most happy of all women, you whom Jupiter has honoured with his couch; your blood will give laws to the world, I am the messenger of the gods." The mother of Fohi, the great Chinese God, became enceinte by walking in the footsteps of a giant. The mother of Hercules did not lose her virginity. The savages of St. Domingo represented the chief divinity by a female figure called the "mother of God." On Friday, the day of Freya, or Venus, many Christians still eat only fish, fish being sacred to the female deity.

In Comtism we find the latest development of woman-worship, wherein the "emotional sex" becomes the sacred sex, to be guarded, cherished, sustained, adored; and thus in the youngest religion the stamp of the eldest is found.

Thus womanhood has been worshipped in all ages of the world, and maternity has been deified by all creeds: from the savage who bowed before the female symbol of motherhood, to the philosophic Comtist who adores woman "in the past, the present, and the future," as mother, wife, and daughter, the worship of the female element in nature has run side by side with that of the male; the worship is one and the same in all religions, and runs in an unbroken thread from the barbarous ages to the present time.

The doctrines of the mediation, and the divinity of Christ, and of the immortality of the soul, are as pre-Christian as the symbols which we have examined.

The idea of the Mediator comes to us from Persia, and the title was borne by Mithra before it was ascribed to Christ. Zoroaster taught that there was existence itself, the unknown, the eternal, "Zeruane Akerne," "time without bounds." From this issued Ormuzd, the good, the light, the creator of all. Opposite to Ormuzd is Ahriman, the bad, the dark, the deformer of all. Between these two great deities comes Mithra, the Mediator, who is the Reconciler of all things to God, who is one with Ormuzd, although distinct from him. Mithra, as we have seen, is the Sun in the sign of the Bull, exactly parallel to Jesus, the Sun in the sign of the Lamb, both the one and the other being symbolised by that sign of the zodiac in which the sun was at the spring equinox of his supposed date. "Mithras is spiritual light contending with spiritual darkness, and through his labours the kingdom of darkness shall be lit with heaven's own light; the Eternal will receive all things back into his favour, the world will be redeemed to God. The impure are to be purified, and the evil made good, through the mediation of Mithras, the reconciler of Ormuzd and Ahriman. Mithras is the Good, his name is Love. In relation to the Eternal he is the source of grace, in relation to man he is the life-giver and mediator. He brings the 'Word,' as Brahma brings the Vedas, from the mouth of the Eternal. (See Plutarch 'De Isid. et Osirid.;' also Dr. Hyde's 'De Religione Vet. Pers.,' ch. 22; see also 'Essay on Pantheism,' by Rev. J. Hunt.) It was just prior to the return of the Jews from living among the people who were dominated by these ideas, that the splendid chapter of Isaiah (xl.), or indeed the series of chapters which form the closing portion of the book, were written: 'Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.' And then follows a magnificent description of the greatness and supremacy of God, and this is followed by chapters which tell of a Messiah, or conquering prince, who will redeem the nation from its enemies, and restore them to the light of the divine favour, and which predict a millennium, a golden age of purified and glorified humanity. It is thus manifest that the inspiration of these writings came to the Jewish people from their contact with the religious thought of the Persians, and not from any supernatural source. From this time the Jews began to hold worthier ideas concerning God, and to cherish expectations of a golden age, a kingdom of heaven, which the Messiah, who was to be the sent messenger of God, should inaugurate. And this kingdom was to be a kingdom of righteousness, a day of marvellous light, a rule under which all evil and darkness were to perish" ("Plato, Philo, and Paul," Rev. J.W. Lake, pp. 15, l6.)

The growth of the philosophical side of the dogma of the Divinity of Christ is as clearly traceable in Pagan and Jewish thought as is the dogma of the incarnation of the Saviour-God in the myths of Krishna, Osiris, etc. Two great teachers of the doctrine of the "Logos," the "Word," of God, stand out in pre-Christian times—the Greek Plato and the Jewish Philo. We borrow the following extract from pp. 19, 20, of the pamphlet by Mr. Lake above referred to, as showing the general theological position of Plato; its resemblance to Christian teaching will be at once apparent (it must not be forgotten that Plato lived B.C. 400):—

"The speculative thought and the religious teaching of Plato are diffused throughout his voluminous writings; but the following is a popular summary of them, by Madame Dacier, contained in her introduction to what have been classed as the 'Divine Dialogues:'—

"'That there is but one God, and that we ought to love and serve him, and to endeavour to resemble him in holiness and righteousness; that this God rewards humility and punishes pride.

"'That the true happiness of man consists in being united to God, and his only misery in being separated from him.

"'That the soul is mere darkness, unless it be illuminated by God; that men are incapable even of praying well, unless God teaches them that prayer which alone can be useful to them.

"'That there is nothing solid and substantial but piety; that this is the source of all virtues, and that it is the gift of God.

"'That it is better to die than to sin.

"'That it is better to suffer wrong than to do it.

"'That the "Word" ([Greek: Logos]) formed the world, and rendered it visible; that the knowledge of the Word makes us live very happily here below, and that thereby we obtain felicity after death.

"'That the soul is immortal, that the dead shall rise again, that there shall be a final judgment—both of the righteous and of the wicked, when men shall appear only with their virtues or vices, which shall be the occasion of their eternal happiness or misery.'"

It is this Logos who was "figured in the shape of a cross on the universe" (ante, p. [358]). The universe, which is but the materialised thought of God, is made by his Logos, his Word, which is the expression of his thought. In the Christian creed it is the Logos, the Word of God, by whom all things are made (John i. 1-3). The very name, as well as the thought, is the same, whether we turn over the pages of Plato or those of John. Philo, the great Jewish Platonist, living in Alexandria at the close of the last century B.C. and in the first half of the first century after Christ, speaks of the Logos in terms that, to our ears, seem purely Christian. Philo was a man of high position among the Jews in Alexandria, being "a man eminent on all accounts, brother to Alexander the alabarch [governor of the Jews], and one not unskilful in philosophy" (Josephus' "Antiquities of the Jews," bk. xviii., ch. 8, sec. 1). This "Alexander was a principal person among all his contemporaries both for his family and wealth" (Ibid, bk. xx, ch. 5, sec. 2). He was the principal man in the Jewish embassage to Caius (Caligula) A.D. 39-40, and was then a grey-headed old man. Keim speaks of him as about sixty or seventy years old at that time, and puts his birth at about B.C. 20. He writes: "The Theology of Philo is in great measure founded on his peculiar combination of the Jewish, the Platonic, and the Neo-Platonic conception of God. The God of the Old Testament, the exalted God, as he is called by the modern Hegelian philosophy, stood in close relations to the Greek Philosophers' conception of God, which believed that the Supreme Being could be accurately defined by the negative of all that was finite. In accordance with this, Philo also described God as the simple Entity; he disclaimed for him every name, every quality, even that of the Good, the Beautiful, the Blessed, the One. Since he is still better than the good, higher than the Unity, he can never be known as, but only that, he is: his perfect name is only the four mysterious letters (Jhvh)—that is, pure Being. By such means, indeed, neither a fuller theology nor God's influence on the world was to be obtained. And yet it was the problem of philosophy, as well as of religion, to shed the light of God upon the world, and to lead it again to God. But how could this Being which was veiled from the world be brought to bear upon it? By Philo, as well as by all the philosophy of the time, the problem could only be solved illogically. Yet, by modifying his exalted nature, it might be done. If not by his being, yet by his work he influences the world; his powers, his angels, all in it that is best and mightiest, the instrument, the interpreter, the mediator and messenger of God; his pattern and his first-born, the Son of God, the Second God, even himself God, the divine Word or Logos communicate with the world; he is the ideal and actual type of the world and of humanity, the architect and upholder of the world, the manna and the rock in the wilderness" ("Jesus of Nazara," vol. i., pp. 281, 282).

