races to express their
religious conceptions; by observing the similarity in the mythoses
and sacred appellations among all tribe and nations, an through the
discovery of the fact that the legends extant in the various countries
of the globe are identical, or have the same foundation, it is probable
that a clue has already been obtained whereby an outline of the
religious history of the human family from a period even as remote as
the "first dispersion," or from a time when one race comprehended the
entire population of the globe, maybe traced. Humboldt in his Researches
observes: "In every part of the globe, on the ridge of the Cordilleras
as well as in the Isle of Samothrace, in the Aegean Sea, fragments of
primitive languages are preserved in religious rites."

Regarding the identity of the fundamental ideas contained in the various
systems of religion, both past and present, Hargrave Jennings, in
referring to a parallel drawn by Sir William Jones, between the deities
of Meru and Olympus, observes:

"All our speculations tend to the same conclusions. One day it is a
discovery of cinerary vases, the next, it is etymological research; yet
again it is ethnological investigation, and the day after, it is the
publication of unsuspected tales from the Norse; but all go to heap
up proof of our consanguinity with the peoples of history--and of an
original general belief, we might add."

That the religious systems of India and Egypt were originally the same,
there can be at the present time no reasonable doubt. The fact noted
by various writers, of the British Sepoys, who, on their overland route
from India, upon beholding the ruins of Dendera, prostrated themselves
before the remains of the ancient temples and offered adoration to
them, proves the identity of Indian and Egyptian deities. These foreign
devotees, being asked to explain the reason of their strange conduct
declared that they "saw sculptured before them the gods of their
country."

Upon the subject of the identity of Eastern religions, Wilford remarks
that one and the same code both of theology and of fabulous history, has
been received through a range or belt about forty degrees broad across
the old continent, in a southeast and northwest direction from the
eastern shores of the Malaga peninsula to the western extremity of
the British Isles, that, through this immense range the same religious
notions reappear in various places under various modifications, a