The same is true of baptism and the Eucharist, as ceremonies identical with these, in their main aspects, existed among the ancient pagans. The “Lord’s Supper” virtually was in use more than two hundred and fifty years before Christ. Wherever Christian missionaries have gone they have found substantially the same dogmas and religious observances, and Tertullian, a Christian Father of the second century, conveniently explained this fact by saying that the devil had taught the heathen these same things to forestall the preaching of the missionaries. And yet Justin Martyr in the second century (a. d. 140), in defending the Christian religion against the assaults of pagans, said: “For declaring that the Logos, the first-begotten Son of God, our Master Jesus Christ, to be born of a virgin without any human mixture, and to be crucified and dead and to have arisen again into heaven, we say no more in this than what you say of those whom you style the sons of Jove.” Here is a distinct admission in the second century, from one in high authority, that the doctrine of the death and resurrection of miraculously-incarnated deities born of virgin mothers was well known among pagans before the Christian era. But we are not done with Justin Martyr yet. In his Apology to the emperor Hadrian he makes this most astonishing admission: “In saying that all things were made in this beautiful order by God, what do we seem to say more than Plato? When we teach a general conflagration, what do we teach more than the Stoics? By opposing the worship of the works of men’s hands we concur with Menander the comedian.... For you need not be told what a parcel of sons the writers most in vogue among you assign to Jove; there’s Mercury, Jove’s interpreter, in imitation of the Logos, in worship among you. There’s Æsculapius, the physician, smitten by a thunderbolt, and after that ascending into heaven. There’s Bacchus, torn to pieces; and Hercules, burnt to get rid of his pains. There’s Pollux and Castor, the sons of Jove by Leda, and Perseus by Danæ; and, not to mention others, I would fain know why you always deify the departed emperors, and have a fellow at hand to make affidavit that he saw Cæsar mount to heaven from the funeral pile? “As to the Son of God, called Jesus, should we allow him to be nothing more than man, yet the title of the Son of God is very justifiable, upon the account of his wisdom, considering that you have your Mercury in worship under the title of the Word and Messenger of God. “_As to the objection of our Jesus being crucified,_ I say that suffering was common to all the forementioned sons of Jove, but only they suffered another kind of death. As to his being born of a virgin, you have your Perseus to balance that. As to his curing the lame and the paralytic and such as were cripples from birth, this is little more than what you say of your Æsculapius.”