"Man is fallen.... There is no man who is without sin, and even the perfect man, if he should be born, does not escape from it.... Yet there is a redemption, willed by God himself, and brought to pass by the act of a wise man. Adam's successors still preserve the types of their relationship to the Father, although in an obscure form, each man possesses the knowledge of good and evil and an incorruptible judgment, subject to reason; his spiritual strength is even now aided by the Divine Logos, the image, copy, and reflection of the blessed nature. Hence it follows that man can discern and see all the stains with which he has wilfully or involuntarily defiled his life, that man by means of his self-knowledge can decide to subdue his passions, to despise his pleasures and desires, to wage the battle of repentance, and to be just at any cost, and by the fundamental virtues of humanity, piety, and justice, to imitate the virtues of the Father.... In such perfection as is possible to all, even to women and to slaves, since no one is a slave by nature, the wise man is truly rich. He is noble and free who can proudly utter the saying of Sophocles, God is my ruler, not one among men! Such a one is priest, king, and prophet, he is no longer merely a son and scholar of the Logos, he is the companion and son of God.... God is the eternal guide and director of the world, himself requiring nothing, and giving all to his children. It is of his goodness that he does not punish as a judge, but that, as the giver of grace, he bears with all. With him all things are possible; he deals with all, even with that which is almost beyond redemption. From him all the world hopes for forgiveness of sins, the Logos, the high priest, and intercessor, and the patriarchs pray for it; he grants it, not for the world's sake, but of his own gracious nature, to those who can truly believe. He loves the humble, and saves those whom he knows to be worthy of healing. His grace elects the pious before they are born, giving them victory over sensuality, and steadfastness in virtue. He reveals himself to holy souls by his Spirit, and by his divine light leads those who are too weak by nature even to understand the external world, beyond the limits of human nature to that which is divine" ("Jesus of Nazara," pp. 283-287). Such are the most important passages of Keim's résumé of Philo's philosophy, and its resemblance to Christian doctrine is unmistakeable, and adds one more proof to the fact that Christianity is Alexandrian rather than Judæan. It will be well to add to this sketch the passages carefully gathered out of Philo's works by Jacob Bryant, who endeavoured to prove, from their resemblance to passages in the New Testament, that Philo was a Christian, forgetting that Philo's works were mostly written when Jesus was a child and a youth, and that he never once mentions Jesus or Christianity. It must not be forgotten that Philo lived in Alexandria, not in Judæa, and that between the Canaanitish and the Hellenic Jews there existed the most bitter hostility, so that—even were the story of Jesus true—it could not have reached Philo before A.D. 40, at which time he was old and gray-headed. We again quote from Mr. Lake's treatise, who prints the parallel passages, and we would draw special attention to the similarity of phraseology as well as of idea:

"Identity of the Christ of the New Testament with the Logos of Philo.

Philo, describing the Logos, says:—	The New Testament, speaking of Jesus says:—
'The Logos is the Son of God the Father.'—DeProfugis.	'This is the Son of God.' John i. 34.
'The first begotten of God.'—De Somniis.	'And when he again bringeth his first-born into theworld.'—Heb. i. 6.
'And the most ancient of all beings.'—De Conf. Ling	'That he is the first-born of every creature.'—Col. i.15.
'The Logos is the image and likeness of God.'—DeMonarch.	'Christ, the image of the invisible God.'—Col. i. 15.'The brightness of his (God's) glory, and the express image of hisperson.'—Heb. i. 3.
'The Logos is superior to the angels.'—De Profugis.	'Being made so much better that the angels. Let all the angelsof God worship him.'—Heb. i. 4, 6.
'The Logos is superior to all beings in the world.'—DeLeg. Allegor.	'Thou hast put all things in subjection under hisfeet.'—Heb. ii. 8.
'The Logos is the instrument by whom the world wasmade.'—De Leg. Allegor.	'All things were made by him (the Word or Logos), and withouthim was not anything made that was made.'—John i. 3
'The divine word by whom all things were ordered anddisposed.'—De Mundi Opificio.	'Jesus Christ, by whom are all things.'—1 Cor. viii.6.
	'By whom also he made the worlds.'—Heb. i. 2.
'the Logos is the light of the world, and the intellectualsun.'—De Somniis.	'The Word (Logos) was the true light.'—John i. 9.
	'The life and the light of men.'—John i. 4.
	'I am the light of the world.'—John viii. 12.
'The Logos only can see God.'—De Confus. Ling.	'He that is of God, he hath seen the Father.'—John vi.46.
	'No man hath seen God at any time. The only begotten Son whichis in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him."—John i.18.
'He is the most ancient of God's works.'—De ConfusLing.	'Now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self with theglory which I had with thee before the world was.'—John xvii.5.
'And was before all things.'—De Leg. Allegor.	'He was in the beginning with God.'—John i. 2.
	'Before all worlds.'—2 Tim. i. 9.
'The Logos is esteemed the same as God.'—De Somniis.	'Christ, who is over all, God blessed for evermore.'—Rom.ix. 5.
	'Who, being in the form of God. thought it no robbery to beequal with God.'—Phil. ii. 6.
'The Logos was eternal.'—De Plant. Noë.	'Christ abideth for ever.—John xii. 34.
	'But to the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever andever.'—Heb. i. 8.
'The Logos supports the world, is the connecting power by whichall things are united.'—De Profugis.	'Upholding all things by the word of his power.'—Heb. i.3.
	'By him all things consist.'—Col. i. 17.
'The Logos is nearest to God, without any separation; being, asit were, fixed upon the only true existing Deity, nothing comingbetween to disturb that unity.'—De Profugis.	'I and my Father are one.'—John x. 30.
'The Logos is free from all taint of sin, either voluntary orinvoluntary.'—De Profugis.	'That they may be one as we are.'—John xvii. 11.
	'The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of theFather.'—John i. 18.
	'The blood of Christ, who offered himself without spot toGod.'—Heb. ix. 14.
	'Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth.'—1 Pet. ii. 22.
'The Logos the fountain of life.	'Whosoever shall drink of the water that I shall give him,shall never thirst, but the water that I shall give him shall be inhim a well of water, springing up into everlastinglife.'—John iv. 14.
'It is of the greatest consequence to every person to strivewithout remission to approach to the divine Logos, the Word of Godabove, who is the fountain of all wisdom; that by drinking largelyof that sacred spring, instead of death, he may be rewarded witheverlasting life.'—De Profugis.
'The Logos is the shepherd of God's flock.	'The great shepherd of the flock... our Lord Jesus.'—Heb. xiii. 20.
'The deity, like a shepherd, and at the same time like amonarch, acts with the most consummate order and rectitude, and hasappointed his First-born, the upright Logos, like the substitute ofa mighty prince, to take care of his sacred flock.'—DeAgricult.	'I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known ofmine.—John x. 14.
	'Christ ... the shepherd and guardian of your souls.' 1 Pet.ii. 25.
The Logos, Philo says, is 'The great governor of the world; heis the creative and princely power, and through these the heavensand the whole world were produced.' —De Profugis.	'For Christ must reign till he hath put all his enemies underhis feet.'—1 Cor. xv. 25
	'Christ, above all principality, and might, and dominion, andevery name that is named, not only in this world, but in the worldto come ... and God hath put all things under his feet.'—Eph.i. 21, 22
'The Logos is the physician that heals all evil.'—De Leg.Allegor.	'The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed meto heal the broken-hearted.'—Luke iv. 18.
The Logos the Seal of God.	Christ the Seal of God.
'The Logos, by whom the world was framed, is the seal, afterthe impression of which everything is made, and is rendered thesimilitude and image of the perfect Word of God.'—DeProfugis.	'In whom also, after that ye believed, ye were sealed with theholy seal of promise.'—Eph. i. 13
	'Jesus, the son of man ... him hath God the Fathersealed.'—John vi. 27.
'The soul of man is an impression of a seal, of which theprototype and original characteristic is the everlastingLogos.'—De Plantatione Noë.	'Christ, the brightness of his (God's) glory, and the expressimage of his person.—Heb. i. 3.
The Logos the source of immortal life.	Christ the source of eternal life.
Philo says 'that when the soul strives after its best andnoblest life, then the Logos frees it from all corruption, andconfers upon it the gift of immortality.'—De C.Q. Erud.Gratiâ.'	'The dead (in Christ) shall be raised incorruptible.'—1Cor. xv. 52
	'Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from thebondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children ofGod.'—Rom. vii. 21.
Philo speaks of the Logos not only as the Son of God and hisfirst begotten, but also styles him 'his beloved Son.'—DeLeg. Allegor.	The New Testament callsChrist the Beloved Son:—'This ismy beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.'—Matt. iii. 17;Luke ix. 35; 2 Pet. i. 17
	'The Son of his love.'—Col. i. 13.
Philo says 'that good men are admitted to the assembly of thesaints above.	'But ye are come unto mount Zion, and to the city of the livingGod, and to an innumerable company of angels, and to the spirits ofjust men made perfect.'—Heb. xii. 22, 23.
'Those who relinquish human doctrines, and become thewell-disposed disciples of God, will be one day translated to anincorruptible and perfect order of beings."—DeSacrifices.	'Giving thanks unto the Father which hath made us meet to bethe partakers of the inheritance of the saints inlight.'—Col. i. 12.
Philo says 'that the just man, when he dies is translated toanother state by the Logos, by whom the world was created. For Godby his said Word (Logos), by which he made all things, will raisethe perfect man from the dregs of this world, and exalt him nearhimself. He will place him near his own person.'—DeSacrificiis.	The New Testament makes Jesus to say:—
	'No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent medraw him; and I will raise him up at the last day.'—John vi.44.
	'No man cometh to the Father but by me.'—John xvi.6.
	'Where I am, there also shall my servant be ... him will myfather honour.'—
Philo says that the Logos is the true High Priest, who iswithout sin and anointed by God:—	The New Testament speaks of Jesus as the High Priest:
'It is the world, in which the Logos, God's First-born, thatgreat High Priest, resides. And I assert that this High Priest isno man, but the Holy Word of God; who is not capable of eithervoluntary or involuntary sin, and hence his head is anointed withoil.'—De Profugis.	'Seeing then that we have a great High Priest that is passedinto the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast ourprofession.'—Heb. iv. 14.
	'For such an High Priest became us, who is holy, harmless,undefiled, separate from sinners.'—Heb. vii. 26.
Philo mentions the Logos as the great High Priest and Mediatorfor the sins of the world. Speaking of the rebellion of Korah, heintroduces the Logos as saying:—	The New Testament says of Christ:—
	'We have such an High Priest, who is set on the right hand ofthe throne of the majesty in the heavens, a mediator of a bettercovenant.'—Heb. viii. 1-6.
'It was I who stood in the middle between the Lord andyou.
'The sacred Logos pressed with zeal and without remission thathe might stand between the dead and the living.—Quis RerumDiv. Haeres.	'But Christ being come an High Priest ... entered at once intothe holy place, having obtained eternal redemption forus,—Heb. ix. 11, 12.
The Logos, the Saviour God, who brings salvation as the rewardof repentance and righteousness.	The New Testament says of John, the forerunner of Jesus, thathe preached 'the baptism of repentance for the remission ofsins.'—Mark i. 4.
'If then men have from their very souls a just contrition, andare changed, and have humbled themselves for their past errors,acknowledging and confessing their sins, such persons shall findpardon from the Saviour and merciful God, and receive a most choiceand great advantage of being like the Logos of God, who wasoriginally the great archetype after which the soul of man wasformed.'—De Execrationibus.	Jesus says :—
	'Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.'—Johnv. 40.
	'Beloved, we be now the sons of God; and it doth not yet appearwhat we shall be; but we know that when he doth appear we shall belike him.'—1 John iii. 2.
	'As we have born the image of the earthy, we shall also bearthe image of the heavenly.'—1 Cor. xv. 49.
	'For if we have been planted together in the likeness of hisdeath, we shall be also in the likeness of hisresurrection.'—Rom. vi. 5."

