The mediatorial office of Agni (Latin ignis), the Vedic Fire-god, has never been explained; nor has there ever been an attempt to clarify the relation between Agni as mediator and as avenger, or to show whether either of these functions is extraordinary. Usually the office is taken for granted, as if it were the regular business of Agni to act as a mediator between gods and men. It depends on what is called a mediator whether this is true or not; and the loose use of language has surprising results when non-Sanskrit scholars take up a word used by Sanskrit scholars in a literal sense and employ it in the theological sense. ‘Mediator’ means literally a go-between, or messenger, and Chaucerian English so uses the word; but the common theological connotation adds to this the idea that the messenger or go-between goes as an intercessor or reconciler between two opposed parties.

Now when the author of Ethnic Trinities (and even Tiele) undertakes to show the universality of Christian ideas in religious phenomena, he instances the Hindu Fire-god as a ‘mediator,’ using the word as applied in Christian theology. As a matter of fact, this gives a very incorrect view of Agni, who does not intercede with other gods for the sake of men. The idea that the fire of the sacrifice helps to appease the wrath of other gods is not wholly absent; but it is worth while to see when and where this idea is found, and especially to learn how it is reached and what it implies.