fortune, peace, and plenty.  The two ideas could never be separated:  the fertilising flood was the waters of life, that conveyed every blessing, and even existence itself, to the provinces through which they flowed.  One other and most obvious hieroglyph completed the expressive allegory.  The Demon of Famine, who, should the waters fail of their inundation, or not reach the elevation indicated by the position of the transverse beam upon the upright, would reign in all his horrors over their desolated lands.  This symbolical personification was, therefore, represented as a miserable emaciated wretch, who had grown up ’as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground, who had no form nor comeliness; and when they should see him, there was no beauty that they should desire him.’  Meagre were his looks; sharp misery had worn him to the bone.  His crown of thorns indicated the sterility of the territories over which he reigned.  The reed in his hand, gathered from the banks of the Nile, indicated that it was only the mighty river, by keeping within its banks, and thus withholding its wonted munificence, that placed an unreal sceptre in his gripe.  He was nailed to the cross, in indication of his entire defeat.  And the superscription of his infamous title, ’THIS IS THE KING OF THE JEWS,’ expressively indicated that Famine, Want, or Poverty, ruled the destinies of the most slavish, beggarly, and mean race of men with whom they had the honour of being acquainted” ("Diegesis,” p. 187).  While it may very likely be true that the miserable aspect given to Jesus crucified is copied from some such original as Mr. Taylor here sketches, we are tolerably certain that the general idea of the crucifix had the solar origin described above.

Very closely joined to the notion of the cross is the idea of the TRINITY IN UNITY, and we need not delay upon it long.  It is as universal in Eastern religions as the cross, and comes from the same idea; all life springs from a trinity in unity in man, and, therefore, God is three in one.  This trinity is, of course, symbolised by the cross, and especially by the lotus, and any “three in one” leaf; from this has come to Christianity the conventional triple foliage so constantly seen in Church carvings, the fleur-de-lis, the triangle, etc., which are now—­as of old—­accepted as the emblems of the trinity.  The persons of the trinity are found each with his own name; in India, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, and it is Vishnu who becomes incarnate; in Egypt different cities had different trinities, and “we have a hieroglyphical inscription in the British Museum as early as the reign of Sevechus of the eighth century before the Christian era, showing that the doctrine of Trinity in Unity already formed part of their religion, and that in each of the two groups last mentioned the three gods only made one person” ("Egyptian Mythology and Egyptian Christology,” by S. Sharpe, p. 14).  Mr. Sharpe might have gone