Here, then, we get, complete, the idea of Christ as the Word of God, and we see that Christianity is as lacking in originality on these points as in everything else. We may note, also, that this Platonic idea was current among the Jews before Philo, although he gives it to us more thoroughly and fully worked out: in the apocryphal books of the Jews we find the idea of the Logos in many passages in Wisdom, to take but a single case.

The widely-spread existence of this notion is acknowledged by Dean Milman in his "History of Christianity." He says: "This Being was more or less distinctly impersonated, according to the more popular or more philosophic, the more material or the more abstract, notions of the age or people. This was the doctrine from the Ganges, or even the shores of the Yellow Sea to the Ilissus; it was the fundamental principle of the Indian religion and the Indian philosophy; it was the basis of Zoroastrianism; it was pure Platonism; it was the Platonic Judaism of the Alexandrian school. Many fine passages might be quoted from Philo, on the impossibility that the first self-existing Being should become cognisable to the sense of man; and even in Palestine, no doubt, John the Baptist and our Lord himself spoke no new doctrine, but rather the common sentiment of the more enlightened, when they declared that 'no man had seen God at any time.' In conformity with this principle, the Jews, in the interpretation of the older Scriptures, instead of direct and sensible communication from the one great Deity, had interposed either one or more intermediate beings as the channels of communication. According to one accredited tradition alluded to by St. Stephen, the law was delivered by the 'disposition of angels;' according to another, this office was delegated to a single angel, sometimes called the angel of the Law (see Gal. iii. 19); at others, the Metatron. But the more ordinary representative, as it were, of God, to the sense and mind of man, was the Memra, or the Divine Word; and it is remarkable that the same appellation is found in the Indian, the Persian, the Platonic, and the Alexandrian systems. By the Targumists, the earliest Jewish commentators on the Scriptures, this term had been already applied to the Messiah; nor is it necessary to observe the manner in which it has been sanctified by its introduction into the Christian scheme. This uniformity of conception and coincidence of language indicates the general acquiescence of the human mind in the necessity of some mediation between the pure spiritual nature of the Deity and the moral and intellectual nature of man" (as quoted by Lake). And "this uniformity of conception and coincidence of language indicates," also, that Christianity has only received and repeated the religious ideas which existed in earlier times. How can that be a revelation from God which was well known in the world long before God revealed it? The acknowledgment of the priority of Pagan thought is the destruction of the supernatural claims of Christianity based on the same thought; that cannot be supernatural after Christ which was natural before him, nor that sent down from heaven which was already on earth as the product of human reason. The Rev. Mr. Lake fairly says: "We have evidence—clear, conclusive, irrefutable evidence—as to what this doctrine really is. We can trace its birth-place in the philosophic speculations of the ancient world, we can note its gradual development and growth, we can see it in its early youth passing (through Philo and others) from Grecian philosophy into the current of Jewish thought; then, after resting awhile in the Judaism of the period of the Christian era, we see it slightly changing its character, as it passes through Gamaliel, Paul—the writers of the Fourth Gospel and of the Epistle to the Hebrews—through Justin Martyr and Tertullian, into the stream of early Christian thought, and now from a sublime philosophical speculation it becomes dwarfed and corrupted into a church dogma, and finally gets hardened as a frozen mass of absurdity, stupidity, and blasphemy, in the Nicene and Athanasian creeds" ("Philo, Plato, and Paul," pp. 71, 72).

