The truth is Mithraism was not overthrown; it was merely transformed.... Though Mithraism had many attractions, Christianity had more, having sedulously copied every one of its rivals and developed special features of its own.... In the Christian legend the God was humanised in the most literal way; and for the multitude the concrete deity must needs replace the abstract. The Gospels gave a literal story: The Divine Man was a carpenter, and ate and drank with the poorest of the poor.... Gradually the very idea of allegory died out of the Christian intelligence; and priests as well as people came to take everything literally and concretely.... This was the religion for the Dark Ages.... Byzantines and barbarians alike were held by literalism, not by the unintelligible: for both alike the symbol had to become a fetish; and for the Dark Ages the symbol of the cross was much more plausibly appealing than that of the god slaying the zodiacal bull.... A Mithraist could turn to the Christian worship and find his main rites unimpaired, lightened only of the burden of initiative austerities, stripped of the old obscure mysticism, and with all things turned to the literal and the concrete, in sympathy with the waning of knowledge and philosophy throughout the world." But I must now close these quotations, apologising to Mr. Robertson for making such a free use of his book, and advising my readers to study it. They will find that his facts are reliable; they are all backed by the highest authorities, however much the conclusions drawn from them may, at present, be a matter of opinion. Suffice it to say here that the coincidences between Mithraism and Christianity are indescribably marvellous, and require further explanation, if Mr. Robertson's theory of the absorption of the former by the latter be not very largely true. Whatever the substratum of real history may be, there is no doubt that there was every opportunity for an early absorption of Mithraism, and every probability that it took place to an extent which throws a new flood of light upon many Christian doctrines. "The first six centuries were characterised by fierce controversies as to the most fundamental verities of the Christian faith, by the wholesale introduction of adult converts, who brought with them heathen and Jewish habits of thought, and who were in many cases of a low type of civilisation; and the adulteration of the Gospel was further facilitated by the purely nominal adhesion of persons anxious to stand well with the first Christian Emperors. The period was one of incessant fermentation and of rapid and continuous change." These are not the words of Mr. Robertson, nor of any other freethinker, but are an extract from the resolution adopted by the Church Association in connection with the appeal by Dean Wace and others to the authority of the First Six Centuries. What a period to appeal to! When we know what we do of the credulity and the methods