It has been placed in full light by the researches of scholars, and notably English scholars, and by the publication of the original texts... In point of fact, for a long time folks had been struck with the resemblances--or, rather, the identical elements--contained in Christianity and Buddhism. Writers of the firmest faith and most sincere piety have admitted them. In the last century these analogies were set down to the Nestorians; but since then the science of Oriental chronology has come into being, and proved that Buddha is many years anterior to Nestorius and Jesus. Thus the Nestorian theory had to be given up. But a thing may be posterior to another without proving derivation. So the problem remained unsolved until recently, when the pathway that Buddhism followed was traced step by step from India to Jerusalem. There was baptism before Christ, and before John the Baptist. There were gods, man-gods, son-gods, and saviours before Christ. There were Bibles, hymns, temples, monasteries, priests, monks, missionaries, crosses, sacraments, and mysteries before Christ. Perhaps the most important sacrament of the Christian religion to-day is the Eucharist, or Lord's Supper. But this idea of the Eucharist, or the ceremonial eating of the god, has its roots far back in the prehistoric days of religious cannibalism. Prehistoric man believed that if he ate anything its virtue passed into his physical system. Therefore he began by devouring his gods, body and bones. Later, man mended his manners so far as to substitute animal for human sacrifice; still later he employed bread and wine as symbolical substitutes for flesh and blood. This is the origin and evolution of the strange and, to many of us, repulsive idea of eating the body and drinking the blood of Christ. Now, supposing these facts to be as I have stated them above, to what conclusion do they point? Bear in mind the statement of M. Burnouf, that religions are built up slowly by a process of adaptation; add that to the statements of Eusebius, the great Christian historian, and of St. Augustine, the great Christian Father, that the Christian religion is no new thing, but was known to the ancients, and does it not seem most reasonable to suppose that Christianity is a religion founded on ancient myths and legends, on ancient ethics, and on ancient allegorical mysteries and metaphysical errors? To support those statements with adequate evidence I should have to compile a book four times as large as the present volume. As I have not room to state the case properly, I shall content myself with the recommendation of some books in which the reader may study the subject for himself. A list of these books I now subjoin: _The Golden Bough._ Frazer. Macmillan & Co. _A Short History of Christianity._ Robertson. Watts & Co. _The Evolution of the Idea of God._ Grant Allen. Rationalist