n which these developments appeared were
intended for circulation only among an author's narrow circle of
immediate friends, at most to be read aloud in devout reunions. If,
ultimately, of the entire collection, four only were retained, it is
probably because these best expressed existing convictions. Though,
irrespective of their beauties, Irenaeus said that there had to be four
and could be but four, for the reason that there are four seasons,
four winds, four corners of the earth, and the four revelations of
Adam, Noah, Moses, and Jesus.

It is not on that perhaps arbitrary deduction that their validity
resides, but rather because the parables and miracles which they
recite became the spiritual nourishment of a world. To their title of
eternal verities they have other and stronger claims. They have
consoled and they have ennobled. Elder creeds may have done likewise,
but these lacked that of which Christianity was the unique possessor,
the marvel of a crucified god.

Saviours there had been. Mithra was a redeemer. Zoroaster was born of
a virgin. Persephone descended into hell. Osiris rose from the dead.
Gotama was tempted by the devil. Moses was transfigured. Elijah
ascended into heaven. But in no belief is there a parallel for the
crucifixion, although in Hindu legend, Krishna, a divinity whose
mythical infancy a mythical prototype of Herod troubled, died, nailed
by arrows to a tree.

In Oriental lore Krishna is held to have been the eighth avatar of
Vishnu, of whom Gotama was the ninth. Krishna was therefore anterior
to the Buddha, at least in myth. But it would be a grave impropriety
to infer that with the legend concerning him the narrative of the
crucifixion has any other connection than the possible one of having
suggested it. The _Bhagavad-Purana_, in which the legend occurs, is
relatively modern, though the legend itself may, like the _Tripitaka_,
have existed orally, for centuries, before it was finally committed to
writing.

There can, however, be no impropriety in recalling analogies that
exist between the Saviour and one whom the Orient holds also divine.
These analogies, set forth in the first chapter of the present volume,
are, it may be, wholly fortuitous, though Pliny stated that, centuries
before his day, disciples of Gotama were established on the Dead Sea
and, from a passage in Josephus, it seems probable that the Essenes
were Buddhists, in the same degree perhaps that the Pharisees were
Pars