The idea of IMMORTALITY was by no means "brought to light" by Christ, as is pretended. The early Jews had clearly no idea of life after death; "for in death there is no remembrance of thee; in the grave who shall give thee thanks?" (Ps. vi. 5). "Like the slain that lie in the grave, whom thou rememberest no more.... Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead? Shall the dead arise and praise thee? Shall thy lovingkindness be declared in the grave? or thy faithfulness in destruction? Shall thy wonders be known in the dark? and thy righteousness in the land of forgetfulness?" (Ps. lxxxviii. 5, 10-12). "The dead praise not the Lord" (Ps. cxv. 17). "I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that man hath no pre-eminence above a beast" (Eccles. iii. 18, 19). "There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave" (Ibid, ix. 10). "The grave cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. The living, the living, he shall praise thee" (Is. xxxviii. 18, 19). In strict accordance with this belief, that death was the end of man, the pre-captivity Jews regarded wealth, strength, prosperity, and all earthly blessings, as the reward of virtue. After the captivity they change their tone; in the post-Babylonian Psalms life after death is distinctly spoken of: "My flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell" (Ps. xvi. 9, 10); together with other passages. In the apocryphal Jewish Scriptures the belief in immortality appears over and over again.

To say that Jesus "brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel," even to the Jews, is to contend for a position against all evidence. If from the Jews we turn to the Pagan thinkers, immortality is proclaimed by them long before the Jews have dreamed about it. The Egyptians, in their funeral ritual, went through the judgment of the soul before Osiris: "The resurrection of the dead to a second life had been a deep-rooted religious opinion among the Egyptians from the earliest times ("Egyptian Mythology," Sharpe, p. 52), and they appear to have believed in a transmigration of souls through the lower animals, and an ultimate return to the original body; to this end they preserved the body as a mummy, so that the soul, on its return, might find its original habitation still in existence: any who believe in the resurrection of the body should clearly follow the example of the ancient Egyptians. In later times, the more instructed Egyptians believed in a spiritual resurrection only, but the mass of the people clung to the idea of a bodily resurrection (Ibid, p. 54). "It is to the later times of Egyptian history, perhaps to the five centuries immediately before the Christian era, that the religious opinions contained in the funeral papyri chiefly belong. The roll of papyrus buried with the mummy often describes the funeral, and then goes on to the return of the soul to the body, the resurrection, the various trials and difficulties which the deceased will meet and overcome in the next world, and the garden of paradise in which he awaits the day of judgment, the trial on that day, and it then shows the punishment which would have awaited him if he had been found guilty" (Ibid, p. 64). We have already seen that the immortality of the soul was taught by Plato (ante, p. [364]). The Hindus taught that happiness or misery hereafter depended upon the life here. "If duty is performed, a good name will be obtained, as well as happiness, here and after death" ("Mahabharata," xii., 6,538, in "Religious and Moral Sentiments from Indian Writers," by J. Muir, p. 22). The "Mahabharata" was written, or rather collected, in the second century before Christ. "Poor King Rantideva bestowed water with a pure mind, and thence ascended to heaven.... King Nriga gave thousands of largesses of cows to Brahmans; but because he gave away one belonging to another person, he went to hell" (Ibid, xiv. 2,787 and 2,789. Muir, pp, 31, 32). "Let us now examine into the theology of India, as reported by Megasthenes, about B.C. 300 (Cory's 'Ancient Fragments,' p. 226, et seq.). 'They, the Brahmins, regard the present life merely as the conception of persons presently to be born, and death as the birth into a life of reality and happiness, to those who rightly philosophise: upon this account they are studiously careful in preparing for death'" (Inman's "Ancient Faiths," vol. ii., p. 820). Zoroaster (B.C. 1,200, or possibly 2,000) taught: "The soul, being a bright fire, by the power of the Father remains immortal, and is the mistress of life" (Ibid, p. 821). "The Indians were believers in the immortality of the soul, and conscious future existence. They taught that immediately after death the souls of men, both good and bad, proceed together along an appointed path to the bridge of the gatherer, a narrow path to heaven, over which the souls of the pious alone could pass, whilst the wicked fall from it into the gulf below; that the prayers of his living friends are of much value to the dead, and greatly help him on his journey. As his soul enters the abode of bliss, it is greeted with the word, 'How happy art thou, who hast come here to us, mortality to immortality!' Then the pious soul goes joyfully onward to Ahura-Mazdao, to the immortal saints, the golden throne, and Paradise" (Ibid, p. 834). From these notions the writer of the story of Jesus drew his idea of the "narrow way" that led to heaven, and of the "strait gate" through which many would be unable to pass. Cicero (bk. vi. "Commonwealth," quoted by Inman) says: "Be assured that, for all those who have in any way conducted to the preservation, defence, and enlargement of their native country, there is a certain place in heaven, where they shall enjoy an eternity and happiness." It is needless to further multiply quotations in order to show that our latest development of these Eastern creeds only reiterated the teaching of the earlier phases of religious thought.

"But, at least," urge the Christians, "we owe the sublime idea of the UNITY OF GOD to revelation, and this is grander than the Polytheism of the Pagan world." Is it not, however, true, that just as Christians urge that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, are but one God, so the thinkers of old believed in one Supreme Being, while the multitudinous gods were but as the angels and saints of Christianity, his messengers, his subordinates, not his rivals? All savages are Polytheists, just as were the Hebrews, whose god "Jehovah" was but their special god, stronger than the gods of the nations around them, gods whose existence they never denied; but as thought grew, the superior minds in each nation rose over the multitude of deities to the idea of one Supreme Being working in many ways, and the loftiest flights of the "prophets" of the Jewish Scriptures may be paralleled by those of the sages of other creeds. Zoroaster taught that "God is the first, indestructible, eternal, unbegotten, indivisible, dissimilar" ("Ancient Fragments," Cory, p. 239, quoted by Inman). In the Sabaean Litany (two extracts only of this ancient work are preserved by El Wardi, the great Arabic historian) we read: "Thou art the Eternal One, in whom all order is centred.... Thou dost embrace all things. Thou art the Infinite and Incomprehensible, who standest alone" ("Sacred Anthology," by M.D. Conway, pp. 74, 75). "There is only one Deity, the great soul. He is called the Sun, for he is the soul of all beings. That which is One, the wise call it in divers manners. Wise poets, by words, make the beautiful-winged manifold, though he is One" ("Rig-Veda," B.C. 1500, from "Anthology," p.76). "The Divine Mind alone is the whole assemblage of the gods.... He (the Brahmin) may contemplate castle, air, fire, water, the subtile ether, in his own body and organs; in his heart, the Star; in his motion, Vishnu; in his vigour, Hara; in his speech, Agni; in digestion, Mitra; in production, Brahma; but he must consider the supreme Omnipresent Reason as sovereign of them all" ("Manu," about B.C. 1200; his code collected about B.C. 300; from "Anthology," p. 81). On an ancient stone at Bonddha Gaya is a Sanscrit inscription to Buddha, in which we find: "Reverence be unto thee, an incarnation of the Deity and the Eternal One. OM! [the mysterious name of God, equivalent to pure existence, or the Jewish Jhvh] the possessor of all things in vital form! Thou art Brahma, Veeshnoo, and Mahesa!... I adore thee, who art celebrated by a thousand names, and under various forms" ("Asiatic Researches," Essay xi., by Mr. Wilmot; vol. i., p. 285). Plato's teaching is, "that there is but one God" (ante, p. [364]), and wherever we search, we find that the more thoughtful proclaimed the unity of the Deity. This doctrine must, then, go the way of the rest, and it must be acknowledged that the boasted revelation is, once more, but the speculation of man's unassisted reason.

Turning from these cardinal doctrines to the minor dogmas and ceremonies of Christianity, we shall still discover it to be nothing but a survival of Paganism.

