throne of Ormuzd (Rev. xxii. i and 2). The Hindu creed has the same
story, and it is also found among the Chinese.

The monastic life comes to us from India and from Egypt; in both
countries solitaries and communities are found. Bartholémy St. Hilaire,
in his book on Buddha, gives an account of the Buddhist monasteries
which is worthy perusal. From Egypt the contagion of asceticism spread
over Christendom. "From Philo also we learn that a large body of
Egyptian Jews had embraced the monastic rules and the life of
self-denial, which we have already noted among the Egyptian priests.
They bore the name of Therapeuts. They spent their time in solitary
meditation and prayer, and only saw one another on the seventh day. They
did not marry; the women lived the same solitary and religious life as
the men. Fasting and mortification of the flesh were the foundation of
their virtues" ("Egyptian Mythology," S. Sharpe, p. 79). In these
Egyptian deserts grew up those wild and bigoted fanatics--some Jews,
some Pagans, and apparently no difference between them--who, appearing
later under the name of Christians, formed the original of the Western
monasticism. It was these monks who tore Hypatia to pieces in the great
church of Alexandria, and who formed the strength of "that savage and
illiterate party, who looked upon all sorts of erudition, particularly
that of a philosophical kind, as pernicious, and even destructive to
true piety and religion" (Mosheim's "Eccles. Hist," p. 93). There can be
no doubt of the identity of the Christians and the Therapeuts, and this
identity is the real key to the spread of "Christianity" in Egypt and
the surrounding countries. Eusebius tells us that Mark was said to be
the first who preached the Gospel in Egypt, and "so great a multitude of
believers, both of men and women, were collected there at the very
outset, that in consequence of their extreme philosophical discipline
and austerity, Philo has considered their pursuits, their assemblies,