https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/25778/archive/files/7d5ad1da3deeb453371f87a808d689bc.pdf?Expires=1773878400&Signature=RALRqWkSxTZNpLl7QrGGrT2ycv%7EME1ItaoOJdSuUiw0pKLX4RBJUlfJlBcw9CRP0UstHuxTioJFNGPjL2WOva613j8U1xrInddlR2CtdsLXo6olKI5tZEf8hCv99zR5sPLkLAw4P9Be72OZEFRlE3KiAosV%7E%7EazYD-92pHciS9LY6YLD71P3L1hWIODsD-TRlpfsV6fcJez3fstC-9UqWV-7YB7-lDfvkvsLleyflynMxrZ9eNXyzaGPM8ymd3zWC9pLGRlqri1RUjUst2NhKsMVShhmd4EMqSmOvBwFVFcxKxPzQqrDB-y3jAmQ4OPkWqCeBn0hnKwSSJCLTb033Q__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM d0cd0ef6f3a68d561f563863443114ff PDF Text Text CHRIST AND OSIRIS BY J. S. STUART-GLENNIE, M. A. Reprinted by permission from, ‘IN THE MORNINGLAND.’ PUBLISHED BY THOMAS SCOTT, II THE TERRACE, FARQUHAR ROAD, UPPER NORWOOD, LONDON, S.E. 1876. Price Threepence. �LONDON: PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET. �CHRIST AND OSIRIS. “ Thou hast conquered, 0 pale Galilean; the world has grown grey from thy breath ; We have drunken of things Lethean, and fed on the fulness of death. 0 lips that the live blood faints in, the leavings of racks and rods! O ghastly glories of saints, dead limbs of gibbeted gods ! Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all knees bend, I kneel not, neither adore you, but standing, look to the end. ***** Though before thee the throned Cytherean be fallen, and hidden her head, Yet thy kingdom shall pass, Galilean, thy dead shall go down to the dead.” * eflecting- here, on the Temple-roof at Karnak, on the general results of our Egyptian studies, we are first of all struck with what I may call the Christian character of Osirianism. But before proceeding to point this out, and to state the hypothesis which this Christian character of Osirianism suggests, it may be desir­ able to offer a few remarks on the outward, and hence more vulgarly appreciated characteristics of the Egyptian religion. For, in amazement at any likening of Osirianism to Christianism, or of Christianism to Osirianism, many readers may, as if in R * Swinburne, Poems and Ballads, Hymn to Proserpine, pp. 79-80. �6 Christ and Osiris. settlement of any suggestion even of a causal relation between Osirianism and Christianism, ask, ‘ Were not the Egyptians, as a matter of fact, idolaters, and worshippers, indeed, of the most grotesque and monstrous idols ? ’ But let us understand what idolatry means. Possibly, you who put this question may be more of an idolater than were the ancient Egyptians when they first created their Gods. Idolatry is ceremonial worship when the meaning of the ceremonies and symbols is lost. We are helped to the understanding of this by the study of language, in its first formations. Names, as a class of signs, * are themselves but a kind of symbols. In the formation of a language, they are at first uttered certainly not without a meaning ; they certainly are the attempt to denote some thing, or express some want, hitherto nameless, unutterable. Yet these names, at first so meaningful, may in time so com­ pletely lose their original meaning, as to become the terminations of a declension, f So symbols, animal­ headed deities, and others. What if the symbol, in later times, so lost its meaning as to be itself wor­ shipped ? Originally it had carried the mind from itself to that which it signified. And as, in Lan­ guage, ‘ the formation of substantive nouns is the first stage of personifying God so, in Religion, the creation of symbols is the first stage of idolatry. We shall hereafter have occasion to consider idol­ creation more fully, and from other points of view. Here I will only remark, that a reference to the idolatry of the Egyptians is unfortunate, if it is intended thereby to disprove the likeness of Osirian* ‘ A name is a word taken at pleasure to serve for a mark which may raise in our mind a thought like to some thought we had before, and which, being pronounced to others, may be to them a sign of what thought the speaker had, or had not, before in his mind.’—Hobbes, Computation or Logic, ch. it., cited by Mill, System of Logic, vol. II. p. 23. t See Miiller, Lectures on the Science of Language. t Bunsen, Egypt's Place, vol. iv. p. 566. �Christ and Osiris. 7 ism to Christianism. For we shall find that it is just in comparing these two Creeds in this matter of idolatry, that — when we set Yahvehism between them—their likeness comes out most strongly—the religion of Abraham, whether as Judaism, or as Mohammedanism, acting as a foil, and bringing out with startling clearness, at once, the Osirian cha­ racter of Christianism, and the Christian character of Osirianism. 