CHAPTER XXXIX. EXPLANATION.

Previous

After what we have seen concerning the numerous virgin-born, crucified and resurrected Saviours, believed on in the Pagan world for so many centuries before the time assigned for the birth of the Christian Saviour, the questions naturally arise: were they real personages? did they ever exist in the flesh? whence came these stories concerning them? have they a foundation in truth, or are they simply creations of the imagination?

The historical theory—according to which all the persons mentioned in mythology were once real human beings, and the legends and fabulous traditions relating to them were merely the additions and embellishments of later times—which was so popular with scholars of the last century, has been altogether abandoned.

Under the historical point of view the gods are mere deified mortals, either heroes who have been deified after their death, or Pontiff-chieftains who have passed themselves off for gods, and who, it is gratuitously supposed, found people stupid enough to believe in their pretended divinity. This was the manner in which, formerly, writers explained the mythology of nations of antiquity; but a method that pre-supposed an historical Crishna, an historical Osiris, an historical Mithra, an historical Hercules, an historical Apollo, or an historical Thor, was found untenable, and therefore, does not, at the present day, stand in need of a refutation. As a writer of the early part of the present century said:

"We shall never have an ancient history worthy of the perusal of men of common sense, till we cease treating poems as history, and send back such personages as Hercules, Theseus, Bacchus, etc., to the heavens, whence their history is taken, and whence they never descended to the earth."

The historical theory was succeeded by the allegorical theory, which supposes that all the myths of the ancients were allegorical and symbolical, and contain some moral, religious, or philosophical truth or historical fact under the form of an allegory, which came in process of time to be understood literally.

In the preceding pages we have spoken of the several virgin-born, crucified and resurrected Saviours, as real personages. We have attributed to these individuals words and acts, and have regarded the words and acts recorded in the several sacred books from which we have quoted, as said and done by them. But in doing this, we have simply used the language of others. These gods and heroes were not real personages; they are merely personifications of the Sun. As Prof. Max MÜller observes in his Lectures on the Science of Religion:

"One of the earliest objects that would strike and stir the mind of man, and for which a sign or a name would soon be wanted, is surely the Sun.[467:1] It is very hard for us to realize the feelings with which the first dwellers on the earth looked upon the Sun, or to understand fully what they meant by a morning prayer or a morning sacrifice. Perhaps there are few people who have watched a sunrise more than once or twice in their life; few people who have ever known the meaning of a morning prayer, or a morning sacrifice. But think of man at the very dawn of time.... think of the Sun awakening the eyes of man from sleep, and his mind from slumber! Was not the sunrise to him the first wonder, the first beginning of all reflection, all thought, all philosophy? Was it not to him the first revelation, the first beginning of all trust, of all religion? ....

"Few nations only have preserved in their ancient poetry some remnants of the natural awe with which the earlier dwellers on the earth saw that brilliant being slowly rising from out of the darkness of the night, raising itself by its own might higher and higher, till it stood triumphant on the arch of heaven, and then descended and sank down in its fiery glory into the dark abyss of the heaving and hissing sea. In the hymns of the Veda, the poet still wonders whether the Sun will rise again; he asks how he can climb the vault of heaven? why he does not fall back? why there is no dust on his path? And when the rays of the morning rouse him from sleep and call him back to new life, when he sees the Sun, as he says, stretching out his golden arms to bless the world and rescue it from the terror of darkness, he exclaims, 'Arise, our life, our spirit has come back! the darkness is gone, the light approaches.'"

Many years ago, the learned Sir William Jones said:

"We must not be surprised at finding, on a close examination, that the characters of all the Pagan deities, male and female, melt into each other, and at last into one or two; for it seems as well founded opinion, that the whole crowd of gods and goddesses of ancient Rome, and modern Varanes, mean only the powers of nature, and principally those of the SUN, expressed in a variety of ways, and by a multitude of fanciful names."[467:2]

Since the first learned president of the Royal Asiatic Society paved the way for the science of comparative mythology, much has been learned on this subject, so that, as the Rev. George W. Cox remarks, "recent discussions on the subject seem to justify the conviction that the foundations of the science of comparative mythology have been firmly laid, and that its method is unassailable."[468:1]

If we wish to find the gods and goddesses of the ancestors of our race, we must look to the sun, the moon, the stars, the sky, the earth, the sea, the dawn, the clouds, the wind, &c., which they personified and worshiped. That these have been the gods and goddesses of all nations of antiquity, is an established fact.[468:2]

