while the world was thus seething and fermenting with new faiths the creed of the christ made its first appearance on the seaboard of asia. in spite of certain remarks in my first chapter, i am not such a “gross and crass euhemerist” as to insist dogmatically on the historical existence of a personal jesus. of the christ himself, if a christ there were, we know little or nothing. the account of his life which has come down to us in the gospels is so devoid of authority, and so entirely built up of miraculous fragments, derived from elsewhere, that we may well be excused for gravely doubting whether he is not rather to be numbered with st. george and st. catherine, with perseus and arthur, among the wholly mythical and imaginary figures of legend and religion.

on the other hand, it is quite possible, or even probable, that there really did live in galilee, at some time about the beginning of our accepted era, a teacher and reformer bearing the semitic name which is finally hellenised and latinised for us as jesus. if so, it seems not unlikely that this unknown person was crucified (or rather hung on a post) by the romans at jerusalem under the procurator c. pontius pilatus; and that after his death he was worshipped more or less as a god by his immediate followers. such kernel of truth may very well exist in the late and derivative gospel story; a kernel of truth, but imbedded in a mass of unhistorical myth, which implicitly identifies him with all the familiar corn-gods and wine-gods of the eastern mediterranean.

furthermore, 379it is even possible that the christ may have been deliberately put to death, at the instigation of the jewish rabble, as one of those temporary divine kings whose nature and meaning we have already discussed. if this suggestion seem improbable from the lack of any similar recorded case in the scanty jewish annals, i would answer that formal histories seldom give us any hint of the similar customs still surviving in civilised european countries; that many popular rites exist unheard of everywhere; and that the jews were commonly believed through the middle ages to crucify christian boys, like st. hugh of lincoln, in certain irregular and unrecognised ethnical ceremonies. furthermore, lest i should be thought to adduce this instance through an anti-semite tendency (which i do not in the slightest degree possess), i may add that even among christians similar customs are believed to exist in rural parts of italy at the present day,—there are villages where a man dies yearly as the representative of christ; and that in my opinion the oberammergau and other passion plays are survivals of like representations in which a condemned criminal, the usual substitute, did once actually enact the part of christ. in short, i do not hesitate to say that god-slaying ceremonies, more or less attenuated, have lingered on everywhere in obscure forms among the folk-rites and folk-customs of the most civilised peoples.

without doing more than briefly indicate this possibility, however, i pass on to say that if ever there was really a personal christ, and if his followers began by vaguely believing in his resurrection, the legend, as we get it, is obviously made up of collected fragments from all the godslaying customs and beliefs we have been considering in detail through the last six or seven chapters. in the gospel of his later believers, after the sect had spread widely among the gentiles of the towns, jesus is conceived of as a corn and wine god, a temporary king, slain on a cross as a piacular atonement, and raised again from the dead after 380three days, in the manner common to all corn and wine gods. it is possible, of course, that the first believers may have fastened all these ideas on to an accidental condemnation and execution, so to speak; but it is possible too that the christ may actually have been put to death at the great spring feast of the passover, in accordance with some obscure and unrecognised folk-rite of the rabble of jerusalem. i do not even pretend to have an opinion on this subject; i do not assert or deny any historical nucleus of fact: i am satisfied with saying that the story on the whole exhibits the christ to us entirely in the character of a temporary king, slain with piacular rites as a corn and wine god. in this case at least, i am no dogmatic euhemerist.

i think it was professor freeman who once quaintly described buddhism as “a blasphemous anticipatory parody of christianity.” the learned historian’s idea apparently was that the author of all evil, being aware beforehand of the divine intentions, had invented buddhism before the advent of christ, so as to discount the christian plan of salvation by anticipation. if so, we must regard all other religions as similar blasphemous attempts at forestalling god: for we shall see as we proceed that every one of them contains innumerable anticipations of christianity—or, to put it conversely, that christianity subsumes them all into itself, in a highly concentrated and etherealised solution.

in the earliest christian documents, the pauline and other apostolic epistles, we get little information about the history of the real or mythical christ. shadowy allusions alone to the crucifixion and the resurrection repay our scrutiny. but through the mist of words we see two or three things clearly. the christ is described as the son of god—that is to say of the jewish deity; and he is spoken of continually as slain on a post or tree, the sacred symbol of so many old religions. he dies to save mankind; and salvation is offered in his name to all men. a careful reading 381of the epistles from this point of view will give in brief an epitome of the earliest and least dogmatic yet very doctrinal christian theology. its cardinal points are four —incarnation, death, resurrection, atonement.

the later accounts which we get in the gospels are far more explicit. the legend by that time had taken form: it had grown clear and consistent. all the elements of the slain and risen corn and wine god are there in perfection. for brevity’s sake, i will run all these accounts together, adding to them certain traits of still later origin.

the aspect of christ as a survival of the corn-god is already clear in paul’s argument in first corinthians on the resurrection of the body. this argument would strike home at once to every greek and every asiatic. “that which you sow is not quickened unless it die. and when you sow, you sow not the body that is to be, but bare grain; it may be wheat or any other grain. but god gives it a shape as pleases him; to every seed its own body.” the whole of this fifteenth chapter, the earliest statement of the christian belief, should be read through in this connexion by any one who wishes to understand the close relation of the idea of sowing to the resurrection. it might have been written by any worshipper of adonis or osiris who wished to recommend his special doctrine of a bodily resurrection to a doubtful cremationist, familiar with the cult of dionysus and of attis.

the earliest known rite of the christian church was the sacramental eating and drinking of bread and wine together; which rite was said to commemorate the death of the lord, and his last supper, when he eat and drank bread and wine with his disciples. the language put into his mouth on this occasion in the gospels, especially the fourth, is distinctly that of the corn and wine god. “i am the true vine; ye are the branches.” “i am the bread of life.” “take, eat, this is my body.” “this is my blood of the new testament.” numberless other touches of like kind are scattered through the speeches. in the parable 382of the vineyard, god the father is described as the owner of a vineyard, who sends his only begotten son to receive the fruit of it: and the workers slay him. the first miracle at cana of galilee is one where water is turned into wine by the hand of jesus: and so on through a long series of curious instances, which readers can discover for themselves by inspection.