2. But is the Animal-worship of the Egyptians next objected against any comparison of Osirianism with Christianism, or any hypothesis with respect to the origination of the latter in a transformation of the former ? Well, it is admitted that that exaggerated care for animals which becomes a superstitious wor­ ship of them is not a feature of Christian religious emotion. But in the Animal-worship which—pro­ bably derived from an aboriginal African element in the population — was, soon after the time of * Menes, incorporated with Osirianism throughout the Empire, there should seem to have been an idea which modern Science tends more and more clearly to establish—the identity, namely, of the principle of life in all its manifestations.f ‘ And what is this,’ asks Bunsen, £ but a specific adaptation of that con­ sciousness of the divinity of Nature, which is implied in all the religious consciousness of the Old World ?’J The doctrine of transmigration thus became a sacred link between animal and human life. And ‘ the community between the human and anima,! soul being once admitted, we can understand how the Egyptians a^ last arrived at the idea of worshipping in animals a living manifestation of Divinity.’§ But if a similar doctrine is not found in Christianism,* § * Bunsen, Egypt's Place, vol. iv. p. 637 t See Spencer, Principles of Biology, and Principles of Psychology t Bunsen, Egypt's Place, vol. iv. p. 640. § Ibid. vol. iv. p. 641. �Christ and Osiris. one is tempted to say that the want of it is much to be regretted. For there have been, and even still are, few worse features in Christian Civilization than its apathy to animal suffering. And it is very * noteworthy that it was the great Apostle of the Utilitarian School of Moralists who, in that very year from which dates a new period of the Modern Revolution, 1789, introduced into European Ethics the consideration of1 the interests of other animals.’!" So. likewise, a new care for, and new appreciation of animals is one of the characteristic features of Comte s conception of the New Religion of Hu­ manity.J And if, at length, men are beginning again to become sympathetically aware that other animals also besides themselves feel pain, and that it is shameful and dastardly to inflict pain unnecessarily upon them ; if there is now some hope that Christian f sports ’ may, at length, be done away with, and animal-barbarities generally ; and if, in realising that fact of physical kinship with our Elder Brethren, which Science affirms, and Chris­ tianity scouts, there is being devoloped some nobler sympathy also with them—this, at least, it must be admitted, is certainly not owing to any doctrine in Christianism that can be paralleled in Osirianism. 3. The considerations thus suggested on the c Idola­ try and on the ‘ Animal-worship ’ of the Egyptians may, I trust, prepare us candidly now to consider the more essential doctrines of Osirianism—those doc­ fnri^^E1\ristiU1.Crkelty ffenera!ly’we must not recall the gladia­ torial comhats of the Roman amphitheatre, without recalling also the heretic burnings of every chief town in Christendom. Noris Classic ChrkH^o-1®^6 t]udg(?d th,e days of lts decline: but rather, as also aIps;1tYdlza!10n» by the days of its prime. And that the Middle ♦Ur ,!16 f-,lristian civilization is proved by the fact, that ” Ament Fhlch ha?l SCce then> modified Christianity has tended more and more to sweep it, both as a doctrinal and as a social system, I Morals and Legislation, ch. + bee Mill, Comte and Positivism, xvii. �Christ and Osiris. 9 trines which are so remarkably similar to the great dogmas of Christianism. And with respect to what the great religious doctrines of the Egyptians really were, we are not now in any doubt. Eor one of the grandest achievements of Modern Science has been * the translation of their Funeral Ritual, the ‘ Todtenbuch,’ or ‘ Book of the Dead,’ as Lepsius called it, or as it calls itself, the ‘ Departure into Light.’f It belongs to Bunsen’s fourth class of those Sacred Books which would form collectively the Bible of the ancient Egyptians, and is scarcely posterior to 3,000 years before our era.J For, as Bunsen points out, we have a very remarkable proof that the origin of the prayers and hymns of this Ritual belongs pro­ bably to the Pre-Menite Dynasty of Abydos, between 3100 and 4500 B.C., in the fact that we find one of these hymns, § not in its original simplicity, but already mixed up with glosses and commentaries, inscribed on the coffin of Queen Mentuhept of the eleventh dynasty. This monumental text agrees with the printed text of the Turin papyrus. And though the first year of the eleventh dynasty, which lasted forty-three years, cannot be placed earlier than 2782 B.c. yet, if we consider the many stages* § * ‘ The interpretation of the extinct languages of Egypt and Central Asia will ever rank as one of the distinguishing features of the nine­ teenth century.’