od _Mithras_."[363:5]

The Rev. Joseph B. Gross, in his "_Heathen Religion_," also tells us
that:

"The ancient Persians celebrated a festival in honor of
_Mithras_ on the first day succeeding the _Winter Solstice_,
the object of which was to _commemorate the Birth of
Mithras_."[363:6]

Among the ancient _Egyptians_, for centuries before the time of Christ
Jesus, the 25th of December was set aside as the birthday of their gods.
M. Le Clerk De Septchenes speaks of it as follows:

"The ancient Egyptians fixed the pregnancy of _Isis_ (the
_Queen of Heaven_, and the _Virgin Mother_ of the Saviour
Horus), on the last days of March, and towards the end of
_December_ they placed the commemoration of her
delivery."[363:7]

Mr. Bonwick, in speaking of _Horus_, says:

"He is the great God-loved of Heaven. His birth was one of the
greatest mysteries of the Egyptian religion. Pictures
representing it appeared on the walls of temples. One passed
through the holy _Adytum_[364:1] to the still more sacred
quarter of the temple known as the birth-place of Horus. He
was presumably the child of Deity. _At Christmas time_, or
that answering to our festival, his image was brought out of
that sanctuary with peculiar ceremonies, as the image of the
infant _Bambino_[364:2] is still brought out and exhibited in
Rome."[364:3]

Rigord observes that the Egyptians not only worshiped a _Virgin Mother_
"prior to the birth of our Saviour, but exhibited the effigy of her son
lying in the manger, in the manner the infant Jesus was afterwards laid
in the cave at Bethlehem."[364:4]

The "Chronicles of Alexandria," an ancient Christian work, says:

"Watch how Egypt has constructed the childbirth of a Virgin,
and the birth of her son, _who was exposed in a crib to the
adoration of the people_."[364:5]

_Osiris_, son of the "_Holy Virgin_," as they called Ceres, or Neith,
his mother, was born on the 25th of December.[364:6]

This was also the time celebrated by the ancient _Greeks_ as being the
birthday of _Hercules_. The author of "_The Religion of the Ancient
Greeks_" says:

"The night of the _Winter Solstice_, which the Greeks named
the triple night, was that which they thought gave birth to
_Hercules_."[364:7]

He further says:

"It has become an epoch of singular importance in the eyes of
the Christi