Pagan and Christian Creeds: Their Origin and Meaning

To explain what I mean, let me use an illustration. The typhoons and cyclones of the China Seas are some of the most formidable storms that ships can encounter. Their paths in t...

Another thing which corresponds in some degree to living physically in the open air, is the living mentally and emotionally in the atmosphere of love. A large charity of mind, w...

Mithra was born in a cave, and on the 25th December. (1) He was born of a Virgin. (2) He traveled far and wide as a teacher and illuminator of men. He slew the Bull (symbol of t...

All this above-written on the Solar or Astronomical origins of the myths does not of course imply that the Vegetational origins must be denied or ignored. These latter were doub...

The truth is that Sin and Sacrifice represent--if you once allow for the overwhelming sway of fear--perfectly reasonable views of human conduct, adopted instinctively by mankind...

Let me give examples. For a long time the Tribe is all in all; the individual is completely subject to the 'Spirit of the Hive'; he does not even THINK of contravening it. Then...

W. H. Hudson--whose mind is certainly not of a quality to be jeered at--speaks of Animism as "the projection of ourselves into nature: the sense and apprehension of an intellige...

Sometimes, of course, the rain-maker was successful; but of the inner causes of rain he knew next to nothing; he was more ignorant even than we are! His main idea was a more spe...

The magic in this case was of a gentle description; the clay image of Osiris sprouting all over with the young green blade was pathetically poetic; but, as has been suggested, b...

This seems so far a reasonable theory; but I think we shall go farther and get nearer the heart of the problem if we revert to the general clue which I have followed already mor...

Finally it has been pointed out, and there may be some real connection in the coincidence, that in the quite early years of Christianity the FISH came in as an accepted symbol o...

I say that Christianity must either frankly adopt this generous attitude and confess itself a branch of the great World-religion, anxious only to do honor to its source--or else...

Professor Robertson-Smith's celebrated Camel affords an instance of this. (1) It appears that St. Nilus (fifth century) has left a detailed account of the occasional sacrifice i...

This idea of a New Birth at initiation explains the prevalent pagan custom of subjecting the initiates to serious ordeals, often painful and even dangerous. If one is to be born...

The old Teutonic goddess Hertha (the Earth) was a Virgin, but was impregnated by the heavenly Spirit (the Sky); and her image with a child in her arms was to be seen in the sacr...

A second supposition, however, is (2) that the natural psychological evolution of the human mind has in the various times and climes led folk of the most diverse surroundings an...

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar; Not in entire forgetfulness, And n...

With the Cosmic stage comes also necessarily the rehabilitation of the WHOLE of Society in one fellowship (the true Democracy). Not the rule or domination of one class or caste-...

The other point has to do with my statement at the beginning of this chapter that two of the main 'characteristics' of Christianity were its insistence on (a) a tendency towards...

It is evident that it must be a new birth--the entry into a further stage of consciousness which must supersede the present one. Through some such crisis as we have spoken of, t...

"But what of the second group above-mentioned, the "things SHOWN"? It is not so easy naturally to get exact information concerning these, but they seem to have been specially ho...

"The different religions being lame attempts to represent under various guises this one root-fact of the central universal life, men have at all times clung to the religious cre...

At this point it will naturally be asked: "And where in this scheme of the Genesis of Christianity is the chief figure and accredited leader of the movement--namely Jesus Christ...

Referring back to the existence of something resembling a great World-religion which has come down the centuries, continually expanding and branching in the process, we have now...

"The Self is free from qualities." That thing which is so deep, which belongs to all, it either--as I have already said--has ALL qualities, or it has none. You, to whom I am spe...