—Birch, in Bunsen’s Egypt's Place, vol. v. p. ix. t Or ‘ Manifestation to Light,’ according to Champollion and Dr. Birch. The complete translation by the latter was only published with the fifth volume of Bunsen's Egypt in 1867. But I had with me at Thebes the previous volumes, besides Wilkinson’s Ancient Egyptians and other works ; and I had the advantage of perusing and making copious extracts from the translation of an American Egyptologer who was residing at Luxor. Even Dr. Birch’s translation, however, must be considered as representing the state of hieroglyphical knowledge rather twenty years ago than now—so long was its publication, owing to various causes, delayed. The translation of the ‘ Tod.tenbuch,’ to which students must now refer, is that by Brugsch, now in course of publication. My references, however, here, will be to Dr. Birch’s Trans­ lation, as probably more accessible to the majority of readers. t Bunsen, Egypt's Place, vol. iv. p. 646. § It forms chapter xvii. of the Ritual. See Birch’s translation in Egypt's Place, vol. v. pp. 172-80. IT Compare Egypt's Place, vol. V. pp. 29, 88, and 94. �io Christ and Osiris. that must have been passed through, before the original hymn, learned by heart, and recited from memory, became mixed-up with scholia in an nndivided sacred text, we cannot but date its composi­ tion and primitive use many centuries anterior to that dynasty in which we find it thus embedded in explanations. This hymn implies not only the wor­ ship of Osiris, but the whole system of doctrines connected with his redeeming life on Earth, and judicial office in Heaven. Yet an antiquity, even greater than is thus witnessed-to, we are obliged to assign to Osirianism, by the fact that the Osirismyth itself mentions ‘ Byblus (Gebal in Phoenicia) as the place where Isis brought up the young Osiris.’* And this derivation from Asia is further confirmed by the universally admitted identity of ‘ the funda­ mental ideas of the worship, and sacred ceremonials of Adonis and Osiris.’f To the very earliest period, then, of the history of Humanity, as the history of Thought, we must carry back the ideas of the Osirian Faith. And yet, we may possibly find in the sequel, that it is but a transformed Osirianism that, to this day, dominates Christendom. 4. Considered as a whole, the 1 Departure into Light ’ is a revelation in something of an epic, and even occasionally dramatic form of the departure of the Soul into the Other-world, of its judgment, and of what is required of it, in order to its final beatific reception by its Father Osiris. Its formularies may, perhaps, best be arranged under such heads as the following:—I. General Address. II. Address to each of the Forty-two Assessors. III. Announcement of Justification. IV. Telling the names of different parts of the Temple. V. Blessings, &c.J According to Egyptian notions, it was ‘ essentially an inspired * Egypt's Place, vol. iv. p. 347. f Ibid. J Compare Birch’s introduction to his translation, Egypt's Place, vol. v. �Christ and Osiris. ii work; and the term Hermetic, so often applied by profane writers to these books, in reality means inspired. It is Thoth himself who speaks, and reveals the will of the Gods, and the mysterious nature of divine things to man.’* Portions of them are expressly stated to have been written by the very finger of Thoth himself, and to have been the com­ position of a great God.f And in this, it may be noted by the way, that we see an illustration of what, in the Introduction, was pointed out as one of the general characteristics of the First Age of Humanity, namely, the authorlessness, for the most part, of its Literature, and its attribution, to supernatural sources. But sacred this Ritual was also esteemed as ‘ assuring to the soul a passage from the Earth; a transit through the purgatory and other regions of the Dead; the entrance into the Empyreal Gate, by which the souls arrived at the presence of God, typified by the Sun ; the admission into the Bark, or Orb of the Sun, ever traversing in brilliant light the ' liquid ether; and protection from the various Liersin-wait, or Adversaries, who