238 THE EEV. W. ST. CLAIR TISDALL, D.B.j ON MITHEAISM. 



to it in spirit and in principle than the Eeligion of Mitlira.* 

 The contest began in the closing years of the first Christian 

 century, waxed fiercer in the second, reached its crisis towards 

 the end of the third and the beginning of the fourth, and cul- 

 minated in the complete triumph of Christianity a Christianity, 

 alas 1 no longer of unsullied purity, before the year 400. 



In our own day an attempt has been made to renew the 

 struggle in another form ; to lead men to fancy that MithraismJ 

 and Christianity were of kindred origin, if not actually from 

 one and the same source ; that in rites, ethics and doctrines 

 they differed little, if at all ; and that in fact the Divine Infant 

 born in the stable and laid in the manger at Bethlehem was 

 identical in all but name with the youtliful hero§ in Phrygian 

 attire, the so-called " God from a Eock " (^eo? etc Trerpa^), who 

 was destined to be worshipped for a time by multitudes of 

 stalwart devotees from the Hindu Kush to the Eoman Wall 



* In Sanskrit Jlitm ("a friend"), Avestic Mithra, Pahlavt Mitro, 

 Greek M/^/^a? and Mi'Op})^, Latin Mithras^ Mithres, and Mitra. Mod. 

 Pers. Mihr^ Armenian Mitir. 



t Mithraism in the Eoman Empire flourished most widely in the third 

 century. Its public worship was forbidden at Eome in a.d. 378, and 

 more successfully throughout the Empire by the Theodosian Code in 

 A.D. 391. 



:j: Manes (Man!) was apparently the first to start this theory (a.d. 215- 

 276). At an earlier age such a supposition would have needed no 

 refutation. He apparently identified Christ with Mithra. 



§ This is but another form of the now exploded Solar Myth theory. 

 Seydel, Das Evangdium Jesit in s. Verhaltnissen zil Buddha- Sag and 

 Buddha und Christiis, has tried to do the same thing, substituting Buddha 

 for Mithra ; and his failure is admitted even by Schweitzer, The Quest of 

 the Historical Jesus, pp. 290-292. Mr. J. M. Robertson, Christianity and 

 Mythology, endeavours to trace Christianity to the legends of Krishna. 

 E. Schure, Krishna and Orpheus, though pretending to deiive his 

 information from the Bhagavad Gitd and the Vishnu- Pur ana, writes a 

 romance founded on the Gospels, with the same object. M. JacoUiot, La 

 Bible dans VInde et la vie de Jezeus Christna, and Dr. Marius, La 

 Personnalite du Christ, do the same still more audaciously, and are well 

 answered by Professor De Harlez, Vedisme, Brahmanisme et Christianisnie^ 

 who shows that they have deliberately and unblushingly lied to support 

 a contention which they knew to be false. M. Notovitch, The Unknown 

 Life of Christ, has been exposed somewhat similarly by J. A. Douglas in 

 the Nineteenth Century for April, 1896. See Professor S. Dill's remarks, 

 Roman Society from Nero to Aurelius (pp. 622, 623) : "Futile attempts 

 have been made to find parallels to Biblical narrative or symbolism in the 

 faint and faded legend of Mithra. . . . One great weakness of 

 Mithraism lay precisely here, that, in place of the narrative of a divine 

 life, instinct with human sympathy, it had only to offer the cold 

 symbolism of a cosmic legend." 



