Note 14 — Chapter IV · THE GRAVE SUSPICIONS AROUSED BY THE STUDY OF ANCIENT BELIEFS

The Atonement.—In China the Holy One (Tien) dies to save the world. “The sufferings and death of Osiris were the great mystery of the Egyptian religion. His being the divine goodness, and the abstract idea of ‘good,’ his manifestation upon earth (like an Indian god), his death and resurrection, and his office as judge of the dead in a future life, look like the early revelation of a future manifestation of the deity converted into a mythological fable.”14 While Osiris is the judge, Horus, his son, is the mediator. In the Judgment scene in the Book of the Dead, Horus, the son of Isis, leads the deceased, after his heart has been weighed, into the presence of Osiris (see Papyrus of Ani, plates 3 & 4). Mithras, the sun-god of the Persians, was a “Mediator” between God and men—the “Saviour,” who, by his laborious conflicts, worked their salvation. He was also called the “Word.” Attys, called the “Only Begotten Son” and the “Saviour,” was worshipped by the Phrygians, and represented by them as a man tied or nailed to a tree. Adonis was another virgin-born “Saviour” who suffered for mankind. The yearly festival of Adonis in the spring was a special favourite with women. In the Old Testament reference is made to the weeping of the women over Tammuz, the Babylonian equivalent of Adonis (Ezekiel viii. 14). According to the Rev. Sir G. W. Cox,15 he was the crucified Tao (divine love personified). The Rev. Dr. Parkhurst, in the chapter on the Resurrection in his Hebrew lexicon, says: “I find myself obliged to refer Tammuz to that class of idols which were originally designed to represent the promised Saviour, the desire of all nations.” Prometheus was a Saviour who suffered the most fearful tortures as the friend of the human race. Æschylus’s tragedy, Prometheus Vinctus, was acted in Athens five hundred years before the Christian era. Even Bacchus, whom most of us think of as the rollicking wine-god of classical mythology, was a slain Saviour.