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"In all countries local deities were the foundation of religion. Time always brings changes, and belief and ritual must change with the times if they are to keep any hold on the people. In other words, ideas of religion must keep pace with the advance of knowledge. Three great epochs in the evolution of religion can thus be traced in ancient Egypt.

    The first was in one of the prehistoric periods probably the Ger-zean, when the worship of the God who rises from the dead was introduced. This was not so much the beginning of agriculture as the introduction of new types of grain and of the vine, of the making of intoxicants from these new plants, and of the suppression of canni-balism. In other words, by the impact of a foreign culture there was an increase of civilisation by the assimilation of foreign ideas, by the growth of knowledge, and a consequent raising of the standard of living. The combination of these new ideas becomes manifest in the cult of Osiris.

The second epoch was the invasion of the dynastic kings.They had as their totem the Horus-falcon, and they fought with the people whose totems were the crocodile and the hippopotamus, revered under the name of Setekh. From this war there developed the saga of Horus and Setekh, which was originally distinct from the Osiris-legend of the dying God, but was gradually incorporated into it.

     The third epoch began in the iii-rd or iv-th dynasty when sun-worship was imported (probably from a cloudy northern country ) into an almost rainless land, where the sun was regarded as inimical. By the v-th dynasty this cult was completely established as the pre-rogative of the Pharaoh: and though it was later accepted by some of the nobles

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it never became the religion of the people. Its fullest development was under Akhenaten    

      The underlying basic religion and the three great changes in creed and ritual affected each other New ideas of God and of the relation between God and man were evolved by the clash or combination of the varying forms of religion, and this growth from a primitive and savage cult to the highest religious ideals can be best studied in the worship and ritual of Osiris. *

    The cult of Osiris is also the most important of all the Egyptian cults because it belonged to all classes from the highest to the lowest. It is perhaps the most perfect example of that belief which is found in so many countries, viz. That God is incarnate in man, which belief is usually accompanied by the rite of killing the Divine Man.

    The chosen man is almost invariably the king. In him dwells the Spirit of God, and he thus becomes God Incarnate. The indwelling Spirit is that of the Creator, the Giver of Life, and to the Incarnate God was therefore ascribed the power to give fertility to his people and land. In the eyes of his subjects the king was actually God. The appeal of such a belief is obvious, God Himself living and moving among his people, visible to their eyes , a man amongst men but at the same time possessing the mystic and mighty power of God. With this belief there went another belief, which to the primitive mind was the logical corollary. The Spirit was not necessarily im-mortal, any more than the body in which it was incarnate; nor was it exempt from the failure of the bodily powers which come with age. If the Divine Man grew old and became weaker, the Spirit within him also grew weaker; if the Divine Man died a natural death or was accidentally killed, the spirit shared the same fate. If the creator Spirit the Force of reproduction, were dead, what could happen to the worshippers but death and destruction: they themselves and all there belongings were doomed. To prevent so disastrous a fate, some means had to be devised for removing the Spirit from its ageing home and housing it in a younger, stronger body. The only way by which the Divine Spirit could be removed was by the death of the man in whom it was incarnate; and as he could not be allowed to die a natural death, he had to be killed. This had to be done with every kind of precaution, every kind of religious ceremony, for it was equivalent to killing a god. It follows then that while the king was young and active he was sacrosanct, not a finger might be raised against him, and his subjects, literally his worshippers, were ready to die in his defence; but when he showed any sign of age and his time had come not a finger could be raised to save him.

*See Wainwright, The Sky religion in Egypt

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In many countries the Divine King was allowed to reign for a term of years only, usually seven or nine or multiples of those numbers.  The custom altered, as all customs do with the lapse of years and the change in conditions, and the Divine King instead of being sacrificed himself was permitted to appoint a substitute who suffered in his stead. For a few days or weeks the substitute acted as king, enjoying all the pomp and privileges of that high estate, and at the end of the appointed time he was killed with the same ceremonial rites as if he had been the actual king. It is a remarkable fact that wherever there is any record of these practices, there is never any indication that the Divine Victim, whether the real one or his substitute, shirked his fate when the time came; each undertook the office knowing what the end would be.