BAPTISM seems to have been practised as a religious rite in all solar creeds, and has naturally, therefore, found its due place in the latest solar faith. "The idea of using water as emblematic of spiritual washing, is too obvious to allow surprise at the antiquity of this rite. Dr. Hyde, in his treatise on the 'Religion of the Ancient Persians,' xxxiv. 406, tells us that it prevailed among that people. 'They do not use circumcision for their children, but only baptism or washing for the inward purification of the soul. They bring the child to the priest into the church, and place him in front of the sun and fire, which ceremony being completed, they look upon him as more sacred than before. Lord says that they bring the water for this purpose in bark of the Holm-tree; that tree is in truth the Haum of the Magi, of which we spoke before on another occasion. Sometimes also it is otherwise done by immersing him in a large vessel of water, as Tavernier tells us. After such washing, or baptism, the priest imposes on the child the name given by his parents'" ("Christian Records," Rev. Dr. Giles, p. 129).

"The Baptismal fonts in our Protestant churches, and we can hardly say more especially the little cisterns at the entrance of our Catholic chapels, are not imitations, but an unbroken and never interrupted continuation of the same aquaminaria, or amula, which the learned Montfaucon, in his 'Antiquities,' shows to have been vases of holy water, which were placed by the heathens at the entrance of their temples, to sprinkle themselves with upon entering those sacred edifices" ("Diegesis," R. Taylor, p. 219). Among the Hindus, to bathe in the Ganges is to be regenerated, and the water is holy because it flows from Brahma's feet. Tertullian, arguing that water, as being God's earliest and most favoured creation, and brooded over by the spirit—Vishnu also is called Narayan, "moving on the waters"—was sanctifying in its nature, says: "'Well, but the nations, who are strangers to all understanding of spiritual powers, ascribe to their idols the imbuing of waters with the self-same efficacy.' So they do, but these cheat themselves with waters which are widowed. For washing is the channel through which they are initiated into some sacred rites of some notorious Isis or Mithra; and the gods themselves likewise they honour by washings.... At the Appollinarian and Eleusinian games they are baptised; and they presume that the effect of their doing that is the regeneration, and the remission of the penalties due to their perjuries.... Which fact, being acknowledged, we recognise here also the zeal of the devil rivalling the things of God, while we find him, too, practising baptism in his subjects" ("On Baptism," chap. v.). As "the devil" did it first, it seems scarcely fair to accuse him of copying.

Closely allied to baptism is the idea of regeneration, being born again. In baptism the purification is wrought by the male deity, typified in the water flowing from the throne or the feet of the god. In regeneration without water the purification is wrought by the female deity. The earth is the mother of all, and "as at birth the new being emerges from the mother, so it was supposed that emergence from a terrestrial cleft was equivalent to a new birth" (Inman's "Ancient Faiths," vol. i., p. 415; ed. 1868). Hence the custom of squeezing through a hole in a rock, or passing through a perforated stone, or between and under stones set up for the purpose; a natural cleft in a rock or in the earth was considered as specially holy, and to some of these long pilgrimages are still made in Eastern lands. On emerging from the hole, the devotee is re-born, and the sins of the past are no longer counted against him.

CONFIRMATION was also a rite employed by the ancient Persians. "Afterwards, in the fifteenth year of his age, when he begins to put on the tunic, the sudra and the girdle, that he may enter upon religion, and is engaged upon the articles of belief, the priest bestows upon him confirmation, that he may from that time be admitted into the number of the faithful, and may be looked upon as a believer himself" (Dr. Hyde on "Religion of the Ancient Persians," tr. by Dr. Giles in "Christian Records," pp. 129, 130).

LORD'S SUPPER.—Bread and wine appear to have been a regular offering to the Sun-god, whose beams ripen the corn and the grape, and who may indeed, by a figure, be said to be transubstantiated thus for the food of man. The Persians offered bread and wine to Mithra; the people of Thibet and Tartary did the same. Cakes were made for the Queen of heaven, kneaded of dough, and were offered up to her with incense and drink-libations (Jer. vii. 18, and xliv. 19). Ishtar was worshipped with cakes, or buns, made out of the finest flour, mingled with honey, and the ancient Greeks offered the same: this bread seems to have been sometimes only offered to the deity, sometimes also eaten by the worshippers; in the same way the bread and the wine are offered to God in the Eucharist, and he is prayed to accept "our alms and oblations." The Easter Cakes presented by the clergyman to his parishioners—an old English custom, now rarely met with—are the cakes of Ishtar, oval in form, symbolising the yoni. We have already dealt fully with the apparent similarity between the Christian Agapae, and the Bacchanalian mysteries (ante, pp. [222-227]). The supper of Adoneus, Adonai, literally, the "supper of the Lord," formed part of these feasts, identical in name with the supper of the Christian mysteries. The Eleusinian mysteries, celebrated at Eleusis, in honour of Ceres, goddess of corn, and Bacchus, god of wine, compel us to think of bread and wine, the very substance of the gods, as it were, there adored. And Mosheim gives us the origin of many of the Christian eucharistic ceremonies. He writes: "The profound respect that was paid to the Greek and Roman mysteries, and the extraordinary sanctity that was attributed to them, was a further circumstance that induced the Christians to give their religion a mystic air, in order to put it upon an equal foot, in point of dignity, with that of the Pagans. For this purpose they gave the name of mysteries to the institutions of the gospel, and decorated particularly the holy Sacrament with that solemn title. They used in that sacred institution, as also in that of baptism, several of the terms employed in the heathen mysteries; and proceeded so far, at length, as even to adopt some of the rites and ceremonies of which these renowned mysteries consisted. This imitation began in the Eastern provinces; but after the time of Adrian, who first introduced the mysteries among the Latins, it was followed by the Christians, who dwelt in the Western parts of the Empire. A great part, therefore, of the service of the church, in this century [A.D. 100-200], had a certain air of the heathen mysteries, and resembled them considerably in many particulars" ("Eccles. Hist.," 2nd century, p. 56).

The whole system of THE PRIESTHOOD was transplanted into Christianity from Paganism; the Egyptian priesthood, however, was in great part hereditary, and in this differs from the Christian, while resembling the Jewish. The priests of the temple of Dea (Syria) were, on the other hand, celibate, and so were some orders of the Egyptian priests. Some classes of priests closely resembled Christian monks, living in monasteries, and undergoing many austerities; they prayed twice a day, fasted often, spoke little, and lived much apart in their cells in solitary meditation; in the most insignificant matters the same similarity may be traced. "When the Roman Catholic priest shaves the top of his head, it is because the Egyptian priest had done the same before. When the English clergyman—though he preaches his sermon in a silk or woollen robe—may read the Liturgy in no dress but linen, it is because linen was the clothing of the Egyptians. Two thousand years before the Bishop of Rome pretended to hold the keys of heaven and earth, there was an Egyptian priest with the high-sounding title of Appointed keeper of the two doors of heaven, in the city of Thebes" ("Egyptian Mythology," S. Sharpe, preface, p. xi.). The white robes of modern priests are remnants of the same old faith; the more gorgeous vestments are the ancient garb of the priests officiating in the temple of female deities; the stole is the characteristic of woman's dress; the pallium is the emblem of the yoni; the alb is the chemise; the oval or circular chasuble is again the yoni; the Christian mitre is the high cap of the Egyptian priests, and its peculiar shape is simply the open mouth of the fish, the female emblem. In old sculptures a fish's head, with open mouth pointing upwards, is often worn by the priests, and is scarcely distinguishable from the present mitre. The modern crozier is the hooked staff, emblem of the phallus; the oval frame for divine things is the female symbol once more. Thus holy medals are generally oval, and the Virgin is constantly represented in an oval frame, with the child in her arms. In some old missals, in representations of the Annunciation, we see the Virgin standing, with the dove hovering in front above her, and from the dove issues a beam of light, from the end of which, as it touches her stomach, depends an oval containing the infant Jesus.