The words which had denoted the sun and moon would denote not merely living things but living persons. From personification to deification the steps would be but few; and the process of disintegration would at once furnish the materials for a vast fabric of mythology. All the expressions which had attached a living force to natural objects would remain as the description of personal and anthropomorphous gods. Every word would become an attribute, and all ideas, once grouped around a simple object, would branch off into distinct personifications. The sun had been the lord of light, the driver of the chariot of the day; he had toiled and labored for the sons of men, and sunk down to rest, after a hard battle, in the evening. But now the lord of light would be Phoibos Apollon, while Helios would remain enthroned in his fiery chariot, and his toils and labors and death-struggles would be transferred to Hercules. The violet clouds which greet his rising and his setting would now be represented by herds of cows which feed in earthly pastures. There would be other expressions which would still remain as floating phrases, not attached to any definite deities. These would gradually be converted into incidents in the life of heroes, and be woven at length into systematic narratives. Finally, these gods or heroes, and the incidents of their mythical career, would receive each "a local habitation and a name." These would remain as genuine history, when the origin and meaning of the words had been either wholly or in part forgotten.

For the proofs of these assertions, the Vedic poems furnish indisputable evidence, that such as this was the origin and growth of Greek and Teutonic mythology. In these poems, the names of many, perhaps of most, of the Greek gods, indicate natural objects which, if endued with life, have not been reduced to human personality. In them Daphne is still simply the morning twilight ushering in the splendor of the new born sun; the cattle of Helios there are still the light-colored clouds which the dawn leads out into the fields of the sky. There the idea of Hercules has not been separated from the image of the toiling and struggling sun, and the glory of the life-giving Helios has not been transferred to the god of Delos and Pytho. In the Vedas the myths of Endymion, of Kephalos and Prokris, Orpheus and Eurydike, are exhibited in the form of detached mythical phrases, which furnished for each their germ. The analysis may be extended indefinitely: but the conclusion can only be, that in the Vedic language we have the foundation, not only of the glowing legends of Hellas, but of the dark and sombre mythology of the Scandinavian and the Teuton. Both alike have grown up chiefly from names which have been grouped around the sun; but the former has been grounded on those expressions which describe the recurrence of day and night, the latter on the great tragedy of nature, in the alternation of summer and winter.

Of this vast mass of solar myths, some have emerged into independent legends, others have furnished the groundwork of whole epics, others have remained simply as floating tales whose intrinsic beauty no poet has wedded to his verse.[469:1]

"The results obtained from the examination of language in its several forms leaves no room for doubt that the general system of mythology has been traced to its fountain head. We can no longer shut our eyes to the fact that there was a stage in the history of human speech, during which all the abstract words in constant use among ourselves were utterly unknown, when men had formed no notions of virtue or prudence, of thought and intellect, of slavery or freedom, but spoke only of the man who was strong, who could point the way to others and choose one thing out of many, of the man who was not bound to any other and able to do as he pleased.

"That even this stage was not the earliest in the history of language is now a growing opinion among philologists; but for the comparison of legends current in different countries it is not necessary to carry the search further back. Language without words denoting abstract qualities implies a condition of thought in which men were only awakening to a sense of the objects which surrounded them, and points to a time when the world was to them full of strange sights and sounds, some beautiful, some bewildering, some terrific, when, in short, they knew little of themselves beyond the vague consciousness of their existence, and nothing of the phenomena of the world without. In such a state they could but attribute to all that they saw or touched or heard, a life which was like their own in its consciousness, its joys, and its sufferings. That power of sympathizing with nature which we are apt to regard as the peculiar gift of the poet was then shared alike by all. This sympathy was not the result of any effort, it was inseparably bound up with the words which rose to their lips. It implied no special purity of heart or mind; it pointed to no Arcadian paradise where shepherds knew not how to wrong or oppress or torment each other. We say that the morning light rests on the mountains; they said that the sun was greeting his bride, as naturally as our own poet would speak of the sunlight clasping the earth, or the moonbeams as kissing the sea.

"We have then before us a stage of language corresponding to a stage in the history of the human mind in which all sensible objects were regarded as instinct with a conscious life. The varying phases of that life were therefore described as truthfully as they described their own feelings or sufferings; and hence every phase became a picture. But so long as the conditions of their life remained unchanged, they knew perfectly what the picture meant, and ran no risk of confusing one with another. Thus they had but to describe the things which they saw, felt, or heard, in order to keep up an inexhaustible store of phrases faithfully describing the facts of the world from their point of view. This language was indeed the result of an observation not less keen than that by which the inductive philosopher extorts the secrets of the natural world. Nor was its range much narrower. Each object received its own measure of attention, and no one phenomenon was so treated as to leave no room for others in their turn. They could not fail to note the changes of days and years, of growth and decay, of calm and storm; but the objects which so changed were to them living things, and the rising and setting of the sun, the return of winter and summer, became a drama in which the actors were their enemies or their friends.

