latter were on, or hovering near, a carcass on a mudisland. A half-starved dog or two kept approaching and retreating, longing for the carrion, but fearing to hasten their own doom by interfering with the vultures' prey. Various were the passions of the mud-island, but all was amid the serene splendour of the sun of Egypt. At length night fell, and a breeze then sprang up, but for which we should still have had to moor below our hopes. As it was, we did not get-up till after midnight. Yet, though there were hardly even shadows to be seen, glorious as was the starlight, I did not turn-in till two o'clock in the morning. For we had arrived, at length, at Thebes, and were moored at Luxor,' with Karnak beyond, and, on the other side of the river, the Memnonian Plain.

After many days spent in wandering through the temples, palaces, and tombs of the Libyan suburb, and of the Southern city, I found myself, at length, one afternoon, alone on the Temple-roof at Karnak. And there let my readers also now place themselves. Passing through that vast hall of Titanic columns which, whether sublime in the blaze of midday, or appalling amid the shadows of moonlight, has been, for so many successive ages of Man's history, an unparalleled wonder of human genius and power, let us ascend to the roof, an immense platform of hewn rocks set end to end, and side by side; and there, in the midst of all the grandeurs, historic and artistic, of Karnak, and beholding across the river the templed plain of the Colossi, swept

1 Luxor, El Uksor, or El Kosóor, signifies The Palaces, and was called by the ancient Egyptians Southern Tapé.

round by the Libyan hills with their labyrinths of priestly tombs, and gorgeous deep-descending galleries of royal sepulchres; there, let us meditate together on a subject which must, I should think, urge itself, in these days, more or less strongly on the attention of every serious thinker in such a place, the historical relation of the beliefs about Christ to those, so singularly analogous, about Osiris. No doubt, the consequences of the verification of that hypothesis of the origin of Christianity, which here suggests itself, will be in the highest degree revolutionary. But little impressed can we be with the sublime scene around. us, if fear can obscure our judgment, or, within any other bounds than those of historical fact, and logical deduction, restrain our argument.

SECTION I.

THE CHRISTIAN CHARACTER OF OSIRIANISM.

1. REFLECTING here on the general results of our Egyptian studies, we are first of all struck with what I may call the Christian character of Osirianism. But before proceeding to point this out, and to state the hypothesis which this Christian character of Osirianism suggests, it may be desirable to offer a few remarks on the outward, and hence more vulgarly appreciated characteristics of the Egyptian religion. For, in amazement at any likening of Osirianism to Christianism, or of Christianism to Osirianism, many readers

may, as if in settlement of any suggestion even of a causal relation between Osirianism and Christianism, ask, 'Were not the Egyptians, as a matter of fact, idolaters, and worshippers, indeed, of the most grotesque and monstrous idols?' But let us understand what idolatry means. Possibly, you who put this question may be more of an idolater than were the ancient Egyptians when they first created their Gods. Idolatry is ceremonial worship when the meaning of the ceremonies and symbols is lost. We are helped to the understanding of this by the study of language in its first formations. Names, as a class of signs,1 are themselves but a kind of symbols. In the formation of a language, they are at first uttered certainly not without a meaning; they certainly are the attempt to denote some thing, or express some want, hitherto nameless, unutterable. Yet these names, at first so meaningful, may in time so completely lose their original meaning, as to become the terminations of a declension. So symbols, animal-headed deities, and others. What if the symbol, in later times, so lost its meaning as to be itself worshipped? Originally it had carried the mind from itself to that which it signified. And as, in Language, the formation of substantive nouns is the first stage of personifying God;3 so, in Religion, the creation of symbols is the first stage of

1 'A name is a word taken at pleasure to serve for a mark which may raise in our mind a thought like to some thought we had before, and which, being pronounced to others, may be to them a sign of what thought the speaker had, or had not, before in his mind.'-Hobbes, Computation or Logic, ch. ii., cited by Mill, System of Logic, vol. 11. p. 23. 2 See Müller, Lectures on the Science of Language.

3 Bunsen, Egypt's Place, vol. iv. p. 566.

idolatry. We shall hereafter have occasion to consider idol-creation more fully, and from other points of view. Here I will only remark, that a reference to the idolatry of the Egyptians is unfortunate, if it is intended thereby to disprove the likeness of Osirianism to Christianism. For we shall find that it is just in comparing these two Creeds in this matter of idolatry, that when we set Jehovianism between them-their likeness comes out most strongly-the religion of Abraham, whether as Judaism, or as Mohammedanism, acting as a foil, and bringing out with startling clearness, at once the Osirian character of Christianism, and the Christian character of Osirianism.

2. But is the Animal-worship of the Egyptians next objected against any comparison of Osirianism with Christianism, or any hypothesis with respect to the origination of the latter in a transformation of the former? Well, it is admitted that that exaggerated care for animals which becomes a superstitious worship of them is not a feature of Christian religious emotion. But in the Animal-worship which-probably derived from an aboriginal African element in the population-was, soon after the time of Menes, incorporated with Osirianism throughout the Empire, there should seem to have been an idea which modern Science tends more and more clearly to establish—the identity, namely, of the principle of life in all its manifestations." And what is this,' asks Bunsen, ‘but a specific adaptation of that consciousness of the

1 Bunsen, Egypt's Place, vol. IV. p. 637.

2 See Spencer, Principles of Biology, and Principles of Psychology.

divinity of Nature, which is implied in all the religious consciousness of the Old World?' The doctrine of transmigration thus became a sacred link between animal and human life. And the community between the human and animal soul being once admitted, we can understand how the Egyptians at last arrived at the idea of worshipping in animals a living manifestation of Divinity.'2 But if a similar doctrine is not found in Christianism, one is tempted to say that the want of it is much to be regretted. For there have been, and even still are, few worse features in Christian Civilization than its apathy to animal suffering. And it is very noteworthy that it was the great Apostle of the Utilitarian School of Moralists who, in that very year from which dates a new period of the Modern Revolution, 1789, introduced into European Ethics the consideration of the interests of other animals.' 4 So likewise, a new care for, and new appreciation of animals is one of the characteristic features of Comte's conception. of the New Religion of Humanity.5 And if, at length, men are beginning again to become sympathetically aware that other animals also besides themselves feel

1 Bunsen, Egypt's Place, vol. IV. p. 640. 2 Ibid. vol. IV. p. 641.

3 As to Christian cruelty generally, we must not recall the gladiatorial combats of the Roman amphitheatre, without recalling also the heretic burnings of every chief town in Christendom. Nor is Classic civilization to be judged by the days of its decline; but rather, as also Christian civilization, by the days of its prime. And that the Middle Ages were the prime of Christian civilization is proved by the fact, that the movement which has, since then, modified Christianity has tended more and more to sweep it, both as a doctrinal, and as a social system, away. 4 Bentham, Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. xvii. 5 See Mill, Comte and Positivism.