in early christian art, as exhibited in the catacombs at rome, the true vine is most frequently figured; as are also baskets of loaves, with the corresponding miracle of the loaves and fishes. multiplication of bread and wine are the natural credentials of the corn and wine god. the earliest description we possess of christ, that of john of damascus, states that his complexion was “of the colour of wheat”; while in the apocryphal letter of lentulus to the roman senate we read in the same spirit that his hair was “wine-coloured.” the greek description by epiphanius monachus says that christ was six feet high; his hair long and golden-coloured; and in countenance he was ruddy like his father david. all these descriptions are obviously influenced by the identification of the bread and wine of the eucharist with the personal jesus.

in the usage of the church from very early days, it has been customary to eat the body of christ in the form of bread, and to drink his blood as wine in the sacrament. in the catholic church, this continuous ceremony takes place at an altar, containing sacred bones, and is represented as being the offering of god, himself to himself, in the form of a mystic and piacular sacrifice. the priest drinks the wine or blood; the laity eat only the bread or body.

a curious custom which occurs in many churches of sicily at easter still further enforces this unity of christ with the cult of earlier corn and wine gods, like adonis and osiris. the women sow wheat, lentils, and canary-seed in plates, which are kept in the dark and watered every second day. the plants soon shoot up; they are then tied together 383with red ribbons, and the plates containing them are placed on the sepulchres which, with effigies of the dead christ, are made up in roman catholic and greek churches on good friday, “just as the gardens of adonis,” says mr. frazer, “were placed on the grave of the dead adonis.” in this curious ceremony we get a survival from the very lowest stratum of corn-god worship; the stratum where an actual human victim is killed, and corn and other crops are sown above his body. even where the sowing itself no longer survives, the sepulchre remains as a relic of the same antique ritual. such sepulchres are everywhere common at easter, as are the cradles of the child-god at the feast of the winter solstice. the piet脿 is the final form of this mourning of the corn-god by the holy women.

passing on to the other aspects of christ as corn-god and divine-human victim, we see that he is doubly recognised as god and man, like all the similar gods of early races. in the speeches put into his mouth by his biographers, he constantly claims the jewish god as his father. moreover, he is a king; and his kingly descent from his ancestor david is insisted upon in the genealogies with some little persistence. he is god incarnate; but also he is the king of the jews, and the king of glory. wise men come from the east to worship him, and bring gifts of gold and myrrh and frankincense to the infant god in his manger cradle. but he is further the christ, the anointed of god; and, as we saw, anointment is a common element with numerous other divine-human victims.

once more, he is the king’s son; and he is the only begotten son, the dearly beloved son, who is slain as an expiation for the sins of the people. the heavens open, and a voice from them declares, “this is my beloved son in whom i am well pleased.” he is affiliated, like all other such victims, on the older and earlier ethnical god, jah-weh; and though he is himself god, and one with the father, he is offered up, himself to himself, in expiation of 384the sin committed by men against divine justice. all this would be familiar theology indeed to the worshipper of osiris, adonis, and attis.

the common hebrew offering was the paschal lamb; therefore christ is envisaged as the lamb of god, that taketh away the sins of the world. in the paintings of the catacombs, it is as a lamb that the saviour of the world is oftenest represented. as a lamb he raises another lamb, lazarus; as a lamb he turns the water into wine; as a lamb he strikes the living springs from the rock on the spandrils of the sarcophagus of junius bassus. but his birth in a manger is also significant: and his vine and his dove are almost as frequent as his lamb in the catacombs.

the gospel history represents the passion of christ essentially as the sacrifice of a temporary king, invested with all the familiar elements of that early ritual. christ enters jerusalem in royal state, among popular plaudits, like those which always accompany the temporary king, and the attis or adonis. he is mounted on an ass, the royal beast of the semites. the people fling down branches of trees in his path, as they always fling down parts of green trees before the gods of vegetation. on palm sunday his churches are still decked with palm-branches or with sprays of willow-catkin. such rites with green things form an integral part of all the old rituals of the tree-god or the corn-god, and of all the modern european survivals in folk-lore—they are equally found in the dionysiac festival, and in the jack-in-the-green revels on english fair-days. the connexion with trees is also well marked throughout the gospels; and the miracle of the barren fig-tree is specially mentioned in close connexion with the entry into jerusalem. the people as he entered cried “hosanna” to the son of david and the prophetic words were supposed to be fulfilled, “behold, thy king cometh unto thee, meek, sitting upon an ass, and a colt, the foal of an ass.”

the christ goes as a willing victim to the cross; he does not 385seriously ask that the cup should pass from him. he foretells his own death, and voluntarily submits to it but he is also bought with a price—the thirty pieces of silver paid to judas. of all this, we had forecasts in the khond, the mexican, and various other rituals.

furthermore, there is a trial—a double trial, before the high priest, and before pilate. such trials, we have seen, are common elements of the mock-king’s degradation. like all other similar victims, the christ, after being treated like a monarch, is reviled and spat upon, buffeted and insulted. he is bound with cords, and carried before pilate. the procurator asks him, “art thou the king of the jews?” and the christ by implication admits the justice of the title. all the subsequent episodes of the painful drama are already familiar to us. the sacred victim is cruelly scourged that his tears may flow. as in other cases he is crowned with flowers or with bark, in order to mark his position as king of vegetation, so here he is crowned with a chaplet of thorns that adds to his ignominy. the sacred blood must flow from the sacred head. but still, he is clothed with purple and saluted with the words, “hail, king of the jews!” in solemn irony. he is struck on the head with a reed by the soldiers: yet even as they strike, they bow their knees and worship him. they give him to drink wine, mingled with myrrh; “but he received it not.” then he is crucified at golgotha, the place of a skull, * on a cross, the old sacred emblem of so many religions; it bears the inscription, “the king of the jews,” by order of the procurator. after the death of the christ he is mourned over, like adonis and osiris, by the holy women, including his mother. i do not think i need point out in detail the many close resemblances which exist between the mother of the gods and the mother of god—the theotokos.