"That this is a strict statement of facts in the history of the human mind, philology alone would abundantly prove; but not a few of these phrases have come down to us in their earliest form, and point to the long-buried stratum of language of which they are the fragments. These relics exhibit in their germs the myths which afterwards became the legends of gods and heroes with human forms, and furnished the groundwork of the epic poems, whether of the eastern or the western world.

"The mythical or mythmaking language of mankind had no partialities; and if the career of the Sun occupies a large extent of the horizon, we cannot fairly simulate ignorance of the cause. Men so placed would not fail to put into words the thoughts or emotions roused in them by the varying phases of that mighty world on which we, not less than they, feel that our life depends, although we may know something more of its nature.

"Thus grew up a multitude of expressions which described the sun as the child of the night, as the destroyer of the darkness, as the lover of the dawn and the dew—of phrases which would go on to speak of him as killing the dew with his spears, and of forsaking the dawn as he rose in the heaven. The feeling that the fruits of the earth were called forth by his warmth would find utterance in words which spoke of him as the friend and the benefactor of man; while the constant recurrence of his work would lead them to describe him as a being constrained to toil for others, as doomed to travel over many lands, and as finding everywhere things on which he could bestow his love or which he might destroy by his power. His journey, again, might be across cloudless skies, or amid alternations of storm and calm; his light might break fitfully through the clouds, or be hidden for many a weary hour, to burst forth at last with dazzling splendor as he sank down in the western sky. He would thus be described as facing many dangers and many enemies, none of whom, however, may arrest his course; as sullen, or capricious, or resentful; as grieving for the loss of the dawn whom he had loved, or as nursing his great wrath and vowing a pitiless vengeance. Then as the veil was rent at eventide, they would speak of the chief, who had long remained still, girding on his armor; or of the wanderer throwing off his disguise, and seizing his bow or spear to smite his enemies; of the invincible warrior whose face gleams with the flush of victory when the fight is over, as he greets the fair-haired Dawn who closes, as she had begun, the day. To the wealth of images thus lavished on the daily life and death of the Sun there would be no limit. He was the child of the morning, or her husband, or her destroyer; he forsook her and he returned to her, either in calm serenity or only to sink presently in deeper gloom.

"So with other sights and sounds. The darkness of night brought with it a feeling of vague horror and dread; the return of daylight cheered them with a sense of unspeakable gladness; and thus the Sun who scattered the black shade of night would be the mighty champion doing battle with the biting snake which lurked in its dreary hiding-place. But as the Sun accomplishes his journey day by day through the heaven, the character of the seasons is changed. The buds and blossoms of spring-time expand in the flowers and fruits of summer, and the leaves fall and wither on the approach of winter. Thus the daughter of the earth would be spoken of as dying or as dead, as severed from her mother for five or six weary months, not to be restored to her again until the time for her return from the dark land should once more arrive. But as no other power than that of the Sun can recall vegetation to life, this child of the earth would be represented as buried in a sleep from which the touch of the Sun alone could arouse her, when he slays the frost and cold which lie like snakes around her motionless form.

"That these phrases would furnish the germs of myths or legends teeming with human feeling, as soon as the meaning of the phrases were in part or wholly forgotten, was as inevitable as that in the infancy of our race men should attribute to all sensible objects the same kind of life which they were conscious of possessing themselves."

Let us compare the history of the Saviour which we have already seen, with that of the Sun, as it is found in the Vedas.

We can follow in the Vedic hymns, step by step, the development which changes the Sun from a mere luminary into a "Creator," "Preserver," "Ruler," and "Rewarder of the World"—in fact, into a Divine or Supreme Being.

The first step leads us from the mere light of the Sun to that light which in the morning wakes man from sleep, and seems to give new life, not only to man, but to the whole of nature. He who wakes us in the morning, who recalls all nature to new life, is soon called "The Giver of Daily Life."

Secondly, by another and bolder step, the Giver of Daily Light and Life becomes the giver of light and life in general. He who brings light and life to-day, is the same who brought light and life on the first of days. As light is the beginning of the day, so light was the beginning of creation, and the Sun, from being a mere light-bringer or life-giver, becomes a Creator, and, if a Creator, then soon also a Ruler of the World.

Thirdly, as driving away the dreaded darkness of the night, and likewise as fertilizing the earth, the Sun is conceived as a "Defender" and kind "Protector" of all living things.

Fourthly, the Sun sees everything, both that which is good and that which is evil; and how natural therefore that the evil-doer should be told that the sun sees what no human eye may have seen, and that the innocent, when all other help fails him, should appeal to the sun to attest his guiltlessness!

