characteristic of that stage. Here in this
third stage, it would seem, one comes upon the real FACTS of the inner
life--in contradistinction to the fancies and figments of the second
stage; and so one reaches the final point of conjunction between Science
and Religion.

II. SOLAR MYTHS AND CHRISTIAN FESTIVALS

To the ordinary public--notwithstanding the immense amount of work which
has of late been done on this subject--the connection between Paganism
and Christianity still seems rather remote. Indeed the common notion
is that Christianity was really a miraculous interposition into and
dislocation of the old order of the world; and that the pagan gods (as
in Milton's Hymn on the Nativity) fled away in dismay before the sign of
the Cross, and at the sound of the name of Jesus. Doubtless this was a
view much encouraged by the early Church itself--if only to enhance its
own authority and importance; yet, as is well known to every student, it
is quite misleading and contrary to fact. The main Christian doctrines
and festivals, besides a great mass of affiliated legend and ceremonial,
are really quite directly derived from, and related to, preceding
Nature worships; and it has only been by a good deal of deliberate
mystification and falsification that this derivation has been kept out
of sight.

In these Nature-worships there may be discerned three fairly independent
streams of religious or quasi-religious enthusiasm: (1) that connected
with the phenomena of the heavens, the movements of the Sun, planets and
stars, and the awe and wonderment they excited; (2) that connected with
the seasons and the very important matter of the growth of vegetation
and food on the Earth; and (3) that connected with the mysteries of Sex
and reproduction. It is obvious that these three streams would mingle
and interfuse with each other a good deal; but as far as they were
separable the first would tend to create Solar heroes and Sun-myths;
the second Vegetation-gods and personifications of Nature and the
earth-life; while the third would throw its glamour over the other two
and contribute to the projection of deities or demons worshipped with
all sorts of sexual and phallic rites. All three systems of course have
their special rites and times and ceremonies; but, as, I say, the rites
and ceremonies of one system would rarely be found pure and unmixed with
those belonging to the two others. The whole subject is a very large
one; but fo