The same ambiguity prevailed in the case of Christianity where it had been in contact with the arcane worship of Mithras. Seel endeavors to explain the matter as one of policy. He states that the early Christians in Germany for the most part ostensibly paid worship to the Roman gods in order to escape persecution. He makes a supposition as regards the adoption of the secret religion. “It is by no means improbable,” says he, “that under the permitted symbols of Mithras they worshipped the Son of God and the mysteries of Christianity. In this point of view,” he adds, “the Mithraic monuments so frequent in Germany are evidences of the secret faith of the early Christian Romans.” We are not ready to accept this notion that the Christians paid homage to one God, meaning another at the same time, except on the hypothesis that they regarded Mithras and Jesus as virtually the same personification. This conclusion seems to be countenanced by Augustine, the celebrated bishop of Hippo. “I know,” says he, “that the worshippers of the divinity in the cap [the statues of Mithras were decorated with the red Phrygian or cardinal’s cap] used to say, ‘Our god in the cap is Christian.’” That the crucifixion of Christ was not a literal historic occurrence seems to require no argument. Besides, the first day of the Passover was never a Friday, nor can it be according to the established principles of the Jewish calendar. The account in the three synoptic Gospels is therefore manifestly not correct as a literal occurrence; and the unknown writer of the Gospel of John has lamely attempted to evade the difficulty by placing the crucifixion on the day before the Passover. There was a mystic reason, however, for this statement of the synoptic Gospels. The story of the crucifixion had the same occult meaning as that of the departure of the Israelites from Egypt. The forty days in which Jesus “showed himself alive after his passion” corresponded with the forty years of wandering in the wilderness. Hence, as the Israelites left Egypt on the first day of the Passover, so Jesus was also crucified on that day. Not being an historical event, one actually occurring, the statement was permitted in order to preserve the harmony and identity of the myths. As, however, the story is astrological, we need only explain that the sun crossing the equinoctial line at the 21st of March is thus crucified, the ecliptic and the equator constituting the real cross in the form of the letter X. On the third day he appears ascending in the northern hemisphere, and so is “raised again according to the Scriptures.”