sought to accuse, destroy, or detain it in its passage, or destiny.’J In this most ancient book of the Osirian Scriptures there is, no doubt, not only a vast mass of unin­ telligible ritualistic allusions, but evidence of gross superstition. Not, however, without evidence of this, are also the Christian Scriptures. And it must be borne in mind that the Osirian Bible had not the good fortune to be, in the formation of its canon, purged, as was the Christian, of impurer, apocryphal elements. Yet, notwithstanding this misfortune, the religious tone of the Osirian Ritual is such as the following brief extracts may serve, though inade­ quately, to illustrate. * Ibid. p. 133. + See chapter lxiv., Rubric. j Birch in Egypt's Place, vol. V. p. 134. �12 Christ and Osiris. 5. Very touching are some of the expressions in which the Departed calls on Osiris to save him from his Accusers, from the Lake of Fire, and from the Tormentors. Addressing these with the noble bold­ ness of great faith, ‘ says Osiris Anfanch . . . while you strive against me, your acts against me are against Osiris............... To strive against me, is as against Osiris.’ Again: 1 Let me come, having seen and passed, having passed the Gate to see my Father Osiris. I have made way through the dark­ ness to my Father Osiris. I am his beloved. I stab the heart of Sut. I do the things of my Father Osiris. I have opened every door in heaven and earth. I am his beloved son. I have come from the mummy, an instructed spirit.’ And again : ‘ says Osiris Anfanch, save me, as thou savest what belongs to thy word ; catch me up ; the Lord is God, there is but one God for me (or, before the Lord of Mankind, there is but one Lord for me).’ A passage, this, which is but one of many proving the mono­ * theism of the better instructed, or more deeply thinking, of those whom the narrow ignorance of that Creed propagated by the Galilean Fishermen sets down as 1 idolatrous heathens.’ He who is thus represented as speaking in a certain stage of his progress to the region of ‘ Sacred Repose, ’ is more particularly described in the beginning of some papyri as ‘ Osiris Anfanch of the true faith, born of the lady Souhenchem of fair fame.’ The prefix to the man’s name of that of God himself is the ‘ new name ’ which every true believer receives after death. In other passages the good man is even spoken of as an Osiris. ‘ The Osiris lives, after he dies, like the sun daily; for as the sun dies, and is born in the morning, so the Osiris dies.’ And finally, as to that immortality which is so ignorantly imagined to have * See chap. tv. sect. iii. �Christ and Osiris. 13 been 1 brought to light by the Gospel, ’ the Osiris exclaims in another passage : 1 I do not die again in the Region of Sacred Repose.’ And again. ‘ Who­ soever does what belongs to him, visibly (individu­ ally ?) his soul participates in Life Eternal.’ And again. ‘ Plait for thyself a garland . . . thy life is everlasting.’ 6. But it is the central doctrine of Osirianism that more particularly claims our attention. ‘ The peculiar character of Osiris,’ says Sir Gardner Wilkinson, ‘ his coming upon Earth for the benefit of mankind, with the title of “Manifester of Good” and “ Revealer of Truth his being put to death by the Malice of the Evil One; his burial and Resurrec­ tion, and his becoming the Judge of the Dead, are the most interesting features of the Egyptian Reli­ gion. This was the great mystery; and this myth and his worship were of the earliest times and universal in Egypt.’* And, with this central doc­ trine of Osirianism, so perfectly similar to that of Christianism, doctrines are associated precisely analo­ gous to those associated in Christianism with its central doctrine. In ancient Osirianism, as in modern Christianism, the Godhead is conceived as a Trinity, yet are the three Gods declared to be only one God. In ancient Osirianism, as in modern Chris­ tianism, we find the worship of a Divine Mother and Child. In ancient Osirianism, as in modern Chris­ tianism, there is a doctrine of Atonement. In ancient Osirianism, as in modern Christianism, we find the vision of a Last Judgment, and Resurrection of the Body. And finally, in ancient Osirianism, as in modern Christianism, the sanctions of morality are a Lake of Eire and tormenting Demons, on the one hand, and on the other, Eternal Life in the presence * Ancient Egyptians (Popular Edition), vol. i. p. 331. second Series of the larger work, vol. 1. p. 320. Compare �14 Christ and Osiris. of God. Is it possible, then, that such similarities of