form! Thou art Brahma, Veeshnoo, and Mahesa!... I adore thee, who art
celebrated by a thousand names, and under various forms" ("Asiatic
Researches," Essay xi., by Mr. Wilmot; vol. i., p. 285). Plato's
teaching is, "that there is but one God" (ante, p. 364), and wherever we
search, we find that the more thoughtful proclaimed the unity of the
Deity. This doctrine must, then, go the way of the rest, and it must be
acknowledged that the boasted revelation is, once more, but the
speculation of man's unassisted reason.

Turning from these cardinal doctrines to the minor dogmas and ceremonies
of Christianity, we shall still discover it to be nothing but a survival
of Paganism.

BAPTISM seems to have been practised as a religious rite in all solar
creeds, and has naturally, therefore, found its due place in the latest
solar faith. "The idea of using water as emblematic of spiritual
washing, is too obvious to allow surprise at the antiquity of this rite.
Dr. Hyde, in his treatise on the 'Religion of the Ancient Persians,'
xxxiv. 406, tells us that it prevailed among that people. 'They do not
use circumcision for their children, but only baptism or washing for the
inward purification of the soul. They bring the child to the priest into
the church, and place him in front of the sun and fire, which ceremony
being completed, they look upon him as more sacred than before. Lord
says that they bring the water for this purpose in bark of the
Holm-tree; that tree is in truth the Haum of the Magi, of which we spoke
before on another occasion. Sometimes also it is otherwise done by
immersing him in a large vessel of water, as Tavernier tells us. After
such washing, or baptism, the priest imposes on the child the name given
by his parents'" ("Christian Records," Rev. Dr. Giles, p. 129).