The tinkling bell—used at the Mass at the moment of consecration—is the symbol of male and female together—the clapper, the male, within the hollow shell, the female—and was used in solar services at the moment of sacrifice. The position of the fingers of the priest in blessing the congregation is the old symbolical position of the fingers of the solar priest. The Latin form, with the two fingers and thumb upraised—copied in Anglican churches—is said rightly by ecclesiastical writers to represent the trinity; but the trinity it represents is the real human trinity: the more elaborate Greek form is intended to represent the cross as well. The decoration of the cross with flowers, specially at Easter-tide, was practised in the solar temples, and there the phallus, upright on the altar, was garlanded with spring blossoms, and was adored as the "Lord and Giver of Life, proceeding from the Father," and indeed one with him, his very self. The sacred books of the Egyptians were written by the god Thoth, just as the sacred books of the Christians were written by the god the Holy Ghost. The rosary and cross were used by Buddhists in Thibet and Tartary. The head of the religion in those countries, the Grand Llama, is elected by the priests of a certain rank, as the Pope by his Cardinals. The faithful observe fasts, offer sacrifice for the dead, practise confession, use holy water, honour relics, make processions; they have monasteries and convents, whose inmates take vows of poverty and chastity; they flagellate themselves, have priests and bishops—in fact, they carry out the whole system of Catholicism, and have done so, since centuries before Christ, so that a Roman Catholic priest, on his first mission among them, exclaimed that the Devil had invented an imitation of Christianity in order to deceive and ruin men. As with baptism, the imitation is older than the original!

"The rites and institutions, by which the Greeks, Romans, and other nations, had formerly testified their religious veneration for fictitious deities, were now adopted, with some slight alterations, by Christian bishops, and employed in the service of the true God. [This is the way a Christian writer accounts for the resemblance his candour forces him to confess; we should put it, that Christianity, growing out of Paganism, naturally preserved many of its customs.].... Hence it happened that in these times the religion of the Greeks and Romans differed very little in its external appearance from that of the Christians. They had both a most pompous and splendid ritual. Gorgeous robes, mitres, tiaras, wax-tapers, crosiers, processions, lustrations, images, gold and silver vases, and many such circumstances of pageantry, were equally to be seen in the heathen temples and the Christian churches" (Mosheim's "Eccles. Hist.," fourth century, p. 105). Says Dulaure: "These two Fathers [Justin and Tertullian] are in no fashion embarrassed by this astonishing resemblance; they both say that the devil, knowing beforehand of the establishment of Christianity, and of the ceremonies of this religion, inspired the Pagans to do the same, so as to rival God and injure Christian worship" ("Histoire Abrégée de Differens Cultes," t. i., p. 522; ed. 1825).

The idea of angels and devils has also spread from the far East; the Jews learned it from the Babylonians, and from the Jews and the Egyptians it passed into Christianity. The Persian theology had seven angels of the highest order, who ever surrounded Ormuzd, the good creator; and from this the Jews derived the seven archangels always before the Lord, and the Christians the "seven spirits of God" (Rev. iii. 1), and the "seven angels which stood before God" (Ibid, viii. 2). The Persians had four angels—one at each corner of the world; Revelation has "four angels standing on the four corners of the earth" (vii. 1). The Persians employed them as Mediators with the Supreme; the majority of Christians now do the same, and all Christians did so in earlier times. Origen, Tertullian, Chrysostom, and other Fathers, speak of angels as ruling the earth, the planets, etc. Michael is the angel of the Sun, as was Hercules, and he fights with and conquers the dragon, as Hercules the Python, Horus the monster Typhon, Krishna the serpent. The Persians believed in devils as well as in angels, and they also had their chief, Ahriman, the pattern of Satan. These devils—or dews, or devs—struggled against the good, and in the end would be destroyed, and Ahriman would be chained down in the abyss, as Satan in Rev. xx. Ahriman flew down to earth from heaven as a great dragon (Rev. xii. 3 and 9), the angels arming themselves against him (Ibid, verse 7). Strauss remarks: "Had the belief in celestial beings, occupying a particular station in the court of heaven, and distinguished by particular names, originated from the revealed religion of the Hebrews—had such a belief been established by Moses, or some later prophet—then, according to the views of the supranaturalist, they might—nay, they must—be admitted to be correct. But it is in the Maccabaean Daniel and in the apocryphal Tobit that this doctrine of angels, in its more precise form, first appears; and it is evidently a product of the influence of the Zend religion of the Persians on the Jewish mind. We have the testimony of the Jews themselves that they brought the names of the angels with them from Babylon" ("Life of Jesus," vol. i., p. 101).

Dr. Kalisch, after having remarked that "the notions [of the Jews] concerning angels fluctuated and changed," says that "at an early period, the belief in spirits was introduced into Palestine from eastern Asia through the ordinary channels of political and commercial interchange," and that to the Hebrew "notions heathen mythology offers striking analogies;" "it would be unwarranted," the learned doctor goes on, "to distinguish between the 'established belief of the Hebrews' and 'popular superstition;' we have no means of fixing the boundary line between both; we must consider the one to coincide with the other, or we should be obliged to renounce all historical inquiry. The belief in spirits and demons was not a concession made by educated men to the prejudices of the masses, but a concession which all—the educated as well as the uneducated—made to Pagan Polytheism" ("Historical and Critical Commentary on the Old Testament." Leviticus, part ii., pp. 284-287. Ed. 1872). "When the Jews, ever open to foreign influence in matters of faith, lived under Persian rule, they imbibed, among many other religious views of their masters, especially their doctrines of angels and spirits, which, in the region of the Euphrates and Tigris, were most luxuriantly developed." Some of the angels are now "distinguished by names, which the Jews themselves admit to have borrowed from their heathen rulers;" "their chief is Mithron, or Metatron, corresponding to the Persian Mithra, the mediator between eternal light and eternal darkness; he is the embodiment of divine omnipotence and omnipresence, the guardian of the world, the instructor of Moses, and the preserver of the law, but also a terrible avenger of disobedience and wickedness, especially in his capacity of Supreme Judge of the dead" (Ibid, pp. 287, 288). This is "the angel of the Lord" who went before the children of Israel, of whom God said "my name is in him" (see Ex. xxiii. 20-23), and who is identified by many Christian commentators as the second person in the Trinity. The belief in devils is the other side of the belief in angels, and "we see, above all, Satan rise to greater and more perilous eminence both with regard to his power and the diversity of his functions." "This remarkable advance in demonology cannot be surprising, if we consider that the Persian system known as that of Zoroaster, and centering in the dualism of a good and evil principle, flourished most and attained its fullest development, just about the time of the Babylonian exile" (Ibid, pp. 292, 293). The Persian creed supplies us, as Dr. Kalisch has well said, with "the sources from which the demonology of the Talmud, the Fathers and the Catholic Church has been derived" (Ibid, p. 318).

The whole ideas of the judgment of the dead, the destruction of the world by fire, and the punishment of the wicked, are also purely Pagan. Justin Martyr says truly that as Minos and Rhadamanthus would punish the wicked, "we say that the same thing will be done, but by the hand of Christ" ("Apology" 1, chap. viii). "While we say that there will be a burning up of all, we shall seem to utter the doctrine of the Stoics; and while we affirm that the souls of the wicked, being endowed with sensation even after death, are punished, and that those of the good being delivered from punishment spend a blessed existence, we shall seem to say the same things as the poets and philosophers" (Ibid, chap. xx). In the Egyptian creed Osiris is generally the Judge of the dead, though sometimes Horus is represented in that character; the dead man is accused before the Judge by Typhon, the evil one, as Satan is the "accuser of the brethren;" forty-two assessors declare the innocence of the accused of the crimes they severally note; the recording angel writes down the judgment; the soul is interceded for by the lesser gods, who offer themselves as an atoning sacrifice (see Sharpe's "Egyptian Mythology," pp. 49-52). A pit, or lake of fire, is the doom of the condemned. The good pass to Paradise, where is the tree of life: the fruit of this tree confers health and immortality. In the Persian mythology the tree of life is planted by the stream that flows from the throne of Ormuzd (Rev. xxii. i and 2). The Hindu creed has the same story, and it is also found among the Chinese.