doctrines should not raise the most serious questions as to the relation of the beliefs about Christ to those about Osiris ; as to the cause of this wonderful simi­ larity of the doctrines of Christianism to those of Osirianism; nay, as to the possibility of the whole doctrinal system of Modern Orthodoxy being but a transformation of the Osiris-myth ? But if so—you logically argue with amazed incredulity—all the most sacred dogmas of the Christian faith would be proved to have originated but in the influence of a 4 heathen ’ religion—a religion over the scenes of which we Christians ordinarily pass with the most complacent contempt ? Nay, if so ; if the doctrines cf Christianism had but such an origin; must not. the Christian ‘ Revelation ’ be acknowledged utterly worthless to prove the reality of any one of the supernatural facts which its doctrines affirm—even a Personal Immortality, for instance, or a Personal God ? 7. Well, be the consequences what they may, we must find out what is the fact. And there is certainly no escape in the desperate hypothesis to which the manifestly Christian character of Osirianism has driven some to have recourse—the hypothesis that these doctrines of Osirianism were, somehow or other, themselves a ‘ supernatural revelation.’ For the discovery of Osirianism is the discovery of the missing link between Christianism and Heathenism generally, the religions of the First Age of Hu­ manity, or what I have termed Naturianism. It has hitherto appeared not only a crime but a blunder, not merely a blasphemy but a frivolity, to compare the Christian doctrines of the Trinity, of the Incar­ nation, and of the Death and Resurrection of Christ with the similar doctrines of Naturian Religions. But the doctrines of a Trinity, of an Incarnation, and of the Death and Resurrection of a God-man are �Christ and Osiris. 15 developed in Osirianism with such gravity, such moral purity, and such splendour, that we cannot hesitate to honour them by a comparison with these doctrines as developed in Christianism. Yet, from Osirianism the gradation is so gentle through the whole series of Nature-worships down to the lowest, that, having compared the story and worship of Christ with the worship and myth of Osiris, we find ourselves necessarily comparing the Christian story and worship with the worship and myth of Dionysus, nay, of Adonis, and of Thammuz,—of Thammuz, Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured The Syrian damsels to lament his fate, In amorous ditties all a summer’s day. * And hence if, to support the common belief in the supernatural origin of Christianism, it is concluded that the manifestly similar and unquestionably earlier doctrines of Osiria'nism had a supernatural origin; then, as we thus find it impossible to draw a line separating the highest of the Heathen religions from the lowest, a supernatural origin must also be supposed for all those Heathen religions in which we find—and where do we not find ?—the story of a divine man dying, and—though but to rise again—‘ in amorous ditties ’ annually lamented.t But so great are the interests at stake, that even an hypothesis so wild as this, it may be attempted to defend. For, as has just been suggested, if these Heathen beliefs in the incarnation of a God-man, and in Heaven and Hell, have no sort of supernatural authority; and if Osirianism is, indeed, the missing link that connects Christianism with every one of * Milton, Paradise Lost. f Arjve 7oa>r, Krflepeia, cfipepov ’tcrxeo nopp-Giv. Aet ere 7raAi^ /cAavom, 7raAtr eh %ros &Wo Saxpvtrai. Bion, Epitaph, Adon, �i6 Christ and Osiris. these religions ; what authority is there for the objective reality of any one of those supernatural existences, belief in which is thus found to be common to Christianism, and Heathenism generally ? An attempt, therefore, will doubtless be made to prove the supernatural and divine origin of Heathenism. And truly, when we recall Christian denunciations of, and missions to the ‘ Heathenwhen we find that the essential doctrines of ‘ Heathenism ’ are, just as in Christianism, a Trinity, an Incarnation, and a Future State of Reward and Punishment; hence that—as such doctrines can have no guarantee of objective reality, except they have had a super­ natural origin—all must have had such an origin, or none; and hence that, to guarantee the validity of their own beliefs, Christians must maintain the divine origin of those of Heathenism; there is seen such a profound and tragic irony in the situation that we become more than ever attached to the