THE 520th OEDI^^ARY GENERAL MEETING 



WAS HELD IN 



THE LECTURE HALL OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF ARTS 

 BY KIND PERMISSION, ON MONDAY, 12th JUNE, 1911, 

 AT 4.30 P.M. 



The Venerable Archdeacon Beresford Potter took the 



Chair. 



The Minutes of the previous Meeting were read and confirmed. 

 The Secretary announced the election of two Associates : — 



Mrs. Stuart Trotter. 



Mrs. Edward Trotter. 



The Rev. W. St. Clair Tisdall was then invited to read his paper : — 



MITHRAISM : Christianity's Greatest Rival wonder the Roman 

 Emperors. By the Rev. W. St. Clair Tisdall, D.D. 



{Plutarch.) 



UMEROUS as were the rivals with which, during the 

 first few centuries of our era, Christianity had to contend 

 for the empire of the human heart and of the world, none 

 was more powerful, more dangerous, and (in spite of certain 

 deceptive and merely superficial resemblances)* more opposed 



^ Attention is called to these outward resemhlances by TertuUian, 

 Justin Martyr, etc. Origen {Contra Celsiim, Lib. VI, 22) says that Celsus 

 accused the Christians of borrowing their seven heavens from the Mithraic 

 mysteries. In modern times Lajard, Recherches sur le culte puhliqiie et les 

 mysteres de Mithra^ has unintentionally exaggerated these resemblances : 

 while Mr. J. M. Robertson in his Pagan Christs, Mr, Vivian Phelips 

 (" Philip Vivian ") in his The Churches and Modern Thought, Dr. Frazer 

 in Adonis, Attis, Osiris, Mr. Mallock in Nineteenth Century and After for 

 September, 1905, and others, have called in the aid of excited imaginations, 

 if not also inventive talent of a very high order, with the object of making 

 these points of outw^ard contact between Christianity and Mithraism 

 seem so numerous and so important as to lead their readers to infer a very 

 close relationship betw^een the two faiths. This will be evident in the 

 passage we quote further on in the text. 



