Page:The Religion of Ancient Egypt.djvu/157

 and water is one of the five great ceremonies of the Hindus, and, as Professor Max Müller told you last year, that "without a son to perform the funeral rites, a Brahman believed that he could not enter into heaven." Here is undoubtedly a most remarkable coincidence between two religions which never came into contact. Nor can any even indirect influence of one upon the other be considered admissible. It is the logical process which has taken the same direction in both, and it can be traced in other branches of the Indo-European family.

Readers of ecclesiastical history will remember the fierce persecutions to which the first converts to Christianity were subjected in Persia, chiefly in consequence of the doctrines they held on the subject of virginity and celibacy, so much at variance with a religion which considered children as "a bridge leading to heaven;" but as this religion has special grounds of its own for condemning celibacy, over and above those which it derives from the Indo-European traditions, it is instructive to read Dr. Hearne's remarks on the traditions of Greece and Rome.

"The personal motives which led to marriage were in the early world very strong. The popular sentiment is emphatically expressed by Isaios when he says, 'No man who knows he must die can have so little regard for himself as to leave his family without descendants, for then there would be no one to render