The monastic life comes to us from India and from Egypt; in both countries solitaries and communities are found. Bartholémy St. Hilaire, in his book on Buddha, gives an account of the Buddhist monasteries which is worthy perusal. From Egypt the contagion of asceticism spread over Christendom. "From Philo also we learn that a large body of Egyptian Jews had embraced the monastic rules and the life of self-denial, which we have already noted among the Egyptian priests. They bore the name of Therapeuts. They spent their time in solitary meditation and prayer, and only saw one another on the seventh day. They did not marry; the women lived the same solitary and religious life as the men. Fasting and mortification of the flesh were the foundation of their virtues" ("Egyptian Mythology," S. Sharpe, p. 79). In these Egyptian deserts grew up those wild and bigoted fanatics—some Jews, some Pagans, and apparently no difference between them—who, appearing later under the name of Christians, formed the original of the Western monasticism. It was these monks who tore Hypatia to pieces in the great church of Alexandria, and who formed the strength of "that savage and illiterate party, who looked upon all sorts of erudition, particularly that of a philosophical kind, as pernicious, and even destructive to true piety and religion" (Mosheim's "Eccles. Hist," p. 93). There can be no doubt of the identity of the Christians and the Therapeuts, and this identity is the real key to the spread of "Christianity" in Egypt and the surrounding countries. Eusebius tells us that Mark was said to be the first who preached the Gospel in Egypt, and "so great a multitude of believers, both of men and women, were collected there at the very outset, that in consequence of their extreme philosophical discipline and austerity, Philo has considered their pursuits, their assemblies, and entertainments, as deserving a place in his descriptions" ("Eccles. Hist," bk. ii., chap. xvi). We will see what Philo found in Egypt, before remarking on the date at which he lived. Eusebius states (we condense bk. ii., chap. xvii) that Philo "comprehends the regulations that are still observed in our churches even to the present time;" that he "describes, with the greatest accuracy, the lives of our ascetics;" these Therapeuts, stated by Eusebius to be Christians, were "everywhere scattered over the world," but they abound "in Egypt, in each of its districts, and particularly about Alexandria." In every house one room was set aside for worship, reading, and meditation, and here they kept the "inspired declarations of the prophets, and hymns," they had also "commentaries of ancient men," who were "the founders of the sect;" "it is highly probable that the ancient commentaries which he says they have, are the very Gospels and writings of the apostles;" Eusebius thinks that none can "be so hardy as to contradict his statement that these Therapeuts were Christians, when their practices are to be found among none but in the religion of Christians;" and "why should we add to these their meetings, and the separate abodes of the men and the women in these meetings, and the exercises performed by them, which are still in vogue among us at the present day, and which, especially at the festival of our Saviour's passion, we are accustomed to pass in fasting and watching, and in the study of the divine word? All these the above-mentioned author has accurately described and stated in his writings, and are the same customs that are observed by us alone, at the present day, particularly the vigils of the great festival, and the exercises in them, and the hymns that are commonly recited among us.... Besides this, he describes the grades of dignity among those who administer the ecclesiastical services committed to them, those of the deacons, and the presidencies of the episcopate as the highest." Thus Philo wrote of "the original practices handed down from the apostles." The important points to notice here are: that in the time of Philo, these Christians were scattered all over the world; that the commentaries they had, which Eusebius says were the Christian's gospels, were the works of ancient men, who founded the sect, so that the founders were men who lived long before Philo's time; that they were thoroughly organised, proving thereby that their sect was not a new one in his day; that the "discipline," organised association, ranks of priests, etc., implied a long existence of the sect before Philo studied it, and that such existence was clearly not consistent with any persecution being then directed against it. Philo writes of flourishing and orderly communities, founded by men who had long since passed away, and had bequeathed their writings to their followers for their instruction and guidance. And what was the date of Philo? He himself gives us a clear note of time; in A.D. 40 he was sent on an embassy to the Emperor Caligula at Rome, to complain of a persecution to which the Jews were being subjected by Flaccus; he describes himself as being, in A.D. 40, "a grey-headed old man." The Rev. J.W. Lake puts him at sixty-five or seventy years of age at that period, and consequently would place his birth twenty-five or thirty years before the birth of Jesus ("Plato, Philo, and Paul," by Rev. J.W. Lake, pp. 33, 34). Gibbon, in a note to chap. 15, vol. ii. (p. 180), says that "by proving it (the treatise on the Therapeuts) was composed as early as the time of Augustus, Basnage has demonstrated, in spite of Eusebius, and a crowd of modern Catholics, that the Therapeuts were neither Christians nor monks." Or rather, he has proved that Christians existed before the time of Christ, since Augustus died A.D. 14, and before that date Philo found a long-established sect holding Christian doctrines and practising "apostolic" customs. A man, who in A.D. 40 was grey-headed, spoke of the Christian Gospels as writings of ancient men, founders of a well-organised sect. Now we see why Christianity has so much in common with the Egyptian mythology. Because it grew out of Egypt; its Gospels came from thence; its ceremonies were learned there; its virgin is Isis; its Christ Osiris and Horus; the mask of the revelation of God drops from off it, and we see the true face, the ancient Egyptian religion, with a feature here and there moulded by the cognate ideas of other Eastern creeds, all of which flowed into Alexandria, and mingled in its seething cauldron of thought.

