Almost innumerable instances are given by various writers upon this subject, showing that the sun worship of the ancients has been continued to the present time by the so called followers of Christ, in the shrines of the East, with no change even of names to distinguish it from that of the Christian faith. By those who have spent much time in investigating the Holy Land, it is related that nearly all the spots in and about Jerusalem, sacred to Greek and Romish Christians as connected with the life and death of their risen Lord, are equally sacred to the pagans as commemorating the life and death of their Savior--the New Sun. Even Gethsemane is marked by characteristics which prove that it is no less interesting to pagans, or, more properly speaking, to the pagan followers of Christ, than it is to those of the Greek and Romish churches. Here is a holy tree, and not far distant is a cave of Mithras. There is also to be seen a trinity of stones "those of Janus (Chemosh), Petros and Ion, all solar terms and connected with the sitting or sinking down to rest of the Kuros." Messrs. Maundrell and Sandys, who in 1697 visited all the holy places in and around Jerusalem, state that the entire city, but especially the sites of Moriah, Zion, and suburbs were hotbeds of fire and phallic worship as usually developed still in the East. The topography of ancient Delphi, on the site of which was built the village of Kastri, and at which place excavations are now being made under the direction of the American School of Archaeology, has ever been a place of peculiar interest to the mystic. Here are to be found all the natural features and objects which gladden the heart and stimulate the imagination of a solo-phallic worshipper. The holy Mt. Parnassus, the fountain of Kastali, the deep cave said to be Pythian, and the remnants of huge sepulchres hewn in the rocks all conspire to make of this spot a perfect abode for the god, or goddess, of fertility. Here, too, is a beautiful lake and near it a sacred fig-tree which has been struck by lightning, or, "touched by holy fire." Of this sacred place Forlong writes: "Christianity has never neglected this so-called Pagan shrine, nor yet misunderstood it, if we may judge by the saint she has located here, for Mr. Hobhouse found in the rocky chasm dipped in the dews of Castaly, but safe in a rocky niche, a Christian shrine; and close by a hut called the church of St. John; yea verily of Ione, she who had once reigned here supreme; whilst on a green plot a few yards below the basin, in a little grove of olive trees, stood the monastery of Panhagia or Holy Virgin, so that here we still have and beside her sacred form in the cleft, men who have consecrated their manhood to the old Mother and Queen of Heaven, just as if she of Syria had never been heard of.