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36    " Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here while I go and    pray yonder.

37    And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy.

38    Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me.

39    And he went a little farther, and fell on his face, and prayed saying , O my Father, if it be possi-ble, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.

40    And he cometh unto the dis-ciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith to Peter , What, could ye not watch with me one hour?

41    Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak.  /  

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42    He went away again the sec-ond time, and prayed, saying o my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it thy will be done.

43    And he came and found them asleep again: for their eyes were heavy.  

44    And he left them, and went away again, and prayed the third time, saying the same words.

45    Then cometh he to his disci-ples, and saith unto them, Sleep on now, and take your rest: be-hold, the hour is at hand, and the son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners."

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" In many countries the Divine King was allowed to reign for a term of years only, usually  seven or nine or multiples of those numbers.  /

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"... The truth is very simple. Six days later, Jesus takes three of those who were standing there: James and John, the sons of Zebedee, and Peter up into a high mountain apart, Matthew 17:1.

    We have now to part company with nearly every account of the Transfiguration. This stupendous event occupies

nine verses in Matthew and Luke and seven in Mark's gospel."    

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"...We now come to the act known as the Last Supper. All authorities agree that it was an initiation by which the disciples were enabled to transmit the blessing."

"...The Last Supper was not on the same Divine Plane as the Transfiguration. There was no 'Voice out of the clouds', nor the appearance of other sacred beings. The giving of bread and wine is not mentioned at all in the fourth gospel. In the three synoptic gospels, it is repeated in much the same words in seven to nine verses."

Reight Wah sister Margaret said Alizzed you were saying.

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"...Though Osiris united in himself all the deified natural phenomena which were regarded as producing fertility, it was his aspect as the ruler of both the Living and the Dead which has been most fully recorded. The god of fertility, incarnate in the king, was naturally the object of worship to every inhabitant of the country. His very name written with the throne and the eye (fig 5) reading Us-yri, means the Occupier of the Throne and shows him as the Pharaoh.

     Round the Pharaoh, the living Osiris, clustered a group of deities who belonged to him and not to the rest of the Egyptians; round Osiris, the dead Pharaoh, was another group of deities, who belonged to him and not to the rest of the Egyptians; round Osiris, the dead Pharaoh, was another group of deities, who origin-ally belonged only to him, but later were adopted by people of lesser rank when all the dead were fused with Osiris."

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"The Osiris group consists of those five deities who were regarded as the children of the Sky-goddess Nut, Osiris, Isis, Nephthys, Horus ( or Anubis ), and Setekh. These were not so much the brothers and sisters of Osiris as deities connected with his death and burial. Anubis was the god of death; Setekh was the killer; Horus devised the obsequies; Isis and Nephthys together were the mourners at the funeral.      The legend and cult of Osiris show the belief in the Incarnate God and also the custom of the ritual killing of the king. Though Plutarch* is a late writer, his account of Osiris can be checked by the records of Osiris- worship, and is proved to be substantially correct.

      In the legend there are found the introduction of new forms of agriculture by the god of fertility, the death by asphyxiation of that god, the dismemberment of the divine body, and the burial of the fragments in the earth. Another legend states that Isis collected the fragments of the body, raising a cenotaph in the places where they were found, and that she and Nephthys united the fragments together and by their magic power endued the body with life so that the god rose from the dead. He was thus the god of the dead and the resurrection, typified as the grain which is buried and springs alive out of the ground. In the cult of Osiris it was this aspect of the god which was emphasised, his death, burial and resurrection. The details of his life on earth before he was killed are not represented, except in his aspect as the Pharaoh.

    As often happens, the dead and buried god becomes the ruler of the Underworld, the king of the dead (plxxiii.2) The ruler of a kingdom, especially when like Osiris he governs the realms of bliss, has the right to grant or refuse admission into his kingdom. The god of the dead thus becomes the great and terrible Judge to whom the dead must answer for their deeds on earth."  

It was at this point that Brother Thomas resumed the selling of the male