King Solomon reigned forty years. Goliath presented himself forty days. The rain was upon the earth forty days at the time of the deluge. And, as we saw above, Moses was on the mount forty days and forty nights on each occasion.* Can anything be more mythological than this?

The number forty was used by the ancients in constructing temples. There were forty pillars around the temple of Chilminar, in Persia; the temple at Baalbec had forty pillars; on the frontiers of China, in Tartary, there is to be seen the "Temple of the forty pillars." Forty is one of the most common numbers in the Druidical temples, and in the plan of the temple of Ezekiel, the four oblong buildings in the middle of the courts have each forty pillars. Most temples of antiquity were imitative-were microcosms of the Celestial Templum-and on this account they were surrounded with pillars recording astronomical subjects, and intended both to do honor to these subjects, and to keep them in perpetual remembrance. In the Abury temples were to be seen the cycles of 650-608-600-60-40-30-19-12, etc.*

5

1 I. Kings, xi. 42.

2 I. Samuel, xvii. 16.

Gen. vii. 12.

4 Exodus, xxiv. 18—xxxiv. 28.

See Higgins' Anacalypsis, vol. i. p. 703; vol. ii. p. 402.

• See Ibid. vol. ii. p. 703.

CHAPTER XX.

THE CRUCIFIXION OF CHRIST JESUS.

THE punishment of an individual by crucifixion, for claiming to be "King of the Jews," "Son of God," or "The Christ;" which are the causes assigned by the Evangelists for the Crucifixion of Jesus, would need but a passing glance in our inquiry, were it not for the fact that there is much attached to it of a dogmatic and heathenish nature, which demands considerably more than a "passing glance." The doctrine of atonement for sin had been preached long before the doctrine was deduced from the Christian Scriptures, long before these Scriptures are pretended to have been written. Before the period assigned for the birth of Christ Jesus, the poet Ovid had assailed the demoralizing delusion with the most powerful shafts of philosophic scorn : "When thou thyself art guilty," says he, "why should a victim die for thee? What folly it is to expect savlation from the death

of another."

The idea of expiation by the sacrifice of a god was to be found among the Hindoos even in Vedic times. The sacrificer was mystically identified with the victim, which was regarded as the ransom for sin, and the instrument of its annulment. The Rig- Veda represents the gods as sacrificing Purusha, the primeval male, supposed to be coeval with the Creator. This idea is even more remarkably developed in the Tandya-brāhmanas, thus:

"The lord of creatures (prajā-pati) offered himself a sacrifice for the gods." And again, in the Satapatha-brāhmana:

"He who, knowing this, sacrifices the Purusha-medha, or sacrifice of the primeval male, becomes everything."

Prof. Monier Williams, from whose work on Hindooism we quote the above, says:

1 Monier Williams: Hinduism, pp. 36-40.

"Surely, in these mystical allusions to the sacrifice of a representative man, we may perceive traces of the original institution of sacrifice as a divinely-appointed ordinance typical of the one great sacrifice of the Son of God for the sins of the world."

This idea of redemption from sin through the sufferings and death of a Divine Incarnate Saviour, is simply the crowning-point of the idea entertained by primitive man that the gods demanded a sacrifice of some kind, to atone for some sin, or avert some calamity.

In primitive ages, when men lived mostly on vegetables, they offered only grain, water, salt, fruit, and flowers to the gods, to propitiate them and thereby obtain temporal blessings. But when they began to eat meat and spices, and drink wine, they offered the same; naturally supposing the deities would be pleased with whatever was useful or agreeable to themselves. They imagined that some gods were partial to animals, others to fruits, flowers, etc. To the celestial gods they offered white victims at sunrise, or at open day. To the infernal deities they sacrificed black animals in the night. Each god had some creature peculiarly devoted to his worship. They sacrificed a bull to Mars, a dove to Venus, and to Minerva, a heifer without blemish, which had never been put to the yoke. If a man was too poor fo sacrifice a living animal, he offered an image of one made of bread.

In the course of time, it began to be imagined that the gods demanded something more sacred as offerings or atonements for sin. This led to the sacrifice of human beings, principally slaves and those taken in war, then, their own children, even their most beloved "first-born." It came to be an idea that every sin must have its prescribed amount of punishment, and that the gods would accept the life of one person as atonement for the sins of others. This idea prevailed even in Greece and Rome: but there it mainly took the form of heroic self-sacrifice for the public good. Cicero says: "The force of religion was so great among our ancestors, that some of their commanders have, with their faces veiled, and with the strongest expressions of sincerity, sacrificed themselves to the immortal gods to save their country.""

In Egypt, offerings of human sacrifices, for the atonement of sin, became so general that "if the eldest born of the family of Athamas entered the temple of the Laphystan Jupiter at Alos in Achaia, he was sacrificed, crowned with garlands like an animal victim."

1 Monier Williams: Hinduism, p. 36.

* See Prog. Relig. Ideas, vol. i. p. 303. Kenrick's Egypt, vol. i. p. 443.

When the Egyptian priests offered up a sacrifice to the gods, they pronounced the following imprecations on the head of the victim:

"If any evil is about to befall either those who now sacrifice, or Egypt in general, may it be averted on this head."

