52 
rendered still more striking to us who read them in the light of a 
perfected revelation. I believe that, in the same way as we claim 
by the commentaries of the epistolary writers of the New Testa- 
ment, the better now to comprehend the history of the Old, so, by 
a comparison of the Jewish and Patriarchal systems we are able to 
see the real motive of the Egyptian creed, and to understand it in 
a degree far beyond anything that the Egyptian priests them- 
selves understood or anticipated ; and also, mark you this, far 
beyond the penetration of the Jews who were their contempo- 
raries.* There is still a sense in which these dogmas can be fur- 
ther correlated, but that, with all due deference, I leave to those 
reverend members of this Institute who have done me the 
honour to be present this night. Suffice it then to restate that 
there is certain evidence, that no doctrine was more permanent, 
survived more dynastic changes, was less influenced by the three 
great religious innovations to which Egypt was subjected in the 
twelfth, seventeenth, and nineteenth dynasties, or which exercises 
a holier control over the grosser passions of the flesh, than the 
dogma of Horus, the Deliverer of Mankind and the Justifier of 
the Righteous. 
The very first of the chief epithets applied to Ilorus in this his 
third great office has a startlingly Christian sound; it is the “ Sole 
begotten Son of the Father,” to which, in other texts, is added 
“ Ilorus the Holy Child,” the “ Beloved son of his father.” The 
Lord of Life, the Giver of Life, both very usual epithets on the 
funeral scarabei, the “ Justifier of the Righteous,” the “Eternal 
King ” and the “ Word of the Father Osiris.” f There were other 
names which we are expressly told in the sacred texts no man 
knew but himself, no ear had ever heard, no tongue had ever 
spoken — names of so awful an import that if pronounced they 
would arrest the sun in his career, control the powers of hell, and 
threaten the duration of the universe itself. Hence — but here I 
only cite from recollection — Horus was sometimes simply referred 
to as the name alone, Avithout any other epithet or explanation : 
all these ideas, and many other mysteries deduced from them, are 
traceable in the Gnostic gems, the early mediaeval magical books 
and the mystical amulets of the Alexandrian Christians. 
The vicarious atonement of Horus Avas chiefly carried out after 
the death of the believer,andAvhilcthe body remained un corrupted, 
and the soul conscious of its doom, but conscious also of its power 
to modif} r it by the suffrages of the faithful and the clergy with 
* See Jahn, Sacred Antiquities, sec. 310. 
t Dr. Birch. liitual in various places. See also p. 58. 
