Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE ORIGIN OF CHRISTIANITY. ORTHODOX clergymen of the Christian Church have usually been unwilling to admit certain facts of history, fearing, doubtless, that they might tend to lessen confidence in the Orthodox Church. One of these facts is that Christianity is borrowed from the older religions : that it is, in many respects, almost an exact copy of previously existing religions, or, to say the least, that there is between it and the more ancient religions, a most remarkable similitude, agreement or coincidence. In view of this truth it is gratifying to read from a recent number of the New York Observer of "the organization of a society for the study of 'comparative religion,'" which the writer says is a " field of research which has been much neglected by Christian scholarship" (!) and that, to so orthodox a clergyman as the Secretary of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions, Rev. Dr. F. F. Ellinwood, this organization is principally due. The Observer states that " Christian apologists " formerly endeavored to show " that the Christian religion was unlike all others, both in its essence and requirements, and therefore, could not be referred to that origin ;" but that a change has taken place; that "the battle-ground of to-day is totally different. Christianity does not now, as formerly, deny or ignore these coincidences and resemblances." It asks the question " Do they (these coincidences and resemblances) exist ; " and answers, with the admission, "Yes, many and marvelous." And of what do these coincidences and resemblances consist ? The Observer answers : " They consist in ideas, truths, cosmogonies, symbols, feasts and festivals," and adds that " ethnological, philological and archaeological research has revealed astonishing coincidences between the religion of ...