* according to mediaeval legend, the skull was adam’s, and

the sacred blood which fell upon it revived it. in

crucifixions, a skull is generally represented at the foot

of the cross.

the 386thieves crucified with the saviour have their legs broken, like many other sacred victims; but the christ himself has not a bone broken, like the paschal lamb which was the jewish substitute for the primitive human victim. thus both ideas on this subject, the earlier and the later, seem to find an appropriate place in the history. instead of having his legs broken, however, the christ has his side pierced; and from it flows the mystic blood of the atonement, in which all christians are theoretically washed; this baptism of blood (a literal reality in older cults) being already a familiar image at the date of the apocalypse, where the robes of the elect are washed white in the blood of the lamb that was slain.

after the crucifixion, the christ is taken down and buried. but, like all other corn and wine gods, he rises again from the dead on the third day—this very period of three days being already a conventional one in similar cases. every one of the surroundings recalls osiris and attis. it is the women once more who see him first; and afterwards the men. finally, he ascends into heaven, to his father, before the wondering eyes of his disciples and his mother. in each item of this, there is nothing with which we are not already familiar elsewhere.

i will not pursue the analogy further. to do so would be endless. indeed, i do not think there is an element in the gospel story which does not bear out the parallel here suggested. the slight incident of the visit to herod, for example, is exactly analogous to the visit of the false osiris in modern egypt to the governor’s house, and the visit of the temporary or mock king in so many other cases to the real king’s palace. the episode where herod and his men of war array the christ in a gorgeous robe is the equivalent of the episode of the mexican king arraying the god-victim in royal dress, and is also paralleled in numerous other like dramas elsewhere. the women who prepare spices and ointments for the body recall the adonis rites; pilate washing his hands of the guilt of condemnation 387recalls the frequent episode of the slaughterers of the god laying the blame upon others, or casting it on the knife, or crying out, “we bought you with a price; we are guiltless.” whoever will read carefully through the > gospel accounts, side by side with mr. frazer’s well-chosen collection of mock-king narratives, will see for himself that endless other minor traits crop up in the story which may be equated with numerous similar incidents in the death and resurrection of the man-god elsewhere.

the very subjects of the parables are in themselves significant: the lord of the vineyard who sends his son, whom the hirers slay; the labourers who come at the eleventh hour: the sower and the good and bad ground: the grain of mustard-seed: the leaven of the pharisees: the seed growing secretly: the sons in the vineyard. it will be found that almost all of them turn on the key-note subjects of bread and wine, or at least of seed-sowing.

by what precise stages the story of the galil忙an man-god arose and fixed itself around the person of the real or mythical jesus it would be hard to say. already in the epistles we may catch stray glimpses, in the germ, of most of it. already we notice strange hints and foreshadowings. probably the first jewish disciples had arrived at the outline of the existing story even before the gentiles began to add their quotum. and when we look at documents so overloaded with miracle and legend as the gospels and the acts of the apostles, we find it hard indeed to separate any element of historical truth from the enormous accretion of myth and legend. still, i see no grave reason to doubt the general truth of the idea that the christian belief and practice arose first among galil忙an jews, and that from them it spread with comparative rapidity to the people of syria and asia minor. it even seems probable that one saul or paul was really the person who first conceived the idea of preaching the new religion throughout the empire, and especially in the great cities, as a faith which might be embraced by both jew and gentile.

certainly, 388while the young cult contained most of the best features of judaism, viewed as a possible universal religion,—its monotheism, its purity, its comparative freedom from vile and absurd legends of the gods and their amours—it surpassed the elder faith in acceptability to the world at large, and especially to the people of syria and western asia. every one of them could have said with perfect truth, “nothing is changed; there is but one god more to worship.”

as the church spread, the legend grew apace. to the early account of the death and resurrection of the king of the jews, later narrators added the story of his miraculous birth from a virgin mother, who conceived directly from the spirit of god wafted down upon her. the wide extent and the origin of this belief about the conception of gods and heroes has been fully examined by mr. sidney hartland in his admirable study of the legend of perseus. the new believers further provided their divine leader with a royal genealogy from david downward, and made him by a tolerably circuitous argument be born at bethlehem, according to the supposed prophecy—though if there ever was really a jesus at all, it would seem that the one fact of which we could feel tolerably sure about him, was the fact of his being a man of nazareth. later writers put into his mouth a high moral teaching for its time, somewhat anticipated by hillel and other rabbis, and perhaps in part of buddhist origin; they also made him announce for himself that divine r么le of mediator and atoner which they themselves claimed for the saviour of mankind. he calls himself the vine, the bread of life, the good shepherd; he is called “the lamb of god that taketh away the sins of the world,” by john the baptist, an enthusiast whose fame has attracted him at last into the christian legend. very early, the old rite of water-lustration or baptism, adopted by john, was employed as one of the chief christian ceremonies, the ceremony of initiation, which replaced with advantage the bloody and dangerous jewish circumcision.

this 389allowed for far freer proselytism than judaism could ever expect; and though no doubt at first the christians regarded themselves as a sect of the jews, and though they always adopted entire the jewish sacred books and the jewish god, with all the jewish history, cosmogony, and mythology, yet the new religion was from the beginning a cosmopolitan one, and preached the word unto all nations. such a faith, coming at such a moment, and telling men precisely what they were ready to believe, was certain beforehand of pretty general acceptance. when constantine made christianity the official creed of the empire, it is clear that he did but put an official stamp of approval on a revolution that had long been growing more and more inevitable.

in one word, christianity triumphed, because it united in itself all the most vital elements of all the religions then current in the world, with little that was local, national, or distasteful; and it added to them all a high ethical note and a social doctrine of human brotherhood especially suited to an age of unification and systematic government.