Let us examine now, says Prof. MÜller, from whose work we have quoted the above, a few passages (from the Rig-Veda) illustrating every one of these perfectly natural transitions.

"In hymn vii. we find the Sun invoked as 'The Protector of everything that moves or stands, of all that exists.'"

"Frequent allusion is made to the Sun's power of seeing everything. The stars flee before the all-seeing Sun, like thieves (R. V. vii.). He sees the right and the wrong among men (Ibid.). He who looks upon the world, knows also all the thoughts in men (Ibid.)."

"As the Sun sees everything and knows everything, he is asked to forget and forgive what he alone has seen and knows (R. V. iv.)."

"The Sun is asked to drive away illness and bad dreams (R. V. x.)."

"Having once, and more than once, been invoked as the life-bringer, the Sun is also called the breath or life of all that moves and rests (R. V. i.); and lastly, he becomes the maker of all things, by whom all the worlds have been brought together (R. V. x.), and ... Lord of man and of all living creatures."

"He is the God among gods (R. V. i.); he is the divine leader of all the gods (R. V. viii.)."

"He alone rules the whole world (R. V. v.). The laws which he has established are firm (R. V. iv.), and the other gods not only praise him (R. V. vii.), but have to follow him as their leader (R. V. v.)."[473:1]

That the history of Christ Jesus, the Christian Saviour,—"the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,"[473:2]—is simply the history of the Sun—the real Saviour of mankind—is demonstrated beyond a doubt from the following indisputable facts:

1. The birth of Christ Jesus is said to have taken place at early dawn[473:3] on the 25th day of December. Now, this is the Sun's birthday. At the commencement of the sun's apparent annual revolution round the earth, he was said to have been born, and, on the first moment after midnight of the 24th of December, all the heathen nations of the earth, as if by common consent, celebrated the accouchement of the "Queen of Heaven," of the "Celestial Virgin of the Sphere," and the birth of the god Sol. On that day the sun having fully entered the winter solstice, the Sign of the Virgin was rising on the eastern horizon. The woman's symbol of this stellar sign was represented first by ears of corn, then with a new-born male child in her arms. Such was the picture of the Persian sphere cited by Aben-Ezra:

"The division of the first decan of the Virgin represents a beautiful virgin with flowing hair, sitting in a chair, with two ears of corn in her hand, and suckling an infant called Iesus by some nations, and Christ in Greek."[474:1]

This denotes the Sun, which, at the moment of the winter solstice, precisely when the Persian magi drew the horoscope of the new year, was placed on the bosom of the Virgin, rising heliacally in the eastern horizon. On this account he was figured in their astronomical pictures under the form of a child suckled by a chaste virgin.[474:2]

Thus we see that Christ Jesus was born on the same day as Buddha, Mithras, Osiris, Horus, Hercules, Bacchus, Adonis and other personifications of the Sun.[474:3]

2. Christ Jesus was born of a Virgin. In this respect he is also the Sun, for 'tis the sun alone who can be born of an immaculate virgin, who conceived him without carnal intercourse, and who is still, after the birth of her child, a virgin.

This Virgin, of whom the Sun, the true "Saviour of Mankind," is born, is either the bright and beautiful Dawn,[474:4] or the dark Earth,[474:5] or Night.[474:6] Hence we have, as we have already seen, the Virgin, or Virgo, as one of the signs of the zodiac.[474:7]

This Celestial Virgin was feigned to be a mother. She is represented in the Indian Zodiac of Sir William Jones, with ears of corn in one hand, and the lotus in the other. In Kircher's Zodiac of Hermes, she has corn in both hands. In other planispheres of the Egyptian priests she carries ears of corn in one hand, and the infant Saviour Horus in the other. In Roman Catholic countries, she is generally represented with the child in one hand, and the lotus or lily in the other. In Vol. II. of Montfaucon's work, she is represented as a female nursing a child, with ears of corn in her hand, and the legend IAO. She is seated on clouds, a star is at her head. The reading of the Greek letters, from right to left, show this to be very ancient.

In the Vedic hymns Aditi, the Dawn, is called the "Mother of the Gods." "She is the mother with powerful, terrible, with royal sons." She is said to have given birth to the Sun.[475:1] "As the Sun and all the solar deities rise from the east," says Prof. Max MÜller, "we can well understand how Aditi (the Dawn) came to be called the 'Mother of the Bright Gods.'"[475:2]

The poets of the Veda indulged freely in theogonic speculations without being frightened by any contradictions. They knew of Indra as the greatest of gods, they knew of Agni as the god of gods, they knew of Varuna as the ruler of all; but they were by no means startled at the idea that their Indra had a mother, or that Varuna was nursed in the lap of Aditi. All this was true to nature; for their god was the Sun, and the mother who bore and nursed him was the Dawn.[475:3]

We find in the Vishnu Purana, that Devaki (the virgin mother of the Hindoo Saviour Crishna, whose history, as we have seen, corresponds in most every particular with that of Christ Jesus) is called Aditi,[475:4] which, in the Rig-Veda, is the name for the Dawn. Thus we see the legend is complete. Devaki is Aditi, Aditi is the Dawn, and the Dawn is the Virgin Mother. "The Saviour of Mankind" who is born of her is the Sun, the Sun is Crishna, and Crishna is Christ.

