ar very little of them (the _Essenes_) after A. D. 40;
and there can hardly be any doubt that the _Essenes_ as a body must have
embraced Christianity."

Here is the solution of the problem. The sacred books of Hindoos and
Buddhists were among the _Essenes_, and in the library at Alexandria.
The _Essenes_, who were afterwards called _Christians_, applied the
legend of the _Angel-Messiah_--"the very ancient Eastern doctrine,"
which we have shown throughout this work--to Christ Jesus. It was simply
a transformation of names, _a transformation which had previously
occurred in many cases_.[442:1] After this came _additions_ to the
legend from other sources. Portions of the legends related of the
Persian, Greek and Roman Saviours and Redeemers of mankind, were, from
time to time, added to the already legendary history of the Christian
Saviour. Thus history was repeating itself. Thus the virgin-born God
and Saviour, worshiped by all nations of the earth, though called by
different names, was but one and the same.

In a subsequent chapter we shall see _who_ this One God was, and _how_
the myth originated.

Albert Reville says:

"_Alexandria_, the home of Philonism, and Neo-Platonism (and
we might add _Essenism_), was naturally the centre _whence
spread the dogma of the deity of Jesus Christ_. In that city,
through the third century, flourished a school of
transcendental theology, afterwards looked upon with suspicion
by the conservators of ecclesiastical doctrine, but not the
less the real cradle of orthodoxy. It was still the Platonic
tendency which influenced the speculations of Clement, Origen
and Dionysius, and the theory of the Logos was at the
foundation of their theology."[443:1]

Among the numerous gospels in circulation among the Christians of the
first three centuries, there was one entitled "The Gospel of the
_Egyptians_." Epiphanius (A. D. 385), speaking of it, says:

"Many things are proposed (in this Gospel of the Egyptians) in
a hidden, _mysterious manner_, as by our Saviour, as though he
had said to his disciples, that the Father was the same
person, the Son the same person, and the Holy Ghost the same
person."

That this was one of the "_Scriptures_" of the Essenes, becomes very
evident when we find it admitted by the most learned of Christian
theologians that it was in existence "_before either of the canonical
Gospels_," and