Mr. Higgins says: "John the Baptist was nothing but one of the followers of _Mithra_, with whom the deserts of Syria and the Thebais of Eyypt abounded, under the name of Essenes. He was a Nazarite; and it is a striking circumstance that the fountain (Enon, or Enon), where he baptised, _was sacred to the sun_." Even the name signifies the sun, or Mithra. If this was the (Enon of Locris, in ancient Greece (we know of no other), John must have taken wide excursions in his baptism. In the New Testament allegories there are many coincidents which point out that John (the Janus of the Latins) is the personified genius of January, the zodiacal sign of which month is Aquarius with his pitcher, the water of which is generally poured out plentifully. Aquarius being the mansion of the sun in John's month, or January, his pitcher is figuratively the fountain of OEnon, that was sacred to the sun, and where, as the Evangelist tells us there was "much water." During this month and February the "kingdom of heaven," or Christ (the sun), was said to be coming, or at hand; but he was not considered as _come_ until after the vernal equinox, in March, when, by entering the sign Aries, or the Ram, he became the Lamb, at which time John exclaims--"Behold the Lamb of God; he cometh after me, but is preferred before me." "I baptise with water--he with the Holy Ghost." That is to say, March comes after January, and the genial sun of spring and summer will always be preferred to that of January. The wilderness in which John was said to sojourn was metaphorical of the sterile and bleak face of nature during that month. In Matthew it is said--"He shall baptise you with the Holy Ghost and with fire."* The Holy Ghost was metaphoric of the salubrious summer winds in May, as the fire was of the scorching heat of the dog-days. It has often been observed that the learned, or the initiated in religious mysteries, had language peculiar to themselves, and unknown to the rabble, whereby they concealed science under tropes and allegories; so that, aided by the vivacity of the imagination, the most ordinary phænomena of nature were embodied as mystical existences, and there was hardly anything spoken of without being personified. Philo Judæus informs us that, amongst the arts and mysteries which Moses learnt from his masters the Egyptians, was that of philosophy by symbols, hieroglyphics, and marks of animals. Clemens Alexandrinus states, that "all who have treated of divine matters, the barbarous nations as well as the Greeks, have hid the _principles of things_, and delivered down the truth _enigmatically_, by _signs_, and _symbols_, and _allegories_, and _metaphors_."** Similar confessions were made by all the learned fathers of Christianism, many of whom allowed that their own religion was veiled in exactly the same manner; and for this they might claim even St. Paul as sufficient authority.