occasionally, even in the gospels themselves, we get strange passing echoes of a mysterious identification of the christ with the ancient hebrew ethnical god, not as the lord of the universe alone, but vaguely remembered as the sacred stone of the ark, the rock of israel. “the stone which the builders rejected, that one has become the head of the corner.” “whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.” and in a speech put into the mouth of christ, he says to peter, “rock thou art, and on this rock will i build my assembly.” *

* i can honestly assure the polemical protestant divine

that i am well aware of the difference in gender in this

passage—and of its utter unimportance. the name peter could

not well be made feminine to suit a particular play upon

words or to anticipate the objections of a particular set of

trivial word-twisters.

sometimes, too, in the epistles the two ideas of the corn-god and the foundation stone-god are worked upon alternately. 390"i have planted; apollos watered.” “ye are god’s husbandry; ye are god’s building.” “i have laid the foundation, and another builds thereon. let every man take care how he builds upon it. for other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is the christ, jesus.” or again, “you are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, jesus, the christ, being himself the chief corner stone.” whoever rereads the epistles by the light of the analogies suggested in this book will find that they positively teem with similar references to the familiar theology of the various slain man-gods, which must have been known to every one along the shores of the mediterranean.

the church which was built upon this rock—and that rock was christ—has shown its continuity with earlier religions in a thousand ways and by a thousand analogies. solar and astrological elements have been freely admitted, side by side with those which recall the corn and wine gods. the chief festivals still cling to the solar feasts of the equinoxes and the solstices. thus every year the church celebrates in mimicry the death and resurrection of the christ, as the mediterranean peoples celebrated the death and resurrection of the attis, the adonis, the dionysus, the osiris. it celebrates the feast at the usual time for most such festivals, the spring equinox. more than that, it chooses for the actual day of the resurrection, commonly called in english easter, and in the latin dialects the paschal feast (or p芒ques), a trebly astrological date. the festival must be as near as possible to the spring equinox; but it must be after a full moon, and it must be on the day sacred to the sun. before the feast, a long fast takes place, at the close of which the christ is slain in effigy, and solemnly laid in a mimic sepulchre. good friday is the anniversary of his piacular death, and the special day of the annual mourning, as for adonis and attis. on easter sunday, he rises again from the dead, and every good catholic is bound to communicate—to eat the body of his slaughtered 391god on the annual spring festival of reviving vegetation. comparison of the holy week ceremonies at rome with the other annual festivals, from the mexican corn-feast and the potraj rite of india to attis and adonis, will be found extremely enlightening—i mean, of course, the ceremonies as they were when the pope, the priest-king, the representative of the annual attis at pessinus, officiated publicly in the sistine chapel, with paschal music known as lamentations, and elevation of the host amid the blare of trumpets. on this subject, i limit myself to the barest hint. whoever chooses to follow out so pregnant a clue will find it lead him into curious analogies and almost incredible survivals.

similarly, the birth of christ is celebrated at the winter solstice, the well-known date for so many earlier ceremonies of the gods of vegetation. then the infant god lies unconscious in his cradle. whoever has read mr. frazer’s great work will understand the connexion of the holly and the mistletoe, and the christmas tree, with this second great festival of christendom, very important in the teutonic north, though far inferior in the south to the spring-tide feast, when the god is slain and eaten of necessity. i limit myself to saying that the christmas rites are all of them rites of the birth of the corn-god.

even the christian cross, it is now known, was not employed as a symbol of the faith before the days of constantine, and was borrowed from the solar wheel of the gaulish sun-god-worshippers who formed the mass of the successful emperor’s legionaries.

we are now, therefore, in a very different position for understanding the causes which led to the rise and development of the christian religion from that which we occupied at the outset of our enquiry. we had then to accept crudely the bare fact that about the first century of our era a certain cult of a divine man, jesus, arose among a fraction of the maritime people of lower syria. that fact as we at first received it stood isolated and unrelated 392in its naked singularity. we can now see that it was but one more example of a universal god-making tendency in human nature, high or low; and in our last chapter we shall find that this universal tendency to worship the dead has ever since persisted as fully as ever, and is in fact the central element in the entire religious instinct of humanity.

the main emotional chord upon which christianity played in its early days—and indeed the main chord upon which it still plays—is just, i believe, the universal feeling in favour of the deification or beatification of the dead, with the desire for immortality on the part of the individual believer himself in person. like all other religions, but even more than any other religion at that time in vogue, christianity appealed to these two allied and deep-seated longings of human nature. it appealed on the one hand to the unselfish emotions and affections of mankind by promising a close, bodily, personal, and speedy reassociation of the living believer with his dead relatives and friends. it appealed on the other hand to the selfish wishes and desires of each, by holding forth to every man the sure and certain hope of a glorious resurrection. like all other creeds, but beyond all other creeds, it was the religion of immortality, of the dead revived, of the new world: in an age of doubt, of scepticism, of the decay of faith, it gave fresh life and a totally new basis to the old beliefs—perhaps the old delusions—of the religious nature.

a necessary consequence of the universal ferment and intermixture of pantheons everywhere during the early days of the roman empire was a certain amount of floating scepticism about the gods as a whole, which reaches its highest point in the mocking humour of lucian, or still earlier in the epicurean atheism of lucretius and of roman philosophy in general. but while this nascent scepticism was very real and very widespread, it affected rather current beliefs as to the personality and history of the various gods than the 393underlying conception of godhead in the abstract. even those who laughed and those who disbelieved, retained at bottom many superstitions and supernatural ideas. their scepticism was due, not like that of our own time to fundamental criticism of the very notion of the supernatural, but to the obvious inadequacy of existing gods to satisfy the requirements of educated cosmopolitans. the deities of the time were too coarse, too childish, too gross for their worshippers. the common philosophic attitude of cultivated rome and cultivated alexandria might be compared to some extent to that of our own unitarians, who are not indeed hostile to the conception of theology in its own nature, but who demur to the most miraculous and supernatural part of the popular doctrine.