study of that sublime drama—the history of Man. 8. Any hope, however, of establishing a theory of the supernatural origin of the doctrines of Osirianism, how ‘ Christian ’ soever they may be, has had, I trust the ground cut from under it, by the facts, in the foregoing chapter brought together, in explanation of these doctrines as myths. For, before any theory of the supernatural origin of these doctrines can be maintained, the facts must be met which were in the foregoing chapter summarised as explanatory of the origin of the myths of Naturianism. These facts were, as will be remembered, first, those which define the character of the spontaneity of Mind; secondly, the facts of the conditions under which that spon­ taneity worked in primaeval societies; and thirdly, those explanations of modern spiritist conceptions which confirm the theory by which we explain the origin of primitive spiritist conceptions. Before any rational attempt, therefore, any attempt worthy of �Christ and Osiris. 17 scientific notice, can be made to account for the Christian character of the doctrines of Osirianism, and of the other ‘ Heathen ’ religions, by attributing to them some sort of supernatural origin in a ‘ primi­ tive revelationthose three great classes of facts, psychological, economical, and physio-psychological, in the foregoing chapter summarised, must be shown to be, not only severally, but jointly inadequate to explain, as not only of a natural, but as of a very low natural origin, the formation of such doctrines as those which give to Osirianism its Christian cha­ racter. Nor are these the only facts which must be met before a scientific hearing even can be gained for any hypothesis that would give to the doctrines, whether Christian or Osirian, of a Trinity, a life, death, and resurrection of a God-man, and an Other-world of Reward and Punishment, any sort of supernatural origin, and hence any degree of authori­ tative sanction. For besides the great classes of facts just specified, those also must be met which, in proving the conception of Mutual Determination to be the true and ultimate conception of Causation, show such hypotheses, as this of a supernatural origin of these doctrines, to belong properly only to, or to be derived from, the earlier, and more ignorant stages of men’s knowledge of the relations of things. But these facts have not as yet been met by any of the arguers for the supernatural origin, and there­ fore authoritative truth of theological doctrines. We must conclude, therefore, that if, similar though the doctrines of Christianism are to the myths of Osi­ rianism, and of Naturianism generally, a special and independent origin cannot be proved for them; they were but derived from, or but transformations of these myths. And if so, then, belief in them has, at bottom, no diviner sanction than the labour-driven ignorance, and priest-ridden servility which—result­ ing from the economical conditions under which �18 Christ and Osiris. mental spontaneities originally worked—led to what were but the mere subjective fictions of the myth­ creating imagination being taken for objective realities. Our hypothesis, as it first presented itself, was simply, that the similarity of the doctrines of Osirianism to those of Christianism was such as to be naturally explained only by showing that the earlier import­ antly influenced the development of the later Creed. We now, however, see that, if it is to such an origin that the doctrines of Christianism are to be traced, we cannot stop here. If the Christian doctrines of the Trinity, Incarnation, and Other-world, are in any way to be derived from the myths of Osirianism, or generally, of Naturianism; they had in these myths but their proximate origin. Their ultimate origin must, therefore, have been identical with the origin of these myths ; and, like that, to be found but in those base conditions, in the foregoing chapter set forth, of primitive spiritist conceptions. 