od
sacrifices of Asia, and also of the expiating goats sent out into the
wilderness? What became of that Hosanna-shouting crowd which welcomed
Christ on Palm Sunday? And there never were such places as Gethsemane
and Calvary. Alas! the Son of Man had indeed no spot to lay his head.
And why had He made no sign when on earth! Brother Hyzlo wept bitter
tears.

But he wiped them away as he considered the similarity of the massacre
of the Innocents in Judea and the massacre of the male children ordered
by the wicked Indian Rajah of Madura, who feared the Krishna, just
conceived by divine agency. Yes, the chronicles were full of these gods
born of virgins, of crucifixions,--he could remember sixteen,--of these
solar myths. He caught tripping in a thousand cases the translations of
our holy books. The Ox and Ass legend at the Nativity he realized was
the Pseudo-Matthew's description to Habakkuk of the literal presence:
"In the midst of two animals thou shalt be known;" which is a
mistranslated Hebrew text in the Prayer ascribed to Habakkuk. It got
into the Greek Septuagint version of the Prophet made by Egyptian Jews
before 150 B.C. It should read, "in the midst of the years,"
not "animals." "Ah!" cried Hyzlo, "in this as in important cardinal
doctrines have the faithful been the slaves of the learned and
unscrupulous pious forgers. Even the notorious Apollonius of Tyana
imitated the miracles of Christ--all of them. And what of that wicked
wizard, Simon Magus?"

The very repetition of these miracles in all races, at all epochs,
pointed to the doctrine of recurrence. But back of all the negations,
back of the inexpugnable proof that no such man or God as Christ
existed, or was known to his contemporaries, Jewish and Roman, there
must have been some legend which had crystallized into a mighty
religion. Was He an agitator who preferred His obscurity that His glory
might be all the greater? There _must_ have been a beginning to the
myth; behind the gospels--though they are obviously imitated from the
older testaments, imitated and diluted--were unknown writings; previous
to these there was word of mouth and--and ...?

The day had advanced, the sun was very warm. A shaft of light fell upon
the cold stone floor, and in its fiery particles darted myriads of
motes. Hyzlo followed their spiral flights, thinking all the while of
humanity which flashes from out the dark void, plays madly in the light,
only to vanish into the unknown