He was an exile. Not from the Island of Oig, nor any other island of an earthly sea, but from that far-off sphere of which the sunset-smitten town reminded him. He was an exile from some world of which love, and not hate, was the keynote, banished for what fault he could not tell, condemned to mortal life as to a penance, but tormented and consoled by intimations from that happier state. The soul has her imperial moments when she exercises a prerogative that reason cannot take away; when the toilsome knowledge gathered together by the senses falls into shards under her feet, and she enters into possession of herself, freed from the bonds and trammels cast about her by the material brain. In that moment Alistair did not think--he knew, knew well, more surely than if a voice from the beyond had spoken it in his ear, that he was an immortal spirit inhabiting eternity. When his attention returned to the voice beside him, he found that the agnostic was expounding the folklore of the crucifixion. “The whole subject has been illuminated by Dr. Frazer’s book ‘The Golden Bough,’” he was saying. “The sacrifice of a human victim in the spring, at the time of the seed-sowing, is one of the oldest rites in the world. The victim was originally conceived of as the corn-god, and was put to death in order that his spirit might enter into the seed. His body was buried in the field, and he was supposed to rise again in the form of the harvest. In that way the dogma of Transubstantiation had once a reasonable meaning--the bread was the flesh of the slain god in his new avatar.” Alistair listened like one awakening from sleep who has not yet caught the sense of what is going on around him. “Christianity, in short, is the old Adonis worship, adapted according to Jewish ideas. The Old Testament is full of allusions to this cult--‘women weeping for Tammuz,’ and so on.” “You were speaking of a human victim,” murmured Alistair. “Yes; it was customary to select a man at Easter, usually in later times a condemned criminal, who was sacrificed as a scapegoat for the sins of the people. The Jewish mob appear to have claimed a victim in accordance with this custom. Two were released, in fact, one to be sacrificed, and the other to be honoured as the representative of spring.” Alistair felt there was some confusion in this statement. “For the sins of the people,” he repeated thoughtfully. “You say the victim was sacrificed for the sins of the people?” “That was one form of the cult,” the scientist assented. “The idea of the sin-bearer is a very ancient superstition. Even the details of the New Testament narrative follow the lines of what we know to have been the customary ceremonial in Babylon and elsewhere. The scourging and the crown of thorns were both familiar practices. They are alluded to in Isaiah--‘He was wounded for our transgressions.’”