of the second stage; and so one reaches the final point
of conjunction between Science and Religion.



II. SOLAR MYTHS AND CHRISTIAN FESTIVALS

To the ordinary public--notwithstanding the immense amount
of work which has of late been done on this subject--
the connection between Paganism and Christianity still seems
rather remote. Indeed the common notion is that Christianity
was really a miraculous interposition into and
dislocation of the old order of the world; and that the pagan
gods (as in Milton's Hymn on the Nativity) fled away in
dismay before the sign of the Cross, and at the sound
of the name of Jesus. Doubtless this was a view much
encouraged by the early Church itself--if only to enhance
its own authority and importance; yet, as is well known
to every student, it is quite misleading and contrary to
fact. The main Christian doctrines and festivals, besides
a great mass of affiliated legend and ceremonial, are really
quite directly derived from, and related to, preceding Nature
worships; and it has only been by a good deal of deliberate
mystification and falsification that this derivation has been
kept out of sight.

In these Nature-worships there may be discerned three
fairly independent streams of religious or quasi-religious
enthusiasm: (1) that connected with the phenomena of the
heavens, the movements of the Sun, planets and stars, and