In the Mahabharata, Crishna is also represented as the "Son of Aditi."[475:5] As the hour of his birth grew near, the mother became more beautiful, and her form more brilliant.[475:6]

Indra, the sun, who was worshiped in some parts of India as a Crucified God, is also represented in the Vedic hymns as the Son of the Dawn. He is said to have been born of Dahana, who is Daphne, a personification of the Dawn.[475:7]

The humanity of this SOLAR GOD-MAN, this demiurge, is strongly insisted on in the Rig-Veda. He is the son of God, but also the son of Aditi. He is Purusha, the man, the male. Agni is frequently called the "Son of man." It is expressly explained that the titles Agni, Indra, Mitra, &c., all refer to one Sun god under "many names." And when we find the name of a mortal, Yama, who once lived upon earth, included among these names, the humanity of the demiurge becomes still more accentuated, and we get at the root idea.

Horus, the Egyptian Saviour, was the son of the virgin Isis. Now, this Isis, in Egyptian mythology, is the same as the virgin Devaki in Hindoo mythology. She is the Dawn.[476:1] Isis, as we have already seen, is represented suckling the infant Horus, and, in the words of Prof. Renouf, we may say, "in whose lap can the Sun be nursed more fitly than in that of the Dawn?"[476:2]

Among the goddesses of Egypt, the highest was Neith, who reigned inseparably with Amun in the upper sphere. She was called "Mother of the gods," "Mother of the sun." She was the feminine origin of all things, as Amun was the male origin. She held the same rank at Sais as Amun did at Thebes. Her temples there are said to have exceeded in colossal grandeur anything ever seen before. On one of these was the celebrated inscription thus deciphered by Champollion:

"I am all that has been, all that is, all that will be. No mortal has ever raised the veil that conceals me. My offspring is the Sun."

She was mother of the Sun-god Ra, and, says Prof. Renouf, "is commonly supposed to represent Heaven; but some expressions which are hardly applicable to heaven, render it more probable that she is one of the many names of the Dawn."[476:3]

If we turn from Indian and Egyptian, to Grecian mythology, we shall also find that their Sun-gods and solar heroes are born of the same virgin mother. Theseus was said to have been born of Aithra, "the pure air," and Œdipus of Iokaste, "the violet light of morning." Perseus was born of the virgin Danae, and was called the "Son of the bright morning."[476:4] In IÔ, the mother of the "sacred bull,"[476:5] the mother also of Hercules, we see the violet-tinted morning from which the sun is born; all these gods and heroes being, like Christ Jesus, personifications of the Sun.[476:6]

"The Saviour of Mankind" was also represented as being born of the "dusky mother," which accounts for many Pagan, and so-called Christian, goddesses being represented black.[477:1] This is the dark night, who for many weary hours travails with the birth of her child. The Sun, which scatters the darkness, is also the child of the darkness, and so the phrase naturally went that he was born of her. Of the two legends related in the poems afterwards combined in the "Hymn to Apollo," the former relates the birth of Apollo, the Sun, from Leto, the Darkness, which is called his mother.[477:2] In this case, Leto would be personified as a "black virgin," either with or without the child in her arms.

The dark earth was also represented as being the mother of the god Sun, who apparently came out of, or was born of her, in the East,[477:3] as Minos (the sun) was represented to have been born of Ida (the earth).[477:4]

In Hindoo mythology, the Earth, under the name of Prithivi, receives a certain share of honors as one of the primitive goddesses of the Veda, being thought of as the "kind mother." Moreover, various deities were regarded as the progeny resulting from the fancied union of the Earth with Dyaus (Heaven).[477:5]

Our Aryan forefathers looked up to the heavens and they gave it the name of Dyaus, from a root-word which means "to shine." And when, out of the forces and forms of nature, they afterwards fashioned other gods, this name of Dyaus became Dyaus pitar, the Heaven-father, or Lord of All; and in far later times, when the western Aryans had found their home in Europe, the Dyaus pitar of the central Asian land became the Zeupater of the Greeks, and the Jupiter of the Romans, and the first part of his name gave us the word Deity.