with the mass, however, the religious unrest showed itself mainly, as it always shows itself at such critical moments, in a general habit of running after new and strange religions, from some one or other of which the anxious enquirer hopes to obtain some divine answer to his doubts and difficulties. when old faiths decay, there is room for new ones. as might have been expected, this tendency was most clearly shown in the great cosmopolitan trading towns, where men of many nations rubbed shoulders together, and where outlandish cults of various sorts had their temples and their adherents. especially was this the case at rome, alexandria, and antioch, the capitals respectively of the roman, the hellenic, and the semitic worlds. in the gr忙co-egyptian metropolis, the worship of serapis, a composite deity of hybrid origin, grew gradually into the principal cult of the teeming city. at antioch, hellenic deities were ousting the baalim. at rome, the worship of isis, of jahweh, of syrian and other remoter eastern gods was carried on by an ever-increasing body of the foreign, native, and servile population. these were the places where christianity spread. the men of the villages were long, as the world still quaintly phrases it, “pagans.”

the 394strange cults which united in thus gradually crushing out the old local and national pantheons throughout the roman world, had for the most part two marked attributes in common: they were more or less mystical; and they tended more or less in the direction of monotheism. solar myth, syncretism, the esoteric priestly interpretations, and the general diffusion of greek philosophic notions, mixed with subtler oriental and zoroastrian ideas, had all promoted the rise and growth of the mystic element: while a vague monotheistic movement had long been apparent in the higher thought of egypt, greece, italy, and the east. in the resulting conflict and intermixture of ideas, judaism, as one of the most mystical and monotheistic of religions, would have stood a good chance of becoming the faith of the world, had it not been for the fatal weight of its strict and obstinate national character. even as it was, jewish communities were scattered through all the commercial towns of the gr忙co-roman world; a jewish colony strongly influenced alexandria; and jewish teachers made proselytes in rome in the very bosom of the imperial household.

the ferment which thus existed by the orontes, the nile, and the tiber must also have extended in a somewhat less degree to all the cosmopolitan seaports and trading towns of the great and heterogeneous military empire. what was true of rome, alexandria, and antioch, was true in part, we have every reason to believe, of damascus, of byzantium, of sinope, of ephesus: of rhodes, of cyrene, of athens, of carthage; perhaps even of massilia, of gades, of burdigala, of lugdunum. all around the eastern mediterranean at least, new faiths were seething, new ideas were brewing, new mysticisms were being evolved, new superstitions were arising, phoenix-like, out of the dying embers of decaying creeds. setting aside mere exotic or hybrid cults, like the worship of serapis at alexandria and of isis at rome, or mere abortive attempts like the short-lived worship of antinous in egypt, 395we may say that three of these new religions appealed strongly to the wants and desires of the time: and those three were mithraism, gnosticism, and christianity.

all were alike somewhat eclectic in character; and all could lay claim to a certain cosmopolitan and catholic spirit unknown to the cults of the old national pantheons. all came to the greek and roman world from the mystic east, the land of the rising sun, whose magic is felt even at the present day by the votaries of theosophy and of esoteric buddhism. which of the three was to conquer in the end might have seemed at one time extremely doubtful: nor indeed do i believe that the ultimate triumph of christianity, the least imposing of the three, inevitable as it at last became, was by any means at first a foregone conclusion. the religion of jesus probably owed quite as much to what we call chance—that is to say, to the play of purely personal and casual circumstances—as to its own essential internal characteristics. if constantine or any other shrewd military chief had happened to adopt the symbols of mithra or abraxas instead of the name of christ, it is quite conceivable that all the civilised world might now be adoring the mystic divinity of the three hundred and sixty-five emanations, as sedulously as it actually adores the final theological outcome of the old hebrew jahweh. but there were certain real advantages as well, which told, i believe, in the very nature of things, in favour of the christ as against the coinage of basilides or the far-eastern sun-god. constantine, in other words, chose his religion wisely. it was the cult exactly adapted to the times: above all others, during the two centuries or so that had passed since its first beginning (for we must place the real evolution of the christian system considerably later than the life or death of jesus himself) it had shown itself capable of thoroughly engaging on its own side the profoundest interests and emotions of the religious nature.

we must remember, too, that in all religious crises, while 396faith in the actual gods and creeds declines rapidly, no corresponding weakening occurs in the underlying sentiments on which all religions ultimately base themselves. hence the apparent paradox that periods of doubt are also almost always periods of intense credulity as well. the human mind, cast free from the moorings which have long sufficed for it, drifts about restlessly in search of some new haven in which it may take refuge from the terrors of uncertainty and infidelity. and its new faith is always but a fresh form of the old one. a god or gods, prayer, praise, and sacraments, are essential elements. more especially is it the case that when trust in the great gods begins to fail, a blind groping after necromancy, spiritualism, and ghost-lore in general takes its place for the moment. we have seen this tendency fully exemplified in our own time by the spiritualists and others: nor was it less marked in the tempest of conflicting ideas which broke over the roman world from the age of the antonines to the fall of the empire. the fact is, the average man cares but little, after all, for his gods and his goddesses, viewed as individuals. they are but an outlet for his own emotions. he appeals to them for help, as long as he continues to believe in their effective helpfulness: he is ready to cajole them with offerings of blood or to flatter them with homage of praise and prayer, as long as he expects to gain some present or future benefit, bodily or spiritual, in return for his assiduous adulation. but as soon as his faith in their existence and power begins to break down, he puts up with the loss of their godhead, so far as they themselves are concerned, without one qualm of disappointment or inconvenience. it is something far other than that that touches him in religion: it is his hopes for his own eternal welfare, and the welfare after death of those that love him.

hence, a decline of faith in the great gods is immediately followed by a recrudescence of the most barbaric and original element in religion—the cult of the ghost or spirit, 397necromancy, the direct worship of the dead or intercourse with the dead: a habit of enquiry into the positive chances of human immortality. this necromantic spirit is well marked in gnostic remains, and in the fragmentary magical literature of the decadent gr忙co-roman world. it is precisely the same tendency which produces spiritualism in our own time: and it is due to the desire to find some new and experimental basis for the common human belief in the immortality of the soul or the resurrection of the body.

