world.”  The late Professor Banergea, of Calcutta, reaching the same conclusion, says:  “It is not easy to account for the genesis of these ideas in the Veda, of ’one born in the beginning Lord of creatures,’ offering himself a sacrifice for the benefit of deified mortals, except on the assumption that it is based upon the tradition of the ’Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.’”

No doubt modern scepticism might be slow to acknowledge any such inference as this; but as Professor Banergea was a high-caste Hindu of great learning, and was well acquainted with the subtleties of Hindu thought, his opinion should have great weight.  And when we remember how easily scientific scepticism is satisfied with the faintest traces of whatever strengthens its theories—­how thin are some of the generalizations of Herbert Spencer—­how very slight and fanciful are the resemblances of words which philologists often accept as indisputable proofs—­how far-fetched are the inferences sometimes drawn from the appearance of half-decayed fossils as proofs and even demonstrations of the law of evolution—­we need not be over-modest in setting forth these traces of an original divine element in the institution of typical sacrifices among men.

It is never safe to assume positively this or that meaning for a mysterious passage found in the sacred books of non-Christian systems, but there are many things which seem at least to illustrate important precepts of the Christian faith.  Thus the slain Osiris of the Egyptians was said to enter into the sufferings of mortals.  “Having suffered the great wound,” so the record runs, “he was wounded in every other wound.”  And we read in “The Book of the Dead” that “when the Lord of truth cleanses away defilement, evil is joined to the deity that the truth may expel the evil."[179] This seems to denote an idea of vicarious righteousness.

The Onondaga Indians had a tradition that the celestial Hiawatha descended from heaven and dwelt among their ancestors, and that upon the establishment of the League of the Iroquois he was called by the Great Spirit to sanctify that League by self-sacrifice.  As the Indian council was about to open, Hiawatha was bowed with intense suffering, which faintly reminds one of Christ’s agony in Gethsemane.  He foresaw that his innocent and only child would be taken from him.  Soon after a messenger from heaven smote her to the earth by his side.  Then, having drank this cup of sorrow, he entered the council and guided its deliberations with superhuman wisdom.[180] In citing this incident nothing more is intended than to call attention to some of the mysterious conceptions which seem to float dimly through the minds of the most savage races, and which show at the very least that the idea of vicarious sacrifice is not strange to mankind, but is often mysteriously connected with their greatest blessings.  The legend of “Prometheus Bound,” as we find it in the tragedies of AEschylus,