From a photograph of a small bronze image in the Mayor collection of Browne’s Museum, Liverpool. Copied from D^(r) Inman’s “Ancient Faiths”.] [Illustration: THE VEDIC VIRGIN, INDRANEE, WIFE-MOTHER OF SAVIOUR-GOD, INDRA. From Hislop’s “Two Babylons”.] [Illustration: THE HINDU GOD VISHNU, NURSED BY HIS VIRGIN WIFE-MOTHER, LAKSHMI. From Moore’s “Hindu Pantheon”.] [Illustration: DEVAKI AND CHRISTNA From Moore’s “Hindu Pantheon”.] [Illustration: THE HINDU GOD SIVA, NURSED BY HIS VIRGIN WIFE-MOTHER, PARVATI. Copied from statuette in Liverpool museum.] [Illustration: AMEN-RA (After Drummond.)] [Illustration: CRUX ANSATA Found marked on the breast of an Egyptian mummy in the University College Museum, London.] [Illustration: THE ASSYRIAN VIRGIN ISHTAR From Rawlinson’s “Ancient Monarchies”.] [Illustration: CRUCIFIXION OF CHRISTNA From old Hindu engraving. After Higgins.] [Illustration: VIRGIN AND CHILD AT IDALIUM IN CYPRUS After Rawlinson (“Herodotus”)] [Illustration: ISIS AND HORUS THE EGYPTIAN VIRGIN AND SAVIOUR-GOD From Rawlinson’s “Herodotus”.] EVOLUTION OF THE GOD IDEA. “Knowing his adopted land well, the Eastern does not require recondite volumes to explain ‘Dionysiak myths’ or ‘solar theories,’ as the old faiths are now called in the West. He sees these pervading the tales and epiks of East and West alike, just as Yahvism or Yahu-ism pervades the Scriptures of Jews or Yahus—that ever-familiar and expressive faith-term by which alone Asia knows the ‘Yahudean’ race.” While fully admitting the true character of the old faith as here expressed, yet, with all due deference to one of such acknowledged repute in the literary world as Major-General Forlong, whose splendid work, entitled “Rivers of Faith” (Preface, p. xxi.) contains the above paragraph, it may be fairly urged that the educated few only, both among Easterns and Westerns, have hitherto been capable of discerning the vein of solar myth which pervades all systems of religion; while the vast multitude of ignorant and credulous people even yet perceive, or think they perceive, the Divine handiwork in the particular sacred oracle to which they firmly pin their faith. The Hindu supreme deity is known as Brahm, the Persian as Ormuzd, the Mohammedan as Allah, and the Jewish and Christian as El, Elohim, Yahouh (or Jehovah), God, etc. Probably few among the many millions who worship these various deities know much or anything about their origin, innocently imagining that the Deity they bow allegiance to once manifested itself to some chosen individual, to whom it gave a revelation, the facts of which were handed down to posterity. They little dream of the vast cycles of time that have rolled past since the brain of man attained such a state of perfection as to enable it to evolve the idea of Deity. It is utterly impossible for the human mind to grasp the enormous interval of time that has elapsed since primeval man emerged from the condition of unreasoning