and here we get the clue to the serious change which christianity wrought in the religious feeling of the western world: a change whose importance and whose retrograde nature has never yet, i believe, been fully recognised. for christianity, while from one point of view, as a monotheistic or quasi-monotheistic religion, an immense advance upon the aesthetic paganism of greece and italy, was from another point of view, as a religion of resurrection rather than a religion of immortality, a step backward for all western europe.

even among the jews themselves, however, the new cult must have come with all the force of an “aid to faith” in a sceptical generation. abroad, among the jewish hellenists, greek philosophy must have undermined much of the fanatical and patriotic enthusiasm for jahweh which had grown stronger and ever stronger in jud忙a itself through the days of the maccabees and the asmon忙an princes. scraps of vague platonic theorising on the nature of the divine were taking among these exiles the place of the firm old dogmatic belief in the rock of israel. at home, the hellenising tendencies of the house of herod, and the importance in jerusalem of the sadducees “who say there is no resurrection,” were striking at the very roots of the hope and faith that pious jews most tenderly cherished. instead of israel converting the world, the world seemed likely to convert israel. swamped in the great absorbing and assimilating empire, judah 398might follow in the way of ephraim. and israel’s work in the world might thus be undone, or rather stultified for ever.

just at this very moment, when all faiths were tottering visibly to their fall, a tiny band of obscure galil忙an peasants, who perhaps had followed a wild local enthusiast from their native hills up to turbulent jerusalem, may have been seized with a delusion neither unnatural nor unaccustomed under their peculiar circumstances; but which nevertheless has sufficed to turn or at least to modify profoundly the entire subsequent course of the world’s history. their leader, if we may trust the universal tradition of the sect, as laid down long after in their legendary gospels, was crucified at jerusalem under c. pontius pilatus. if any fact upon earth about jesus is true, besides the fact of his residence at nazareth, it is this fact of the crucifixion, which derives verisimilitude from being always closely connected with the name of that particular roman official. but three days after, says the legend, the body of jesus could not be found in the sepulchre where his friends had laid him: and a rumour gradually’ gained ground that he had risen from the dead, and had been seen abroad by the women who mourned him and by various of his disciples. in short, what was universally believed about all other and elder human gods, was specifically asserted afresh in a newer case about the man christ jesus. the idea fitted in with the needs of the time, and the doctrine of the resurrection of jesus the christ became the corner-stone of the new-born christian religion.

nothing can be clearer than the fact admitted on all hands, that this event formed the central point of the apostles’ preaching. it was the resurrection of jesus, regarded as an earnest of general resurrection for all his followers, that they most insisted upon in their words and writings. it was the resurrection that converted the world of western europe. “your faith is flagging,” said the early christians in effect to their pagan fellows: “your gods are 399half-dead; your ideas about your own future, and the present state of your departed friends, are most vague and shadowy. in opposition to all this, we offer you a sure and certain hope; we tell you a tale of real life, and recent; we preach a god of the familiar pattern, yet very close to you; we present you with a specimen of actual resurrection. we bring you good tidings of jesus as the messiah, and him crucified: to the jews, a stumbling-block; to the greeks, foolishness; but to such as are saved, a plain evidence of the power of the god of israel. accept our word: let your dead sleep in christ in our catacombs, as once they slept in osiris at abydos, or rested upon him that rests at phil忙.” “if christ be not risen,” says one of the earliest christian writers in a passionate peroration, “then is our preaching vain, and your faith is vain also: but as it is, christ is risen from the dead, and has become the first fruits of them that slept.” “else what shall they do,” he goes on, touching to the quick that ingrained human desire for communion with the departed, “what shall they do which are baptised for the dead, if the dead rise not at all? why are they then baptised for the dead?” these, in short, apart from the elements common to all creeds, are the three great motors of primitive christianity: one dogmatic, the resurrection of jesus: one selfish, the salvation of the individual soul: one altruistic, the desire for reunion with the dead among one’s beloved.

syria and egypt could easily accept the new doctrine. it involved for them no serious change of front, no wide departure from the ideas and ceremonies which always formed their rounded concept of human existence. there is a representation of the resurrection of osiris in the little temple on the roof at denderah which might almost pass for a christian illustration of the resurrection of jesus. to syrian and egyptian, the resurrection indeed was but a special modern instance of a well-known fact; a fresh basis of evidence upon which to plant firmly the tottering edifice 400of their old convictions.’ in its beginnings, in short, christianity was essentially an oriental religion; it spread fastest in the eastern mediterranean basin, where judaism was already well established: at rome, it seems to have attracted chiefly the oriental population. and it is a significant fact that its official adoption as the public religion of the roman state was the act of the same prince who deliberately shifted the seat of his government from the tiber to the bosphorus, and largely transformed the character of the empire from a latin to a gr忙co-asiatic type. all the new religions which struggled together for the mastery of the world were oriental in origin: the triumph of christianity was but a single episode in the general triumph of aggressive orientalism over the occidental element in the roman system.

egypt in particular, i believe, had far more to do with the dogmatic shaping of early christianity, and the settlement of christian symbolism and christian mysticism, than is generally admitted by the official historians of the primitive church. there, where the idea of resurrection was already so universal, and where every man desired to be “justified by osiris,” christianity soon made an easy conquest of a people on whose faith it exerted so little change. and egypt easily made its influence felt on the plastic young creed. it is allowed that the doctrine of the trinity took shape among the triad-worshippers on the banks of the nile, and that the scarcely less important doctrine of the logos was borrowed from the philosophy of alexandrian jews. nobody can look at the figures of isis and the infant horus in any egyptian museum without being at once struck by the obvious foreshadowing of the coptic and byzantine madonna and child. the mystery that sprang up about the new doctrines; the strange syncretic union of father, son, and holy ghost into a single trinity; the miraculous conception by the theotokos or mother of god—a clear variant in one aspect on the older idea of hathor; and the antenatal existence of christ 401in heaven before his incarnation; all are thoroughly egyptian in character, with a faint superadded dash of alexandrian jewish hellenism. the love of symbols which the young church so early exhibits in the catacombs and elsewhere smacks equally of ptolemaic reminiscences of thebes and memphis. the mummy-form of lazarus; the fish that makes such a clever alphabetic ideogram for the name and titles of jesus; the dove that symbolises the holy ghost; the animal types of the four evangelists—all these are in large part egyptian echoes, resonant of the same spirit which produced the hieroglyphics and the symbolism of the great nilotic temples. at the same time it must be remembered that sacred fish were common in syria, and that similar identifications of gods with animals have met us at every turn, in our earlier investigation.

