May we not conclude that Mr. Frazer's 'light bridges' of hypothesis have 'broken down'?[10] 'The importance and interest of the subject' have induced me to examine the hypotheses. But it was needless. One point has been clear from the beginning. Even if the Sacæan victims were _originally_ supposed to be gods, they could not bequeath a halo of divinity to Christ, unless, as late as the reign of Tiberius, their own godhead was still commonly recognised. Now it certainly was _not_ recognised. When Mr. Frazer published the first edition of his 'Golden Bough,' he doubted that the Sacæan victim could, as civilisation advanced, be identified with a god. But, before publishing his second edition, Mr. Frazer evolved his theory of the origin or partial origin of the belief in the divinity of Christ, as inherited from the criminal slaves at the Sacæa. In his second edition, therefore, the godhead of the Sacæan victims is usually regarded as commonly recognised; though Mr. Frazer had doubted the possibility of this in his first, and preserves the doubt in his second edition. It is needless to say more. Mr. Frazer, in vol. iii. 120, had already shaken his own theory as given in vol. iii. 195-198.[11] I might have contented myself with comparing these two passages, but in the interest of the nascent science of religion it seemed desirable to point out what I am constrained to think the errors of method that now prevail. In the following essay criticism is applied to an hypothesis with which modern orthodoxy has no concern. [1] _G. B_. iii. 195-197. [2] _G. B_. ii. 192. [3] _G. B_. iii. 197. [4] _G. B_. iii. 120. [5] The passage in which Mr. Frazer thus appears to demolish his own theory represents his opinion before his theory was evolved. It appeared in his first edition, but he retains it in his remodelled work. [6] _G. B_. iii. 193. [7] _G. B_. iii. 195. [8] See the contradictory attempts to get out of this difficulty in iii. 189. [9] _G. B_. iii. 120. [10] _G. B_. i. xv. xvi. [11] See also Appendix C, pp. 303-304. XI _THE GHASTLY PRIEST_ The spirit of system, of finding master keys for all the locks of old religion and mythology, has confessedly been apt to misguide students. 'Macrobius was the father,' says Mr. Frazer, 'of that large family of mythologists who resolve all or most gods into the sun. According to him Mercury was the sun, Mars was the sun, Janus was the sun, Saturn was the sun, so was Jupiter, also Nemesis, likewise Pan, and so on through a great part of the Pantheon. It was natural, therefore, that he should identify Osiris with the sun....'[1] Mythology has been of late emancipated from the universal dominion of the sun, but only to fall under that of gods of vegetation, whether of vegetable life at large, or of the corn spirit and the oak spirit in particular. What Mr. Frazer says about Macrobius, Macrobius would retort on Mr. Frazer, thus: