In an article which appeared in the March number of the _Deutsche Rundschau_, 1895, entitled “The Parliament of Religions in Chicago,” I expressed my surprise that this event which I had characterised as in my opinion the most important of the year 1893, had been so little known and discussed in Germany—so little, that the editors of the _Wiener Fremdenblatt_ thought it needful to explain the nature of the Chicago Congress. Likewise, when in answer to the question as to what I should consider the most desirable discovery of the coming year in my department, I answered the discovery of the _Sermo Verus_ of Celsus; this, too, appeared to be a work so little known, that the editors considered it necessary to add that Celsus was a renowned philosopher of the second century, who first subjected the ever spreading system of Christianity to a thorough criticism in a work entitled _Sermo Verus_. The wish, yes, even the hope, that this lost book, of which we gain a fair idea from the reply of Origen, should again make its appearance, was prompted by the recent discoveries of ancient Greek papyrus manuscripts in Egypt. Where so many unexpected discoveries have been made, we may hope for yet more. For who would have believed that ancient Greek texts would be found in a mummy-case, the Greek papyrus leaves being carelessly rolled together to serve as cushions for the head and limbs of a skeleton? It was plain that these papyrus leaves had been sold as waste paper, and that they were probably obtained from the houses of Greek officials and military officers, who had established themselves in Egypt during the Macedonian occupation, and whose furniture and belongings had been publicly sold and scattered on occasion of their rapid withdrawal. There were found not only fragments of classical texts, as of Homer, Plato, and the previously unknown treatise on “The Government of the Athenians,” not, perhaps, composed, but utilised, by Aristotle, but also many fragments of Christian literature, which made it probable that the libraries of Christian families also had been thrown on the market, and that papyrus leaves, when they appeared useless for any other purpose, were used as waste paper, or as a kind of papier-maché.