-_to which point they
ordinarily directed their prayers_.[502:5]

The followers of Mithra always turned towards the East, when they
worshiped; the same was done by the Brahmans of the East, and the
Christians of the West. In the ceremony of baptism, the catechumen was
placed with his face to the West, the symbolical representation of the
prince of darkness, in opposition to the East, and made to spit towards
it at the evil one, and renounce his works.

Tertullian says, that Christians were taken for worshipers of the Sun
because they prayed towards the East, after the manner of those who
adored the Sun. The Essenes--whom Eusebius calls Christians--always
turned to the east to pray. The Essenes met once a week, and spent the
night in singing hymns, &c., which lasted till sun-rising. As soon as
dawn appeared, they retired to their cells, after saluting one another.
Pliny says the Christians of Bithynia met before it was light, and sang
hymns to Christ, as to a God. After their service they saluted one
another. Surely the circumstances of the two classes of people meeting
before daylight, is a very remarkable coincidence. It is just what the
Persian Magi, who were Sun worshipers, were in the habit of doing.

When a Manichaean Christian came over to the orthodox Christians, he was
required to curse his former friends in the following terms:

"I curse Zarades (Zoroaster?) who, Manes said, had appeared as
a god before his time among the Indians and Persians, _and
whom he calls the Sun_. I curse those who say _Christ is the
Sun_, and who make prayers to the _Sun_, and who do not pray
to the true God, only towards the East, but who turn
themselves round, following the motions of the Sun with their
innumerable supplications. _I curse those person who say that
Zarades and Budas and Christ and the Sun are all one and the
same._"

There are not many circumstances more striking than that of Christ Jesus
being originally worshiped under the form of a LAMB--the actual "Lamb of
God, which taketh away the sins of the world." As we have already seen
(in Chap. XX.), it was not till the Council of Constantinople, called
_In Trullo_, held so late as the year 707, that pictures of Christ Jesus
were ordered to be drawn in the form of a man. It was ordained that, in
the place of the figure of a LAMB, the symbol used to that time, the
figure of a man nailed to a cross, should in future be used.[