9. Unquestionably, the verification of an hypo­ thesis which, to such an origin as this, would trace the myths of Christianity, is of the very gravest import. For it is almost incredibly tragical, that the sorrow of a Milton, for instance, in meditating on the death of Christ, had—so far as that sorrow was occasioned by the thought of a divine person, an incarnate Grod, who had come voluntarily on earth for the good of mankind—no more ground of actual objective fact than had the lamentations of the Syrian damsels, whom the great Christian poet, all unconscious of being himself the victim of a similar bitter-sweet delusion, scornfully represents as, ‘ in amorous ditties, ’ bewail­ ing such a fiction of their own imaginations as a Thammuz or Adonis. And yet, if we consider the hypothesis here suggested, on the Temple-roof at Karnak, in relation to our Ultimate Law of History, we shall see that such an origin as we have here been led to suppose for the doctrines of Christianism—we �Christ and Osiris. shall see that a transformation of the myths of Naturianism in such doctrines as those of Christianism—is but a deduction from our Ultimate Law, and a deduc­ tion, the verification of which will be one of the most important verifications of that Law. For, of that Law the great central affirmation is, that the passage from the earlier to the later mode of conceiving Causation is through a transitional age marked by the differentiation of Subjective and Objective; a differentiation implying a great development of in­ dividuality, of subjectivity, of morality; but not a differentiation implying anything more than greater abstractness merely in the primitive spiritist concep­ tion of Causation. But if so, then it will evidently follow that the spiritist beliefs which have dominated the First Age of Humanity, will not be destroyed, but only undergo a moral transformation. And what is it that we find in the doctrines of Christianism but jiist this—all the old myths of Osirianism revived in such an identical fashion intellectually, that,—put but Christ for Osiris,—and the general description of the one creed is an accurate description of the other ? Only in the moral spirit of Christianism is there a change. But this is just what, from our Ultimate Law of History, we should expect to find ; and the fact, therefore, which can be for it but a most important verification. This changed moral spirit, however, in no way affects the objective validity of the myths in which it is expressed. These continue to be but a language ; a language in which other sentiments were expressed before Christianity ; and a language which, after Christianity, will still survive for the ex­ pression of ideal emotion. And shocking though to some may be the thought of the utter unreality of the supernatural beings affirmed by Christianism, as by Osirianism; such is the spectacle here, at Karnak, presented, of the sublime tragedy of Human Exist­ ence; that, if it is in any degree duly felt, it will be �20 Christ and Osiris. impossible for one to shrink from clearly stating to oneself the truth, however destructive it may be. As other Ideals have perished, so,—it would be pre­ sumptuous to deny,—may ours. Very far are we from being the first who have experienced the agony of discovered delusion. PRINTED BY C. W. REYNELL, LITTLE PULTENEY STREET, HAYMARKET. � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Victorian Blogging Description An account of the resource A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library &amp; Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span> Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Conway Hall Library & Archives Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2018 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Conway Hall Ethical Society Text A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text. Original Format The type of object, such as painting, sculpture, paper, photo, and additional data Pamphlet Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Christ and Osiris Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Stuart-Glennie, John S. Description An account of the resource Place of publication: London Collation: 20 p. ; 18 cm. Notes: Reprinted by permission from "In the Morningland". Includes bibliographical references. From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Printed by C.W. Reynell, Little Pulteney Street, London. Osiris is the ancient Egyptian god whose annual death and resurrection personified the self-renewing vitality and fertility of nature. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Thomas Scott Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1876 Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CT185 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /><br /><span>This work (Christ and Osiris), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span> Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource application/pdf Type The nature or genre of the resource Text Language A language of the resource English Subject The topic of the resource Egypt Jesus Christ Conway Tracts Egypt-Religion Jesus Christ