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Updated: June 5, 2025
He found the fire-altars in ruins, the sacred flame extinguished, the most essential of the Magian ceremonies and practices disregarded. Everywhere, except perhaps in his own province of Persia Proper, he found idolatry established. Temples of the sun abounded, where images of Mithra were the object of worship, and the Mithraic cult was carried out with a variety of imposing ceremonies.
At stated intervals the doors of temples opened of themselves. Statues perspired visibly. There was a book that explained the mechanism of these marvels. It interested nobody. Prodigies were matters of course. The people had a heaven, also a hell, both of them Greek, a purgatory that may have been Asiatic, and, pending the advent of the son of Jove, in Mithra they could have had a redeemer.
The birth, death, and resurrection of Christ is quite similar to the myths of that time concerning the savior gods Adonis, Isis, Osiris, Attis, Mithra, and a multitude of others. The evidence for the point of view that Jesus was actually a historic character is so slight that such scholars as J. M. Robertson, Prof. W. B. Smith, Professor Drews, Dr.
He is, among other things, Secretary of God, Liberator from Infernal Chains, Defender in the Hour of Death, Custodian of the Pope, Spirit of Light, Wisest of Magistrates, Terror of Demons, Commander-in-Chief of the Armies of the Lord, Lash of Heresies, Adorer of the Word Incarnate, Guide of Pilgrims, Conductor of Mortals: Mars, Mercury, Hercules, Apollo, Mithra what nobler ancestry can angel desire?
A ritual that lingered on in the hills and mountains of Wales as the Mithra worship did in the Alps and Vosges, celebrated as that cult habitually was, in natural caverns, and mountain hollows?
The devotee of Mithra or Attis on the Vatican Hill at Rome in the year 200 A.D. probably had as little notion or comprehension of the real origin of the sacred Bull or Ram which he adored, as the Christian in St. Peter's to-day has of the origin of the Lamb-god whose vicegerent on earth is the Pope.
Plutarch speaks of the Persians, in common with the Chaldeans and Egyptians, as worshipers of the sun under the name of Mithra, whom they regarded as standing between Ormuzd, "the author of good," and Ahriman, "the author of evil," occupied alternately in aiding the former and subduing the latter.
And they were commemorated by Eucharistic meals. Let me give a few brief examples. Mithra was born in a cave, and on the 25th December. He was born of a Virgin. He traveled far and wide as a teacher and illuminator of men. He was buried in a tomb, from which however he rose again; and his resurrection was celebrated yearly with great rejoicings.
There was Mithra, day, and Yama, death. There were still others, infantile, undulant, fluid, not infrequently ridiculous also. But it was Indra for whom the dew and honey of the morning hymns were spread. It was Indra who, emerging from darkness, made the earth after his image, decorated the sky with constellations and wrapped the universe in space.
“I have faithful slaves,” said Xerxes, rising and smiling benignantly upon the general and the bow-bearer. “Let us disperse, but first let command be given the Magians to cry all night to Mithra and Tishtrya, and to sacrifice to them a white horse.”
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