us is mutilated at a passage (v.) where he seems to be accusing
Christians of following Mithraic usages." While again Professor Murray
says, "The polemic literature of Christianity is loud and triumphant;
the books of the Pagans have been DESTROYED." (2)

(1) De Abstinentia, ii. 56; iv. 16.

(2) Four Stages, p. 180. We have probably an instance of this
destruction in the total disappearance of Celsus' lively attack
on Christianity (180 A.D.), of which, however, portions have been
fortunately preserved in Origen's rather prolix refutation of the same.

Returning to the doctrine of the Savior, I have already in preceding
chapters given so many instances of belief in such a deity among the
pagans--whether he be called Krishna or Mithra or Osiris or Horus or
Apollo or Hercules--that it is not necessary to dwell on the subject any
further in order to persuade the reader that the doctrine was 'in the
air' at the time of the advent of Christianity. Even Dionysus, then
a prominent figure in the 'Mysteries,' was called Eleutherios, The
Deliverer. But it may be of interest to trace the same doctrine among
the PRE-CHRISTIAN sects of Gnostics. The Gnostics, says Professor
Murray, (1) "are still commonly thought of as a body of CHRISTIAN
heretics. In reality there were Gnostic sects scattered over the
Hellenistic world BEFORE Christianity as well as after. They must have
been established in Antioch and probably in Tarsus well before the
days of Paul or Apollos. Their Savior, like the Jewish Messiah, was
established in men's minds before the Savior of the Christians. 'If
we look close,' says Professor Bousset, 'the result emerges with great
clearness that the figure of the Redeemer as such did not wait for
Christianity to force its way into the religion of Gnosis, but was
already present there under various forms.'"

(1) Four Stages, p. 143.

This Gnostic Redeemer, continues Professor Murray, "is descended by a
fairly clear genealogy from the 'Tritos Soter' ('third Savior') (1) of
early Greece, contaminated with similar figures, like Attis and Adonis
from Asia Minor, Osiris from Egypt, and the special Jewish conception of
the Messiah of the Chosen people. He has various names, which the name
of Jesus or 'Christos,' 'the Anointed,' tends gradually to supersede.
Above all, he is in some sense Man, or 'the second Man' or 'the Son of
Man'... He is the real, the ultimate, the perfect and eternal Man, of
whom all bodily men are