nay, more, the very details themselves of christian symbolism often go back to early egyptian models. the central christian emblem of all, the cross, is holy all the world over: it is the sacred tree: and each race has adapted it to its own preconceived ideas and symbols. but in coptic christianity it has obvious affinities with the crux ansata. in the coptic room of the new museum at ghizeh is an early christian monument with a greek uncial inscription, on which is represented a cross of four equal limbs with expanded flanges, having a crux ansata inserted in all its four interstices. at the coptic church of abu sirgeh at old cairo occurs a similar cross, also with suggestions of tau-like origin, but with other equal-limbed crosses substituted for the cruces ansatae in the corners. * how far the egyptian christians thus merely transferred their old ideas to the new faith may be gathered from a single curious example. in mr. loftie’s collection of sacred beetles is a scarab忙us 402containing a representation of the crucifixion, with two palm branches: and other scarabs have christian crosses, “some of them,” says mr. loftie, “very unmistakable.” if we remember how extremely sacred the scarab was held in the egyptian religion, and also that it was regarded as the symbol of the resurrection, we cannot possibly miss the importance of this implication. indeed, the alexandrian father, epiphanius, speaks of christ as “the scarab忙us of god,” a phrase which may be still better understood if i add that in the treatise on hieroglyphs known under the name of horapollo a scarab忙us is said to denote “an only-begotten.” thus “the lamb of god” in the tongue of israel becomes “the scarab忙us of god” in the mouth of an egyptian speaker. to put it shortly, i believe we may say with truth, in a sense far other than that intended by either prophet or evangelist, “out of egypt have i called my son.”

* count goblet d’alviella’s interesting work on the

migration of symbols well illustrates this common syncretism

and interchangeability of symbolic signs, which runs

parallel with the syncretism of gods and religions.

in the west, however, the results of the spread of christianity were far more revolutionary. indeed, i do not think the cult of jesus could ever have spread at all in rome had it not been for the large extent to which the city was peopled in later times by syrians and africans. and if christianity had not spread in rome, it could never have gained a foothold at all in the aryan world: for it is not at bottom an aryan religion in tone and feeling: it has only become possible among aryan peoples by undergoing at last a considerable change of spirit, though not largely of form, in its westward progress. this change is indicated by the first great schism, which severed the latin from the greek communion.

foremost among the changes which christianity involved in italy and the rest of western europe was the retrograde change from the belief in immortality and the immateriality of the soul, with cremation as its practical outcome, to the belief in the resurrection of the body, with a return to the disused and discredited practice of burial as its normal correlative. the catacombs were the necessary 403result of this backward movement; and with the catacombs came in the possibility of relic-worship, martyr-worship, and the adoration of saints and their corpses. i shall trace out in my next chapter the remoter effects of this curious revival of the prime element in religion—the cult of the dead—in greater detail: it must suffice here to point out briefly that it resulted as a logical effect from the belief in the resurrection of christ, and the consequent restoration of the practice of burial. moreover, to polytheists, this habit gave a practical opening for the cult of many deities in the midst of nominal monotheism, which the italians and sundry other essentially polytheistic peoples were not slow to seize upon. here again the difference between the more monotheistic and syncretic east, which puts a ban upon graven images, and the more polytheistic and separating west, which freely admits the employment of sculpture, is not a little significant. it is true that theoretically the adoration paid to saints and martyrs is never regarded as real worship: but i need hardly say that technical distinctions like these are always a mere part of the artificial theology of scholastic priesthoods, and may be as safely disregarded by the broad anthropological enquirer as may all the other fanciful lumber of metaphysical brahmans and theologians everywhere. the genuine facts of religion are the facts and rites of the popular cult, which remain in each race for long periods together essentially uniform.

thus we early get two main forms of christianity, both official and popular: one eastern—greek, coptic, syrian; more mystical in type, more symbolic, more philosophic, more monotheistic: the other western—latin, celtic, spanish; more aryan in type, more practical, more material, more polytheistic. and these at a later time are reinforced by a third or northern form,—the teutonic and protestant; in which ethical ideas preponderate over religious, and the worship of the book in its most literal and often foolish interpretation supersedes the earlier worship of madonna, saints, pictures, statues, and emblems.

at 404the period when christianity first begins to emerge from the primitive obscurity of its formative nisus, however, we find it practically compounded of the following elements—which represent the common union of a younger god offered up to an older one with whom he is identified.

first of all, as the implied basis, taken for granted in all the early hebrew scriptures, there is current judaism, in the form that judaism had gradually assumed in the fourth, third, and second centuries before the christian era. this includes as its main principle the cult of the one god jahweh, now no longer largely thought of under that personal name, or as a strictly ethnic deity, but rather envisaged as the lord god who dwells in heaven, very much as christians of to-day still envisage him. it includes also an undercurrent of belief in a heavenly hierarchy of angels and archangels, the court of the lord (modifications of an earlier astrological conception, the host of heaven), and in a principle of evil, satan or the devil, dwelling in hell, and similarly surrounded by a crowd of minor or assistant demons. further, it accepts implicitly from earlier judaism the resurrection of the dead, the judgment of the good and the wicked, the doctrine of future rewards and punishments (perhaps in its fullest shape a hellenistic importation from egypt, though also commonly found in most spontaneous religions), and many other tenets of the current jewish belief. in short, the very earliest christians, being probably for the most part jews, galil忙ans, and proselytes, or else syrians and africans of judaising tendencies, did not attempt to get rid of all their preconceived religious opinions when they became christians, but merely superadded to these as a new item the special cult of the deified jesus.

