Reviews.

Freethought Review, Volume I, Issue 10, 1 July 1884, Page 13

Reviews.

Christianity: Its origin and esoteric meaning, by H. J. Browne ; a lecture delivered at the Music Hall, Melbourne. Melbourne : W. H. Terry.

The lecturer travels over a wide field in identifying Paganism with Christianity, the worship of Nature, in her various forms and moods, with the transformed worship of Christianity. " The conception of the new Man : god was evidently borrowed by his priestly creators from the Egyptian theology, in which Horus is represented as the son of Osiris (the Sun) and Isis (the Earth)." The life of Jesus as given in the Gospels is treated as a myth, and associated with the ideas of heathen nations. Nor are there any moral ideas in Christianity which are not to be found in some Pagan writer, Buckle being quoted to the following effect:— " That the system of morals professed by the New Testament contained no maxim which had not been previously enunciated, and that some of the most beautiful passages therein are quotations from Pagan authors, is well known to every scholar : but to assert that Christianity communicated to man moral truth previously unknown argues on the part of the assertor either gross ignorance or else wilful fraud." Mr Browne adds : " I may mention that in Acts there is a quotation from the Greek poet Eratus. In Titus there is one from Epimenides, and in Corinthians one from the Thais of Menander." Perhaps some of the analogies between the stars and incidents in the history of the Christian religion, will fail to carry conviction. The lecture on the whole gives proof of much research and study, and many will rise from its perusal knowing a great deal more than they ever knew before of the origin of Christianity.