According to Egyptian mythology, Isis was also the Earth.[477:6] Again, from the union of Seb and Nut sprung the mild Osiris. Seb is the Earth, Nut is Heaven, and Osiris is the Sun.[477:7]

Tacitus, the Roman historian, speaking of the Germans in A. D. 98, says:

"There is nothing in these several tribes that merit attention, except that they all agree in worshiping the goddess Earth, or as they call her, Herth, whom they consider as the common mother of all."[477:8]

These virgin mothers, and virgin goddesses of antiquity, were also, at times, personifications of the Moon, or of Nature.[478:1]

Who is "God the Father," who overshadows the maiden? The overshadowing of the maiden by "God the Father," whether he be called Zeus, Jupiter or Jehovah, is simply the Heaven, the Sky, the "All-father,"[478:2] looking down upon with love, and overshadowing the maiden, the broad flushing light of Dawn, or the Earth. From this union the Sun is born without any carnal intercourse. The mother is yet a virgin. This is illustrated in Hindoo mythology by the union of Pritrivi, "Mother Earth," with Dyaus, "Heaven." Various deities were regarded as their progeny.[478:3] In the Vedic hymns the Sun—the Lord and Saviour, the Redeemer and Preserver of Mankind—is frequently called the "Son of the Sky."[478:4]

According to Egyptian mythology, Seb (the Earth) is overshadowed by Nut (Heaven), the result of this union being the beneficent Lord and Saviour, Osiris.[478:5] The same thing is to be found in ancient Grecian mythology. Zeus or Jupiter is the Sky,[478:6] and Danae, Leto, Iokaste, Io and others, are the Dawn, or the violet light of morning.[478:7]

"The Sky appeared to men (says Plutarch), to perform the functions of a Father, as the Earth those of a Mother. The sky was the father, for it cast seed into the bosom of the earth, which in receiving them became fruitful, and brought forth, and was the mother."[479:1]

This union has been sung in the following verses by Virgil:

"Tum pater omnipotens fecundis imbribis Æther
Conjugis in grenium lÆtÆ descendit."

(Geor. ii.)

The Phenician theology is founded on the same principles. Heaven and Earth (called Ouranos and GhÈ) are at the head of a genealogy of Æons, whose adventures are conceived in the mythological style of these physical allegorists.[479:2]

In the Samothracian mysteries, which seem to have been the most anciently established ceremonies of the kind in Europe, the Heaven and the Earth were worshiped as a male and female divinity, and as the parents of all things.[479:3]

The Supreme God (the Al-fader), of the ancient Scandinavians was Odin, a personification of the Heavens. The principal goddess among them was Frigga, a personification of the Earth. It was the opinion among these people that this Supreme Being or Celestial God had united with the Earth (Frigga) to produce "Baldur the Good" (the Sun), who corresponds to the Apollo of the Greeks and Romans, and the Osiris of the Egyptians.[479:4]

Xiuletl, in the Mexican language, signifies Blue, and hence was a name which the Mexican gave to Heaven, from which Xiuleticutli is derived, an epithet signifying "the God of Heaven," which they bestowed upon Tezcatlipoca, who was the "Lord of All," the "Supreme God." He it was who overshadowed the Virgin of Tula, Chimelman, who begat the Saviour Quetzalcoatle (the Sun).

3. His birth was foretold by a star. This is the bright morning star

"Fairest of stars, last in the train of Night,
If better, thou belongst not to the Dawn,
Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling morn
With thy bright circlet"—

which heralds the birth of the god Sol, the beneficent Saviour.

A glance at a geography of the heavens will show the "chaste, pure, immaculate Virgin, suckling an infant," preceded by a Star, which rises immediately preceding the Virgin and her child. This can truly be called "his Star," which informed the "Wise Men," the "Magi"—Astrologers and Sun-worshipers—and "the shepherds who watched their flocks by night" that the Saviour of Mankind was about to be born.

4. The Heavenly Host sang praises. All nature smiles at the birth of the Heavenly Being. "To him all angels cry aloud, the heavens, and all the powers therein." "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will towards men." "The quarters of the horizon are irradiate with joy, as if moonlight was diffused over the whole earth." "The spirits and nymphs of heaven dance and sing." "Caressing breezes blow, and a marvelous light is produced." For the Lord and Saviour is born, "to give joy and peace to men and Devas, to shed light in the dark places, and to give sight to the blind."[480:1]

5. He was visited by the Magi. This is very natural, for the Magi were Sun-worshipers, and at early dawn on the 25th of December, the astrologers of the Arabs, Chaldeans, and other Oriental nations, greeted the infant Saviour with gold, frankincense and myrrh. They started to salute their God long before the rising of the Sun, and having ascended a high mountain, they waited anxiously for his birth, facing the East, and there hailed his first rays with incense and prayer.[480:2] The shepherds also, who remained in the open air watching their flocks by night, were in the habit of prostrating themselves, and paying homage to their god, the Sun. And, like the poet of the Veda, they said:

"Will the powers of darkness be conquered by the god of light?"

