"In these mysteries, after the attendants had for a long time bewailed the death of this just person, he was at length understood to be restored to life, to have experienced a resurrection; signified by the re-admission of light. On this the priest addressed the company, saying, 'Comfort yourselves, all ye who have been partakers of the mysteries of the deity, thus preserved: for we shall now enjoy some respite from our labors:' to which were added these words: 'I have scaped a sad calamity, and my lot is greatly mended.' The people answered by the invocation: 'Hail to the Dove! the Restorer of Light!'"[218:2]
Alexander Murray tells us that the ancient Greeks also celebrated this festival in honor of the resurrection of Adonis, in the course of which a figure of him was produced, and the ceremony of burial, with weeping and songs of wailing, gone through. After these a joyful shout was raised: "Adonis lives and is risen again."[218:3]
Plutarch, in his life of Alcibiades and of Nicias, tells us that it was at the time of the celebration of the death of Adonis that the Athenian fleet set sail for its unlucky expedition to Sicily; that nothing but images of dead Adonises were to be met with in the streets, and that they were carried to the sepulchre in the midst of an immense train of women, crying and beating their breasts, and imitating in every particular the lugubrious pomp of interments. Sinister omens were drawn from it, which were only too much realized by subsequent events.[218:4]
It was in an oration or address delivered to the Emperors Constans and Constantius that Julius Firmicius wrote concerning the rites celebrated by the heathens in commemoration of the resurrection of Adonis. In his tide of eloquence he breaks away into indignant objurgation of the priest who officiated in those heathen mysteries, which, he admitted, resembled the Christian sacrament in honor of the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus, so closely that there was really no difference between them, except that no sufficient proof had been given to the world of the resurrection of Adonis, and no divine oracle had borne witness to his resurrection, nor had he shown himself alive after his death to those who were concerned to have assurance of the fact that they might believe.
The divine oracle, be it observed, which Julius Firmicius says had borne testimony to Christ Jesus' resurrection, was none other than the answer of the god Apollo, whom the Pagans worshiped at Delphos, which this writer derived from Porphyry's books "On the Philosophy of Oracles."[219:1]
Eusebius, the celebrated ecclesiastical historian, has also condescended to quote this claimed testimony from a Pagan oracle, as furnishing one of the most convincing proofs that could be adduced in favor of the resurrection of Christ Jesus.
"But thou at least (says he to the Pagans), listen to thine own gods, to thy oracular deities themselves, who have borne witness, and ascribed to our Saviour (Jesus Christ) not imposture, but piety and wisdom, and ascent into heaven."
This was vastly obliging and liberal of the god Apollo, but, it happens awkwardly enough, that the whole work (consisting of several books) ascribed to Porphyry, in which this and other admissions equally honorable to the evidences of the Christian religion are made, was not written by Porphyry, but is altogether the pious fraud of Christian hands, who have kindly fathered the great philosopher with admissions, which, as he would certainly never have made himself, they have very charitably made for him.[219:2]
The festival in honor of the resurrection of Adonis was observed in Alexandria in Egypt—the cradle of Christianity—in the time of St. Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria (A. D. 412), and at Antioch—the ancient capital of the Greek Kings of Syria—even as late as the time of the Emperor Julian (A. D. 361-363), whose arrival there, during the solemnity of the festival, was taken as an ill omen.[219:3]
It is most curious that the arrival of the Emperor Julian at Antioch—where the followers of Christ Jesus, it is said, were first called Christians—at that time, should be considered an ill omen. Why should it have been so? He was not a Christian, but a known apostate from the Christian religion, and a zealous patron of Paganism. The evidence is very conclusive; the celebration in honor of the resurrection of Adonis had become to be known as a Christian festival, which has not been abolished even unto this day. The ceremonies held in Roman Catholic countries on Good Friday and on Easter Sunday, are nothing more than the festival of the death and resurrection of Adonis, as we shall presently see.