PAGAN "ORIGINS" OF CHRISTIANITY

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1721, 11 April 1913, Page 6

PAGAN "ORIGINS" OF CHRISTIANITY

Tho H-qv. Father C. C. Jlartindalc, 5..1 speaking on the comparative history of religions at the Catholic Reference Library and Heading Itaom, London, recently stated that Pagan origins had been claimed for nearly everything in the ritual, ethical, mystical, sacramental, and even' historical systems of Christianity, lie criticised aiot only the detailed derivation of Christian from Pagan iJults, but the whole application of a mechanical notion of evolution to the growth of ideas and religion. He insisted that similarities, especially ritual or artistic, need not imply inter-coiineetion, and he deprecated the translation of Pagan records in Biblical language and the dissection of Christianity, which, he urged, was a vital whole and not a collection, of scraps. licferring tn the recnrrenco of fashionable theories, Father Martindale remarked that if a man committed himself during the • last fifty years to each fashionable theory with regard to religious criticism' he would have had to change constantly his whole mental attitude in obedience to what people told him was the last word in criticism. He would be like a man | trying lo walk in a sort of intellectual I hobble skirt.