And when the Sun rose, they wondered how, just born, he was so mighty. They greeted him:

"Hail, Orient Conqueror of Gloomy Night."

And the human eye felt that it could not bear the brilliant majesty of him whom they called, "The Life, the Breath, the Brilliant Lord and Father." And they said:

"Let us worship again the Child of Heaven, the Son of Strength, Arusha, the Bright Light of the Sacrifice." "He rises as a mighty flame, he stretches out his wide arms, he is even like the wind." "His light is powerful, and his (virgin) mother, the Dawn, gives him the best share, the first worship among men."[480:3]

6. He was born in a Cave. In this respect also, the history of Christ Jesus corresponds with that of other Sun-gods and Saviours, for they are nearly all represented as being born in a cave or dungeon. This is the dark abode from which the wandering Sun starts in the morning.[481:1] As the Dawn springs fully armed from the forehead of the cloven Sky, so the eye first discerns the blue of heaven, as the first faint arch of light is seen in the East. This arch is the cave in which the infant is nourished until he reaches his full strength—in other words, until the day is fully come.

As the hour of his birth drew near, the mother became more beautiful, her form more brilliant, while the dungeon was filled with a heavenly light as when Zeus came to Danae in a golden shower.[481:2]

At length the child is born, and a halo of serene light encircles his cradle, just as the Sun appears at early dawn in the East, in all its splendor. His presence reveals itself there, in the dark cave, by his first rays, which brightens the countenances of his mother and others who are present at his birth.[481:3]

6. He was ordered to be put to death. All the Sun-gods are fated to bring ruin upon their parents or the reigning monarch.[481:4] For this reason, they attempt to prevent his birth, and failing in this, seek to destroy him when born. Who is the dark and wicked Kansa, or his counterpart Herod? He is Night, who reigns supreme, but who must lose his power when the young prince of glory, the Invincible, is born.

The Sun scatters the Darkness; and so the phrase went that the child was to be the destroyer of the reigning monarch, or his parent, Night; and oracles, and magi, it was said, warned the latter of the doom which would overtake him. The newly-born babe is therefore ordered to be put to death by the sword, or exposed on the bare hillside, as the Sun seems to rest on the Earth (Ida) at its rising.[481:5]

In oriental mythology, the destroying principle is generally represented as a serpent or dragon.[482:1] Now, the position of the sphere on Christmas-day, the birthday of the Sun, shows the Serpent all but touching, and certainly aiming at the woman—that is, the figure of the constellation Virgo—who suckles the child Iessus in her arms. Thus we have it illustrated in the story of the snake who was sent to kill Hercules, when an infant in his cradle;[482:2] also in the story of Typhon, who sought the life of the infant Saviour Horus. Again, it is illustrated in the story of the virgin mother Astrea, with her babe beset by Orion, and of Latona, the mother of Apollo, when pursued by the monster.[482:3] And last, that of the virgin mother Mary, with her babe beset by Herod. But like Hercules, Horus, Apollo, Theseus, Romulus, Cyrus and other solar heroes, Christ Jesus has yet a long course before him. Like them, he grows up both wise and strong, and the "old Serpent" is discomfited by him, just as the sphynx and the dragon are put to night by others.

7. He was tempted by the devil. The temptation by, and victory over the evil one, whether Mara or Satan, is the victory of the Sun over the clouds of storm and darkness.[482:4] Growing up in obscurity, the day comes when he makes himself known, tries himself in his first battles with his gloomy foes, and shines without a rival. He is rife for his destined mission, but is met by the demon of storm, who runs to dispute with him in the duel of the storm. In this struggle against darkness the beneficent hero remains the conqueror, the gloomy army of Mara, or Satan, broken and rent, is scattered; the Apearas, daughters of the demon, the last light vapors which float in the heaven, try in vain to clasp and retain the vanquisher; he disengages himself from their embraces, repulses them; they writhe, lose their form, and vanish.

Free from every obstacle, and from every adversary, he sets in motion across space his disk with a thousand rays, having avenged the attempts of his eternal foe. He appears then in all his glory, and in his sovereign splendor; the god has attained the summit of his course, it is the moment of triumph.

