Apollo was worshipped on Mt. Parnassus.

The name "diabolos" means "a slanderer."

There is no definition of religion in the Bible.

The first altar mentioned was that raised by Noah.

The cross was first displayed in churches about 431.

The term Puritan was first used in England in 1567.

In the Greek church all priests are called Papa, or Pope.

The Passion Play at Oberammergau was instituted in 1634.

Deism is the term for natural as opposed to revealed religion.

The poet Young wrote: " By night an atheist half believes a God."

The Jains are an East Indian sect, between the Hindus and Buddhists.

Marabouts are religious devotees held in great reverence by the Berbers.

Abrahamites were a Bohemian sect that prevailed about 1782, now extinct.

Some writers insist that absolute atheism has never existed in a reasoning mind.

It was Shakspeare who said that "the devil can cite Scripture for his purpose."

The adherents of Zoroastrianism, the ancient faith of Persia, are called Parsees.

The shamrock is said to have been used by St. Patrick as a symbol of the Trinity.

The oldest church edifice in this country is that of San Miguel, Santa Fe, N.M.

No general term equivalent to religion is found either in Chinese, Sanscrit or Hebrew.

Giaour is a term applied by the Turks to all who do not believe in Mahommedanism.

Tennyson calls faith "the great world's altar stairs, that slope thro' darkness up to God."

What are called the monastic vows are three in number - poverty, chastity and obedience.

The British and Foreign Bible Society has issued the Good Book in three hundred tongues.

The canonical books are those books of Holy Scripture accepted as genuine by Christian churches.

He was a cunning wag who said; "Orthodoxy is my doxy and heterodoxy is the other fellow's."

Washington endorsed the idea that if there had been no God men would have been obliged to imagine one.

The ascetics were ancient Christians who sought a higher and more spiritual life by means of severe penances.

Sir Isaac Newton said: "I find more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatever."

Charles Kingsley observes that true religion will make a man a more thorough gentleman than all the courts in Europe.

A strict definition of nihilism is that system of philosophy which totally rejects religion and substitutes nothing for it.

The ten persecutions of the early Christian church are dated from the years 64, 95, 106, 166, 202, 235, 249, 258, 274 and 303 A.D.

Freethinker was the name applied from one to two centuries ago to those deists who favored natural as against revealed religion.

The Stoics taught that God is the soul of the world, and that man's supreme good is to live in the perfect harmony of the universe.

There are two places in London where clergymen can buy sermons printed. They cover all subjects, and can be had for every season.

The Gnostics were an early speculative school, with principles based on oriental philosophy, combined with certain tenets of Christianity.

The belief in and worship of one personal God is called monotheism. Judaism, Christianity and Mahommedanism are all monotheistic.

Dervishes are Mohammedan devotees. They are divided into two sections - the Mevlevies, or dancing, and the Nakshbendies, or howling dervishes.

The chamber or vault beneath a church, generally under the altars, where the dead, and particularly ecclesiastics, were formerly entombed, is called a Crypt.

The Treacle Bible is Beck's Bible of 1549, in which the word balm is rendered treacle. The Bishops' Bible has tryacle (Jer. iii, 22; xlvi, 11; and Ezek. xxvii, 17).

The Apple of Sodom is a fruit mentioned by Strabo, Josephus, and others, as growing on the shores of the Dead Sea. It was tempting to the eye, but if tasted filled the mouth with bitter ashes. It is supposed to have been an oak-gall, or the fruit of the solanum.

The deluge is the inundation of the world recorded in the Mosaic history. It began December 7, 1656, a.d., or 2348, B.C., and lasted 377 days (Gen. vi, vii, viii). The mythological history of many nations mention inundations which correspond with the Scriptural account.

Antichrist is a name which occurs only in the epistles of St. John, and is identified by different writers with more or less probability with false Christs, and other enemies of Christianity.

The Angelus Bell is, in Catholic churches, a bell rung at morning, noon and sunset, to invite the faithful to recite the Angelic Salutation. It gives name to a very famous picture by Millet.

The great writers and teachers who succeeded the Apostles from the second to the sixth centuries are those called the Fathers of the Church. They included St. Athanasius, St. Augustine, etc.

The consistories were councils formed for maintaining ecclesiastical discipline and regulating divine worship in the German Lutheran Church, 1542-55. A consistory is the highest papal council.

Many of the South Sea islanders believe that paradise can be inherited only by persons of perfect physical forms. Where this belief prevails a man will die rather than submit to amputation.

An assembly of the clergy of cathedral churches, usually held in the chapterhouse, is called a chapter. The Parliaments of England were held in the chapter-house of Westminster Abbey from 1377 to 1547.

The five points of Calvinism as set forth by John Calvin of Picardy are: (1) Predestination and reprobation; (2) original sin; (3) particular redemption; (4) irresistible grace; (5) the perseverance of the saints.

Coverdale's Bible was issued in 1535. This translation of the Bible by Miles Coverdale, afterwards Bishop of Exeter, was dedicated to Henry VIII., and was the first English Bible sanctioned by royal authority.