on the other hand, as the gospel spread to the gentiles, it was not thought necessary to burden the fresh converts with the whole minute ceremonial of judaism, and especially with the difficult and unpleasant initiatory rite of circumcision. 405a mere symbolical lustration, known as baptism, was all that was demanded of new adherents to the faith, with abstinence from any participation in “heathen” sacrifices or functions. to this extent the old exclusiveness of jahweh-worship, the cult of the jealous god, was still allowed to assert itself. and the general authority of the hebrew scriptures, especially as a historical account of the development of judaism, from which christianity sprang, was more or less fully admitted, at first by implication or quotation alone, but afterwards by the deliberate and avowed voice of the whole christian assembly. the translation of this mixed mass of historical documents, early cosmogonies, ill-reported and jeho-vised jewish traditions, misinterpreted poems, and conscious forgeries, in the latin version known as the vulgate, had the effect of endowing europe for many centuries with a false body of ancient history, which must have largely retarded the development of the race up to our own time, and whose evil effects have hardly yet passed away among the more ignorant and conservative bibliolatrous classes of modern society.

superimposed upon this substratum of current judaism with its worship of jahweh came the distinctive jesus-cult, the worship of the particular dead galil忙an peasant. this element was superadded to the cult of the father, the great god who had slowly and imperceptibly developed out of the sacred stone that the sons of israel were believed to have brought up with them from the land of egypt. but how, in a religion pretending to be monotheistic, were these two distinct cults of two such diverse gods to be reconciled or to be explained away? by the familiar doctrine of the incarnation, and the belief in the human god who is sacrificed, himself to himself, as a piacular offering. jewish tradition and subtler egyptian mysticism sufficed to smooth over the apparent anomaly. the jews looked forward to a mysterious deliverer, a new moses, the messiah, who was to fulfil the destiny of israel by uniting all nations under the sceptre of david, and by 406bringing the gentiles to the feet of the god of israel. jesus, said the christians, had proclaimed himself that very messiah, the christ of god; he had often alluded to the great hebrew deity as his father; he had laid claim to the worship of the lord of heaven. further than this, perhaps, the unaided jewish intelligence would hardly have gone: it would have been satisfied with assigning to the slain man-god jesus a secondary place, as the only begotten son of god, who gave himself up as a willing victim—a position perhaps scarcely more important than that which mohammad holds in the system of islam. such, it seems to me, is on the whole the conception which permeates the synoptic gospels, representing the ideas of syrian christendom. but here the acute gr忙co-egyptian mind came in with its nice distinctions and its mystical identifications. there was but one god, indeed; yet that god was at least twofold (to go no further for the present). he had two persons, the father and the son: and the second person, identified with the alexandrian conception of the logos, though inferior to the father as touching his manhood, was equal to the father as touching his godhead—after the precise fashion we saw so common in describing the relations of osiris and horus, and the identification of the attis or adonis victim with the earlier and older god he represented. “i and my father are one,” says the christ of the fourth gospel, the embodiment and incarnation of the alexandrian logos. and in the very forefront of that manifesto of neo-platonic christianity comes the dogmatic assertion, “in the beginning was the logos: and the logos dwelt with god: and the logos was god.”

even so the basis of the new creed is still incomplete. the father and son give the whole of the compound deity as the popular mind, everywhere and always, has commonly apprehended it. but the scholastic and theological intelligence needed a third person to complete the trinity which to all mankind, as especially to orientals, is the 407only perfect and thoroughly rounded figure. in later days, no doubt, the madonna would have been chosen to fill up the blank, and, on the analogy of isis, would have filled it most efficiently. as a matter of fact, in the creed of christendom as the catholic people know it, the madonna is really one of the most important personages. but in those early formative times, the cult of the theotokos had hardly yet assumed its full importance: perhaps, indeed, the jewish believers would have been shocked at the bare notion of the worship of a woman, the readmission of an astarte, a queen of heaven, into the faith of israel. another object of adoration had therefore to be found. it was discovered in that vague essence, the holy ghost, or divine wisdom, whose gradual development and dissociation from god himself is one of the most curious chapters in all the history of artificial god-making. the “spirit of jahweh” had frequently been mentioned in hebrew writings; and with so invisible and unapproachable a deity as the jewish god, was often made to do duty as a messenger or intermediary where the personal presence of jahweh himself would have been felt to contravene the first necessities of incorporeal divinity. it was the “spirit of jahweh” that came upon the prophets: it was the “wisdom of jahweh” that the poets described, and that grew at last to be detached from the personality of god, and alluded to almost as a living individual. in the early church, this “spirit of god,” this “holy spirit,” was supposed to be poured forth upon the heads of believers: it descended upon jesus himself in the visible form of a dove from heaven, and upon the disciples at pentecost as tongues of fire. gradually, the conception of a personal holy ghost took form and definiteness: an alexandrian monk insisted on the necessity for a triad of gods who were yet one god: and by the time the first creeds of the nascent church were committed to writing, the spirit had come to rank with the father and the son as the third person in the ever-blessed trinity.

by 408this time, too, it is pretty clear that the original manhood of jesus had got merged in the idea of his eternal godhead; he was regarded as the logos, come down from heaven, where he had existed before all worlds, and incarnate by the holy ghost in the virgin mary. the other articles of the christian faith clustered gradually round these prime elements: the myth gathered force; the mysticism increased; the secondary divine beings or saints grew vastly in numbers; and the element of judaism disappeared piecemeal, while a new polytheism and a new sacerdotalism took root apace in the aryan world. i shall strive to show, however, in my concluding chapters, how even to the very end the worship of the dead is still the central force in modern christianity: how religion, whatever its form, can never wander far from that fundamental reality: and how, whenever by force of circumstances the gods become too remote from human life, so that the doctrine of resurrection or personal immortality is endangered for a time, and reunion with relations in the other world becomes doubtful or insecure, a reaction is sure to set in which takes things back once more to these fundamental concepts, the most persistent and perpetually recurrent element in all religious thinking.