young ram and hurry it
still bleeding to the precincts of the Mosque, while at the same time
every household slays a lamb, as in the Biblical institution, for its
family feast.

But it will perhaps be said, "You are going too fast and proving too
much. In the anxiety to show that the Lamb-god and the sacrifice of the
Lamb were honored by the devotees of Mithra and Cybele in the Rome of
the Christian era, you are forgetting that the sacrifice of the Bull and
the baptism in bull's blood were the salient features of the Persian and
Phrygian ceremonials, some centuries earlier. How can you reconcile
the existence side by side of divinities belonging to such different
periods, or ascribe them both to an astronomical origin?" The answer
is simple enough. As I have explained before, the Precession of the
Equinoxes caused the Sun, at its moment of triumph over the powers of
darkness, to stand at one period in the constellation of the Bull, and
at a period some two thousand years later in the constellation of the
Ram. It was perfectly natural therefore that a change in the sacred
symbols should, in the course of time, take place; yet perfectly natural
also that these symbols, having once been consecrated and adopted,
should continue to be honored and clung to long after the time of their
astronomical appropriateness had passed, and so to be found side by side
in later centuries. The devotee of Mithra or Attis on the Vatican
Hill at Rome in the year 200 A.D. probably had as little notion or
comprehension of the real origin of the sacred Bull or Ram which he
adored, as the Christian in St. Peter's to-day has of the origin of the
Lamb-god whose vicegerent on earth is the Pope.

It is indeed easy to imagine that the change from the worship of the
Bull to the worship of the Lamb which undoubtedly took place among
various peoples as time went on, was only a ritual change initiated
by the priests in order to put on record and harmonize with the
astronomical alteration. Anyhow it is curious that while Mithra in the
early times was specially associated with the bull, his association with
the lamb belonged more to the Roman period. Somewhat the same happened
in the case of Attis. In the Bible we read of the indignation of
Moses at the setting up by the Israelites of a Golden Calf, AFTER
the sacrifice of the ram-lamb had been instituted--as if indeed the
rebellious people were returning to the earlier cult of Apis which they
ought to ha