In the matter of ceremonial and certain other important accessories of religion it must frankly be admitted that Christianity rather borrowed from the older cults than underwent a natural and original development on its own account. A priesthood, as such, does not seem to have formed any integral or necessary part of the earliest Christendom: and when the orders of bishops, priests, and deacons were introduced into the new creed, the idea seems to have been derived rather from the existing priesthoods of anterior religions than from any organic connexion with the central facts of the new worship. From the very nature of the circumstances this would inevitably result. For the primitive temple (as we shall see hereafter) was the Dead Man’s tomb; the altar was his gravestone; and the priest was the relative or representative who continued for him the customary gifts to the ghost {012}at the grave. But the case of Jesus differs from almost every other case on record of a Deified Man in this--that his body seems to have disappeared at an early date; and that, inasmuch as his resurrection and ascension into heaven were made the corner-stone of the new faith, it was impossible for worship of his remains to take the same form as had been taken in the instances of almost all previously deified Dead Persons. Thus, the materials out of which the Temple, the Altar, Sacrifices, Priesthood, are usually evolved (as we shall hereafter see) were here to a very large extent necessarily wanting.