before Jesus was born in Palestine as after He was born;
and to say that the world was left without such teaching, and that man
was left in moral darkness from his beginnings to twenty centuries ago,
is to say that there was a humanity without a Teacher, children without
a Father, human souls crying for light into a darkness that gave them no
answer--a conception as blasphemous of God as it is desperate for man, a
conception contradicted by the appearance of every Sage, by the mighty
literature, by the noble lives, in the thousands of ages ere the Christ
came forth.

Recognising then in Jesus the great Master of the West, the leading
Messenger of the Lodge to the western world, we must face the difficulty
which has made havoc of this belief in the minds of many: Why are the
festivals that commemorate events in the life of Jesus found in
pre-Christian religions, and in them commemorate identical events in the
lives of other Teachers?

Comparative Mythology, which has drawn public attention to this question
in modern times, may be said to be about a century old, dating from the
appearance of Dulaure's _Histoire Abregee de differens Cultes_, of
Dupuis' _Origine de tous les Cultes_, of Moor's _Hindu Pantheon_, and of
Godfrey Higgins' _Anacalypsis_. These works were followed by a shoal of
others, growing more scientific and rigid in their collection and
comparison of facts, until it has become impossible for any educated
person to even challenge the identities and similarities existing in
every direction. Christians are not to be found, in these days, who are
prepared to contend that Christian symbols, rites, and ceremonies are
unique--except, indeed, among the ignorant. There we still behold
simplicity of belief hand-in-hand with ignorance of facts; but outside
this class we do not find even the most devout Christians alleging that
Christianity has not very much in common with faiths older than itself.
But it is well known that in the first centuries "after Christ" these
likenesses were on all hands admitted, and that modern Comparative
Mythology is only repeating with great precision that which was
universally recognised in the Early Church. Justin Martyr, for instance,
crowds his pages with references to the religions of his time, and if a
modern assailant of Christianity would cite a number of cases in which
Christian teachings are identical with those of elder religions, he can
find no better guides than the apologist