THEOLOGY.

Very different from the real similarities that can be discovered in nearly
all the religions of the world, and which, owing to their deeply human
character, in no way necessitate the admission that one religion borrowed
from the other, are those minute coincidences between the Jewish and the
Pagan religions which have so often been discussed by learned theologians,
and which were intended by them as proof positive, either that the Pagans
borrowed their religious ideas direct from the Old Testament, or that some
fragments of a primeval revelation, granted to the ancestors of the whole
race of mankind, had been preserved in the temples of Greece and Italy.

Bochart, in his "Geographia Sacra," considered the identity of Noah and
Saturn so firmly established as hardly to admit of the possibility of a
doubt. The three sons of Saturn--Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto--he represented
as having been originally the three sons of Noah: Jupiter being Ham;
Neptune, Japhet; and Shem, Pluto. Even in the third generation the two
families were proved to have been one, for Phut, the son of Ham, or of
Jupiter Hammon, could be no other than Apollo Pythius; Canaan no other
than Mercury; and Nimrod no other than Bacchus, whose original name was
supposed to have been Bar-chus, the son of Cush. G. J. Vossius, in his
learned work, "De Origine et Progressu Idolatriae" (1688), identified
Saturn with Adam, Janus with Noah, Pluto with Ham, Neptune with Japhet,
Minerva with Naamah, Vulcan with Tubal Cain, Typhon with Og. Huet, the
friend of Bochart, and the colleague of Bossuet, went still farther; and
in his classical work, the "Demonstratio Evangelica," he attempted to
prove that the whole theology of the heathen nations was borrowed from
Moses, whom he identified not only with ancient law-givers, like Zoroaster
and Orpheus, but with gods and demi-gods, such as Apollo, Vulcan, Faunus,
and Priapus.

All this happened not more than two hundred years ago; and even a hundred
years ago, nay, even after the discovery of Sanskrit and the rise of
Comparative Philology, the troublesome ghost of Huet was by no means laid
at once. On the contrary, as soon as the ancient language and religion of
India became known in Europe, they were received by many people in the
same spirit. Sanskrit, like all other languages, was to be derived from
Hebrew, the ancient religion of the Brahmans from the Old Testament.

There was at that time an enthusiasm among