herios as he was called), was torn to pieces, not unlike Osiris.
Even in far Mexico Quetzalcoatl, the Saviour, was born of a virgin, was
tempted, and fasted forty days, was done to death, and his second coming
looked for so eagerly that (as is well known) when Cortes appeared, the
Mexicans, poor things, greeted HIM as the returning god! (3) In Peru
and among the American Indians, North and South of the Equator, similar
legends are, or were, to be found.

(1) See for a considerable list Doane's Bible Myths, ch. xx.

(2) Hist. Sanskrit Literature, p. 80.

(3) See Kingsborough, Mexican Antiquities, vol. vi.

Briefly sketched as all this is, it is enough to prove quite abundantly
that the doctrine of the Saviour is world-wide and world-old, and that
Christianity merely appropriated the same and (as the other cults did)
gave it a special color. Probably the wide range of this doctrine would
have been far better and more generally known, had not the Christian
Church, all through, made the greatest of efforts and taken the greatest
precautions to extinguish and snuff out all evidence of pagan claims on
the subject. There is much to show that the early Church took this line
with regard to pre-Christian saviours; (1) and in later times the same
policy is remarkably illustrated by the treatment in the sixteenth
century of the writings of Sahagun the Spanish missionary--to whose work
I have already referred. Sahagun was a wonderfully broad-minded and fine
man who, while he did not conceal the barbarities of the Aztec religion,
was truthful enough to point out redeeming traits in the manners and
customs of the people and some resemblances to Christian doctrine and
practice. This infuriated the bigoted Catholics of the newly formed
Mexican Church. They purloined the manuscripts of Sahagun's Historia and
scattered and hid them about the country, and it was only after infinite
labor and an appeal to the Spanish Court that he got them together
again. Finally, at the age of eighty, having translated them into
Spanish (from the original Mexican) he sent them in two big volumes home
to Spain for safety; but there almost immediately THEY DISAPPEARED, and
could not be found! It was only after TWO CENTURIES that they ultimately
turned up (1790) in a Convent at Tolosa in Navarre. Lord Kingsborough
published them in England in 1830.

(1) See Tertullian's Apologia, c. 16; Ad Nationes, c. xii.

I have thus dwelt upon several of the