There is also a Jewish sect which we must not overlook, in dealing with the sources of Christianity, that, namely, known as the Essenes. Gibbon regards the Therapeuts and the Essenes as interchangeable terms, but more careful investigation does not bear out this conclusion, although the two sects strongly resemble each other, and have many doctrines in common; he says, however, truly: "The austere life of the Essenians, their fasts and excommunications, the community of goods, the love of celibacy, their zeal for martyrdom, and the warmth, though not the purity of their faith, already offered a lively image of the primitive discipline" ("Decline and Fall," vol. ii., ch. xv., p. 180). It is to Josephus that we must turn for an account of the Essenes; a brief sketch of them is given in Antiquities of the Jews, bk. xviii., chap. i. He says: "The doctrine of the Essenes is this: That all things are best ascribed to God. They teach the immortality of souls, and esteem that the rewards of righteousness are to be earnestly striven for; and when they send what they have dedicated to God into the temple, they do not offer sacrifices, because they have more pure lustrations of their own; on which account they are excluded from the common court of the temple, but offer their sacrifices themselves; yet is their course of life better than that of other men; and they entirely addict themselves to husbandry." They had all things in common, did not marry and kept no servants, thus none called any master (Matt. xxiii. 8, 10). In the "Wars of the Jews," bk. ii., chap, viii., Josephus gives us a fuller account. "There are three philosophical sects among the Jews. The followers of the first of whom are the Pharisees; of the second the Sadducees; and the third sect who pretends to a severer discipline are called Essenes. These last are Jews by birth, and seem to have a greater affection for one another than the other sects [John xiii. 35]. These Essenes reject pleasures as an evil [Matt. xvi. 24], but esteem continence and the conquest over our passions to be virtue. They neglect wedlock.... They do not absolutely deny the fitness of marriage [Matt. xix. 12, last clause of verse, 1 Cor. vii. 27, 28, 32-35, 37, 38, 40].... These men are despisers of riches [Matt. xix. 21, 23, 24] ... it is a law among them, that those who come to them must let what they have be common to the whole order [Acts iv. 32-37, v. 1-11].... They also have stewards appointed to take care of their common affairs [Acts vi. 1-6].... If any of their sect come from other places, what they have lies open for them, just as if it were their own [Matt. x. 11].... For which reason they carry nothing with them when they travel into remote parts [Matt. x. 9, 10].... As for their piety towards God, it is very extraordinary; for before sunrising they speak not a word about profane matters, but put up certain prayers which they have received from their forefathers, as if they made a supplication for its rising [the Essenes were then sun-worshippers].... A priest says grace before meat; and it is unlawful for anyone to taste of the food before grace be said. The same priest, when he hath dined, says grace again after meat; and when they begin, and when they end, they praise God, as he that bestows their food upon them [Eph. v. 18-20. 1 Cor. x. 30, 31. 1 Tim. iv. 4, 5].... They dispense their anger after a just manner, and restrain their passion [Eph. iv. 26].... Whatsoever they say also is firmer than an oath; but swearing is avoided by them, and they esteem it worse than perjury; for they say, that he who cannot be believed without swearing by God, is already condemned [Matt. v. 34-37]." We insert these references into the account given by Josephus of the Essenes, in order to show the identity of teaching of the Gospels and the Essenes. The Essenes excommunicated those who sinned grievously; each promised, on entrance to the society, to exercise piety, observe justice, do no harm to any, show fidelity to all, and especially to those in authority, love truth, reprove lying, keep his hands clear from theft, and his soul from unlawful gains. The resemblance between the Essenes and the early Christians is on many points so strong that it is impossible to deny that the two are connected; if Jesus of Nazareth had any historical existence, he must have been one of the sect of the Essenes, who publicly preached many of their doctrines, and endeavoured to popularise them. We are thus led to conclude that the Jewish side of Christianity is simply Essenian, but that the major part of the religion is purely Pagan, and that its rise under the name of Christianity must be sought for in Alexandria rather than in Judæa.

The saints who play so great a part in the history of Christianity are, solely and simply, the old Pagan deities under new names. The ancient creeds were intertwined with the daily life of the people, and passed on, practically unchanged, although altered in name. "Ancient errors, in spite of the progress of knowledge, were respected. Civilisation, as it grew, only refined them, embellished them, or hid them under an allegorical veil" ("Histoire Abrégée de Differens Cultes," Dulauré, t. i., p. 20). "A remarkable passage in the life of Gregory, surnamed Thaumaturgus, i.e., the wonder-worker, will illustrate this point in the clearest manner. This passage is as follows [here it is given in Latin]: 'When Gregory perceived that the ignorant multitude persisted in their idolatry, on account of the pleasures and sensual gratifications which they enjoyed at the Pagan festivals, he granted them a permission to indulge themselves in the like pleasures, in celebrating the memory of the holy martyrs, hoping that, in process of time they would return, of their own accord, to a more virtuous and regular course of life.' There is no sort of doubt that, by this permission, Gregory allowed the Christians to dance, sport, and feast at the tombs of the martyrs upon their respective festivals, and to do everything which the Pagans were accustomed to do in their temples, during the feasts celebrated in honour of their gods" (Mosheim's "Eccles. Hist.," 2nd century; note, p. 56). "The virtues that had formerly been ascribed to the heathen temples, to their lustrations, to the statues of their gods and heroes, were now attributed to Christian churches, to water consecrated by certain forms of prayer, and to the images of holy men. And the same privileges that the former enjoyed under the darkness of Paganism, were conferred upon the latter under the light of the Gospel, or, rather, under that cloud of superstition that was obscuring its glory. It is true that, as yet, images were not very common [of this there is no proof]; nor were there any statues at all [equally unproven]. But it is, at the same time, as undoubtedly certain, as it is extravagant and monstrous, that the worship of the martyrs was modelled, by degrees, according to the religious services that were paid to the gods before the coming of Christ" (Ibid, 4th century; p. 98). The fact is, that wherever there was a popular god, he passed into the pantheon of Christendom under a new name, as "Christianity" spread. Dulaure, in his work above-quoted, gives a mass of details—mostly very unsavoury—which leave no doubt upon this point. The essence of the old worship was the worship of Nature, as we have seen, and a favourite deity was Priapus; this god was worshipped under the names of St. Fontin, St. Guerlichon, or Greluchon, St. Remi, St. Gilles, St. Arnaud, SS. Cosmo and Damian, etc., in the various provinces of France, Italy, and other Roman Catholic lands; and his worship, with its distinctive rites of the most indecent character, remained in practice up to, at least, 1740 in France, and 1780 in Italy. (See throughout the above work.) If Christians knew a little more about their creed they would be far less proud of it, and far less devout, than they are at present.

Mr. Glennie, in a pamphlet reprinted from "In the Morning Land," points out the resemblance between Christianity and "Osirianism," as he names the religion of Osiris: "'The peculiar character of Osiris,' says Sir Gardner Wilkinson, 'his coming upon earth for the benefit of mankind, with the titles of "Manifester of Good" and "Revealer of Truth;" his being put to death by the malice of the Evil One; his burial and resurrection, and his becoming the judge of the dead, are the most interesting features of the Egyptian religion. This was the great mystery; and this myth and his worship were of the earliest times, and universal in Egypt.' And, with this central doctrine of Osirianism, so perfectly similar to that of Christianism, doctrines are associated precisely analogous to those associated in Christianism with its central doctrine. In ancient Osirianism, as in modern Christianism, the Godhead is conceived as a Trinity, yet are the three Gods declared to be only one God. In ancient Osirianism, as in modern Christianism, we find the worship of a divine mother and child. In ancient Osirianism, as in modern Christianism, there is a doctrine of atonement. In ancient Osirianism, as in modern Christianism, we find the vision of a last judgment, and resurrection of the body. And finally, in ancient Osirianism, as in modern Christianism, the sanctions of morality are a lake of fire and tormenting demons on the one hand, and on the other, eternal life in the presence of God. Is it possible, then, that such similarities of doctrines should not raise the most serious questions as to the relation of the beliefs about Christ to those about Osiris; as to the cause of this wonderful similarity of the doctrines of Christianism to those of Osirianism; nay, as to the possibility of the whole doctrinal system of modern orthodoxy being but a transformation of the Osiris-myth?" ("Christ and Osiris," pp. 13, 14).

Thus we find that the cardinal doctrines and the ceremonies of Christianity are of purely Pagan origin, and that "Christianity" was in existence long ages before Christ. Christianity is only, as we have said, a patchwork composed of old materials; from the later Jews comes the Unity of God; from India and Egypt the Trinity in Unity; from India and Egypt the crucified Redeemer; from India, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, the virgin mother and the divine son; from Egypt its priests and its ritual; from the Essenes and the Therapeuts its ascetism; from Persia, India, and Egypt, its Sacraments; from Persia and Babylonia its angels and its devils; from Alexandria the blending into one of many lines of thought. There is nothing original in this creed, save its special appeal to the ignorant and to babes; "not many wise men after the flesh" are found among its adherents; it is an appeal to the darkness of the world, not to its light: to superstition, not to knowledge; to faith, not to reason. As its root is, so also are its fruits, and when—after glancing at its morality—we turn to its history, we shall see that the corrupt tree bears corrupt fruit, and that from the evil stem of a thinly disguised Paganism spring forth the death-bringing branches of the Upas-tree Christianity, stunting the growth of the young civilisation of the West, and drugging, with its poisonous dew-droppings, the Europe which lay beneath its shade, swoon-slumbering in the death stupor of the Ages of Darkness and of Faith.

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