ve places--the forehead, the
hands, and the knees. This image was carried seven times round the
central hall of the temple with flute-playing, drumming, and hymns,
and then taken back to the underground chamber. In explanation of
these strange actions it was said: "To-day, at this hour, hath Kore
(the Maiden) borne the AEon."{15} Can there be a connection between
this festival and the Eleusinian mysteries? In the latter there was
a nocturnal celebration with many lights burning, and the cry went
forth, "Holy Brimo (the Maiden) hath borne a sacred child,
Brimos."{16} The details given by Miss Harrison in her
"Prolegomena" of the worship of the child Dionysus{17} are of
extraordinary interest, and a minute comparison of this cult with
that of the Christ Child might lead to remarkable results.

[6] Mithraism resembled Christianity in its monotheistic tendencies,
its sacraments, its comparatively high morality, its doctrine of an
Intercessor and Redeemer, and its vivid belief in a future life and
judgment to come. Moreover Sunday was its holy-day dedicated to the
Sun.

[7] This is the explanation adopted by most scholars (cf. Chambers, "M.
S.," i., 241-2). Duchesne suggests as an explanation of the choice
of December 25 the fact that a tradition fixed the Passion of
Christ on March 25. The same date, he thinks, would have been
assigned to His Conception in order to make the years of His life
complete, and the Birth would come naturally nine months after the
Conception. He, however, "would not venture to say, in regard to
the 25th of December, that the coincidence of the _Sol novus_
exercised no direct or indirect influence on the ecclesiastical
decision arrived at in regard to the matter."{25} Professor Lake
also, in his article in Hastings's "Encyclopaedia," seeks to account
for the selection of December 25 without any deliberate competition
with the _Natalis Invicti_. He points out that the Birth of Christ
was fixed at the vernal equinox by certain early chronologists, on
the strength of an elaborate and fantastic calculation based on
Scriptural data, and connecting the Incarnation with the Creation,
and that when the Incarnation came to be viewed as beginning at the
Conception instead of the Birth, the latter would natural