This idea of atonement finally resulted in the belief that the incarnate Christ, the Anointed, the God among us, was to save mankind from a curse by God imposed. Man had sinned, and God could not and did not forgive without a propitiatory sacrifice. The curse of God must be removed from the sinful, and the sinless must bear the load of that curse. It was asserted that divine justice required BLOOD.*

The belief of redemption from sin by the sufferings of a Divine Incarnation, whether by death on the cross or otherwise, was general and popular among the heathen, centuries before the time of Jesus of Nazareth, and this dogma, no matter how sacred it may have become, or how consoling it may be, must fall along with the rest of the material of which the Christian church is built.

Julius Firmicius, referring to this popular belief among the Pagans, says: "The devil has his Christs." This was the general off-hand manner in which the Christian Fathers disposed of such matters. Everything in the religion of the Pagans which corresponded to their religion was of the devil. Most Protestant divines have resorted to the type theory, of which we shall speak

anon.

As we have done heretofore in our inquiries, we will first turn to India, where we shall find, in the words of M. l'Abbé Huc, that "the idea of redemption by a divine incarnation," who came into the world for the express purpose of redeeming mankind, was "general and popular."

"A sense of original corruption," says Prof. Monier Williams,

1 Herodotus: bk. ii. ch. 39.

In the trial of Dr. Thomas (at Chicago) for "doctrinal heresy," one of the charges made against him (Sept. 8, 1881) was that he had said "the BLOOD of the Lamb had nothing to do with salvation." And in a sermon preached in Boston, Sept. 2, 1881, at the Columbus Avenue Presbyterian Church, by the Rev. Andrew A. Bonar, D.D., the preacher said: "No sinner dares to meet the holy God until his sin has been forgiven, or until he has received remission. The penalty of sin is death, and this penalty is not remitted by anything the sinner can do for himself, but only through the BLOOD of Jesus. If you have accepted

Jesus as your Saviour, you can take the blood of Jesus, and with boldness present it to the Father as payment in full of the penalties of all your sins. Sinful man has no right to the benefits and the beauties and glories of nature. These were all lost to him through Adam's sin, but to the blood of Christ's sacrifice he has a right; it was shed for him. It is Christ's death that does the blessed work of salvation for us. It was not his life nor his Incarnation. His Incarnation could not pay a farthing of our debt, but his blood shed in redeeming love, pays it all.” (See Boston Advertiser, Sept. 3, 1831.)

3 Quoted in Taylor's Diegesis, p. 164.

4 Huc's Travels, vol. i. pp. 326, 327.

seems to be felt by all classes of Hindoos, as indicated by the following prayer used after the Gayatri by some Vaishnavas :

"I am sinful, I commit sin, my nature is sinful, I am conceived in sin. Save me, O thou lotus-eyed Heri (Saviour), the remover of sin.'"

Moreover, the doctrine of bhakti (salvation by faith) existed among the Hindoos from the earliest times."

Crishna, the virgin-born, "the Divine Vishnu himself," "he who is without beginning, middle or end," being moved "to relieve the earth of her load," came upon earth and redeemed man by his sufferings-to save him.

The accounts of the deaths of most all the virgin-born Saviours of whom we shall speak, are conflicting. It is stated in one place that such an one died in such a manner, and in another place we inay find it stated altogether differently. Even the accounts of the death of Jesus, as we shall hereafter see, are conflicting; therefore, until the chapter on "Explanation" is read, these myths cannot really be thoroughly understood.

As the Rev. Geo. W. Cox remarks, in his Aryan Mythology, Crishna is described, in one of his aspects, as a self-sacrificing and unselfish hero, a being who is filled with divine wisdom and love, who offers up a sacrifice which he alone can make."

The Vishnu Purana' speaks of Crishna being shot in the foot with an arrow, and states that this was the cause of his death. Other accounts, however, state that he was suspended on a tree, or in other words, crucified.

Mons. Guigniaut, in his "Religion de l'Antiquité," says:

"The death of Crishna is very differently related. One remarkable and convincing tradition makes him perish on a tree, to which he was nailed by the stroke of an arrow."s

Rev. J. P. Lundy alludes to this passage of Guigniaut's in his "Monumental Christianity," and translates the passage "un bois fatal" (see note below) "a cross." Although we do not think he is justified in doing this, as M. Guigniaut has distinctly stated that this "bois fatal" (which is applied to a gibbet, a cross, a scaffold, etc.) was "un arbre" (a tree), yet, he is justified in doing so on other accounts, for we find that Crishna is represented hanging on a cross, and we know that a cross was frequently called the "ac

1 Hinduism, p. 214.

2 Ibid. p. 115.

Vishnu Purana, p. 440.

• Ibid.

Ibid.

Aryan Mythology, vol. ii. p. 132.

7 Pages 274 and 612.

"On reconte fort diversement la mort de Crishna. Une tradition remarquable et avérée le fait périr sur un bois fatal (un arbre), ou il fut cloué d'un coup de flèche." (Quoted by Higgins: Anacalypsis, vol. i. p. 144.)