702 ECCLESIASTICAL INSTITUTIONS. 



a god-descended person should be habitually spoken of by 

 Christians as though it were special to their religion, is 

 strange considering their familiarity with stories of god- 

 descended persons among the Greeks, ^Esculapius, Pytha 

 goras, Plato. But it is not the Greek religion only which 

 furnished such parallels. The Assyrian king Nebuchadnezzar 

 asserted that he had been god- begotten. It is a tradition 

 among the Mongols that Alung Goa, who herself &quot; had a 

 spirit for her father,&quot; bore three sons by a spirit. In ancient 

 Peru if any of the virgins of the Sun &quot; appeared to be 

 pregnant, she said it was by the Sun, and this was believed, 

 unless there was any evidence to the contrary.&quot; And 

 among the existing inhabitants of Mangaia it is the tradi 

 tion that &quot; the lovely Ina-ani-vai &quot; had two sons by the 

 great god Tangaroa. The position, too, of mediator held by 

 the god-descended son, has answering positions elsewhere. 

 Among the Fijian gods, &quot; Tokairamle and Tui Ldkeinba Ean- 

 dinandina seem to stand next to Ndengei, being his sons, 

 and acting as mediators by transmitting the prayers of 

 suppliants to their father.&quot; 



Once more we have, in various places, observances corre 

 sponding to the eucharist. All such observances originate 

 from the primitive notion that the natures of men, inhering 

 in all their parts, inhere also in whatever becomes incorpo 

 rated with them ; so that a bond is established between those 

 who eat of the same food. As furnishing one out of many 

 instances, I may name the Padam, who &quot; hold inviolate any 

 engagement cemented by an interchange of meat as food/ 

 Believing that the ghosts of the dead, retaining their appe 

 tites, feed either on the material food offered or on the spirit 

 of it, this conception is extended to them. Hence arise, in 

 various parts of the world, feasts at which living and dead are 

 supposed to join ; and thus to renew the relation of subordi 

 nation on the one side and friendliness on the other. And 

 this eating with the ghost or the god, which by the Mexicans, 

 was transformed into &quot;eating the god&quot; (symbolized by a cake 



