St. Augustine says: “For the thing itself which is now called the Christian religion really was known to the ancients, nor was not wanting at any time from the beginning of the human race until the time when Christ came in the flesh, from whence the true religion which had previously existed began to be called Christian; and this in our day is the Christian religion, not as having been wanting in former times, but as having in later times received this name.” A fellow and tutor in Trinity College and lecturer on ancient history in the University of Dublin (Mr. Mahaffy) closes one of his lectures in the following manner: “There is, indeed, hardly a great or fruitful idea in the Jewish or Christian system which has not its analogy in the (ancient) Egyptian faith. The development of the one God into a _trinity_; the incarnation of the mediating deity in a virgin, and without a father; his conflict and his momentary defeat by the powers of darkness; his partial victory (for the enemy is not destroyed); his resurrection and reign over an eternal kingdom with his justified saints; his distinction from, and yet identity with, the uncreate incomprehensible Father, whose form is unknown and who dwelleth not in temples made with hands,—_all these theological conceptions pervade the oldest religion of Egypt_. So, too, the contrast and even the apparent inconsistencies between our moral and theological beliefs—the vacillating attribution of sin and guilt partly to moral weakness, partly to the interference of evil spirits, and likewise of righteousness to moral worth, and again to help of good genii or angels; the immortality of the soul and its final judgment,—_all these things have met us in the Egyptian ritual and moral treatises_. So, too, the purely human side of morals and the catalogue of virtues and vices are by natural consequences as like as are the theological systems. _But I recoil from opening this great subject now; it is enough to have lifted the veil and shown the scene of many a future contest._” Indeed, the ablest of the Christian Fathers never claimed that Christianity was a new religion recently and specially revealed by Jesus, but made many admissions quite to the contrary. Clarke in his _Evidences_ says that the most ancient writers of the Church did not scruple to acknowledge the Athenian Socrates a Christian. Clemens Alexandrinus, of the second century (a. d. 194), wrote: “And those who lived according to the _Logos_ were really Christians that is to say, those who practically accepted the Greek conception of a divine incarnation were really Christians.” And why not, for is not John’s Gospel an elaboration of the Neo-Platonism of the Greeks? and is not the whole Christian scheme an ingenious combination of Judaism and Oriental philosophy?