The Eliminator; or, Skeleton Keys to Sacerdotal Secrets

by Richard B. Westbrook

The fact is, that all the great nations of antiquity, and many of the smaller tribes, have had very similar views as to divine manifestations in human flesh; and you need only turn to the pages of any good dictionary of mythology to verify the truth of this allegation.

We might extend these analogies to an indefinite extent. The author of Bible Myths has specified about fifty particulars in which Jesus is said to have resembled Buddha, and as many more particulars in the case of Chrishna. Nobody having any knowledge of the world’s history will doubt that these Indian divinities preceded the Judean Christ by several centuries, as many distinguished writers, like Prof. Max Müller, have admitted.

We challenge the theologians to present one single prominent feature or characteristic said to have been shown in the career of Jesus which did not appear in several other alleged incarnations hundreds of years before. The fact is, that the Christ of modern times is a perfect copy of other Christs who preceded him. Not only are all ancient Oriental scriptures full of incarnated divine saviors, but the same symbols and ceremonies abound in their worship. Take the cross, for an example. In ancient India the cross was as common as in modern Rome, and heathen temples were built in the form of a cross centuries before papists and Puseyites and their liberal imitators ever thought of such a thing. It was a common symbol in the ancient worship of Egypt. It was a Druidic emblem in Britain five hundred years before the introduction of Christianity. Plato, the Grecian philosopher, four hundred or five hundred years before Christ proclaimed the cross to be the best symbol of the divinity next to the supreme. The worshippers of Serapis used it, and Hadrian, the Roman emperor, as late as A. d. 130 mistook them for Christians. The standard portrait of Jesus, so honored by modern Christians, is a copy of the head of Serapis, the well-known sun-god, according to the testimony of Mr. King in his able work, Gnostics and their Remains (p. 68).

The same is true of baptism and the Eucharist, as ceremonies identical with these, in their main aspects, existed among the ancient pagans. The “Lord’s Supper” virtually was in use more than two hundred and fifty years before Christ. Wherever Christian missionaries have gone they have found substantially the same dogmas and religious observances, and Tertullian, a Christian Father of the second century, conveniently explained this fact by saying that the devil had taught the heathen these same things to forestall the preaching of the missionaries.

And yet Justin Martyr in the second century (a. d. 140), in defending the Christian religion against the assaults of pagans, said: “For declaring that the Logos, the first-begotten Son of God, our Master Jesus Christ, to be born of a virgin without any human mixture, and to be crucified and dead and to have arisen again into heaven, we say no more in this than what you say of those whom you style the sons of Jove.” Here is a distinct admission in the second century, from one in high authority, that the doctrine of the death and resurrection of miraculously-incarnated deities born of virgin mothers was well known among pagans before the Christian era.

But we are not done with Justin Martyr yet. In his Apology to the emperor Hadrian he makes this most astonishing admission: “In saying that all things were made in this beautiful order by God, what do we seem to say more than Plato? When we teach a general conflagration, what do we teach more than the Stoics? By opposing the worship of the works of men's hands we concur with Menander the comedian.... For you need not be told what a parcel of sons the writers most in vogue among you assign to Jove; there's Mercury, Jove's interpreter, in imitation of the Logos, in worship among you. There's Æsculapius, the physician, smitten by a thunderbolt, and after that ascending into heaven. There's Bacchus, torn to pieces; and Hercules, burnt to get rid of his pains. There's Pollux and Castor, the sons of Jove by Leda, and Perseus by Danæ; and, not to mention others, I would fain know why you always deify the departed emperors, and have a fellow at hand to make affidavit that he saw Cæsar mount to heaven from the funeral pile?

“As to the Son of God, called Jesus, should we allow him to be nothing more than man, yet the title of the Son of God is very justifiable, upon the account of his wisdom, considering that you have your Mercury in worship under the title of the Word and Messenger of God.

“As to the objection of our Jesus being crucified, I say that suffering was common to all the forementioned sons of Jove, but only they suffered another kind of death. As to his being born of a virgin, you have your Perseus to balance that. As to his curing the lame and the paralytic and such as were cripples from birth, this is little more than what you say of your Æsculapius.”

St. Augustine says: “For the thing itself which is now called the Christian religion really was known to the ancients, nor was not wanting at any time from the beginning of the human race until the time when Christ came in the flesh, from whence the true religion which had previously existed began to be called Christian; and this in our day is the Christian religion, not as having been wanting in former times, but as having in later times received this name.”

A fellow and tutor in Trinity College and lecturer on ancient history in the University of Dublin (Mr. Mahaffy) closes one of his lectures in the following manner: “There is, indeed, hardly a great or fruitful idea in the Jewish or Christian system which has not its analogy in the (ancient) Egyptian faith. The development of the one God into a trinity; the incarnation of the mediating deity in a virgin, and without a father; his conflict and his momentary defeat by the powers of darkness; his partial victory (for the enemy is not destroyed); his resurrection and reign over an eternal kingdom with his justified saints; his distinction from, and yet identity with, the uncreate incomprehensible Father, whose form is unknown and who dwelleth not in temples made with hands,—all these theological conceptions pervade the oldest religion of Egypt. So, too, the contrast and even the apparent inconsistencies between our moral and theological beliefs—the vacillating attribution of sin and guilt partly to moral weakness, partly to the interference of evil spirits, and likewise of righteousness to moral worth, and again to help of good genii or angels; the immortality of the soul and its final judgment,—all these things have met us in the Egyptian ritual and moral treatises. So, too, the purely human side of morals and the catalogue of virtues and vices are by natural consequences as like as are the theological systems. But I recoil from opening this great subject now; it is enough to have lifted the veil and shown the scene of many a future contest.”