8. He was put to death on the cross. The Sun has now reached his extreme Southern limit, his career is ended, and he is at last overcome by his enemies. The powers of darkness, and of winter, which had sought in vain to wound him, have at length won the victory. The bright Sun of summer is finally slain, crucified in the heavens, and pierced by the arrow, spear or thorn of winter.[483:1] Before he dies, however, he sees all his disciples—his retinue of light, and the twelve hours of the day, or the twelve months of the year—disappear in the sanguinary mÊlÉe of the clouds of the evening.

Throughout the tale, the Sun-god was but fulfilling his doom. These things must be. The suffering of a violent death was a necessary part of the mythos; and, when his hour had come, he must meet his doom, as surely as the Sun, once risen, must go across the sky, and then sink down into his bed beneath the earth or sea. It was an iron fate from which there was no escaping.

Crishna, the crucified Saviour of the Hindoos, is a personification of the Sun crucified in the heavens. One of the names of the Sun in the Vedic hymns is Vishnu,[483:2] and Crishna is Vishnu in human form.[483:3]

In the hymns of the Rig-Veda the Sun is spoken of as "stretching out his arms," in the heavens, "to bless the world, and to rescue it from the terror of darkness."

Indra, the crucified Saviour worshiped in Nepal and Tibet,[484:1] is identical with Crishna, the Sun.[484:2]

The principal Phenician deity, El, which, says Parkhurst, in his Hebrew Lexicon, "was the very name the heathens gave to their god Sol, their Lord or Ruler of the Hosts of Heaven," was called "The Preserver (or Saviour) of the World," for the benefit of which he offered a mystical sacrifice.[484:3]

The crucified Iao ("Divine Love" personified) is the crucified Adonis, the Sun. The Lord and Saviour Adonis was called Iao.[484:4]

Osiris, the Egyptian Saviour, was crucified in the heavens. To the Egyptian the cross was the symbol of immortality, an emblem of the Sun, and the god himself was crucified to the tree, which denoted his fructifying power.[484:5]

Horus was also crucified in the heavens. He was represented, like Crishna and Christ Jesus, with outstretched arms in the vault of heaven.[484:6]

The story of the crucifixion of Prometheus was allegorical, for Prometheus was only a title of the Sun, expressing providence or foresight, wherefore his being crucified in the extremities of the earth, signified originally no more than the restriction of the power of the Sun during the winter months.[484:7]

Who was Ixion, bound on the wheel? He was none other than the god Sol, crucified in the heavens.[484:8] Whatever be the origin of the name, Ixion is the "Sun of noonday," crucified in the heavens, whose four-spoked wheel, in the words of Pindar, is seen whirling in the highest heaven.[484:9]

The wheel upon which Ixion and criminals were said to have been extended was a cross, although the name of the thing was dissembled among Christians; it was a St. Andrew's cross, of which two spokes confined the arms, and two the legs. (See Fig. No. 35.)

The allegorical tales of the triumphs and misfortunes of the Sun-gods of the ancient Greeks and Romans, signify the alternate exertion of the generative and destructive attributes.

bird suspended on St. Andrew's cross

Hercules is torn limb from limb; and in this catastrophe we see the blood-red sunset which closes the career of Hercules.[485:1] The Sun-god cannot rise to the life of the blessed gods until he has been slain. The morning cannot come until the EÔs who closed the previous day has faded away and died in the black abyss of night.

Achilleus and Meleagros represent alike the short-lived Sun, whose course is one of toil for others, ending in an early death, after a series of wonderful victories alternating with periods of darkness and gloom.[485:2]

In the tales of the Trojan war, it is related of Achilleus that he expires at the Skaian, or western gates of the evening. He is slain by Paris, who here appears as the Pani, or dark power, who blots out the light of the Sun from the heaven.[485:3]

We have also the story of Adonis, born of a virgin, and known in the countries where he was worshiped as "The Saviour of Mankind," killed by the wild boar, afterwards "rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven." This Adonis, Adonai—in Hebrew "My Lord"—is simply the Sun. He is crucified in the heavens, put to death by the wild boar, i. e., Winter. "Babylon called Typhon or Winter the boar; they said he killed Adonis or the fertile Sun."[485:4]

The Crucified Dove worshiped by the ancients, was none other than the crucified Sun. Adonis was called the Dove. At the ceremonies in honor of his resurrection from the dead, the devotees said, "Hail to the Dove! the Restorer of Light."[485:5] Fig. No. 35 is the "Crucified Dove" as described by Pindar, the great lyric poet of Greece, born about 522 B. C.

"We read in Pindar, (says the author of a learned work entitled "Nimrod,") of the venerable bird Iynx bound to the wheel, and of the pretended punishment of Ixion. But this rotation was really no punishment, being, as Pindar saith, voluntary, and prepared by himself and for himself; or if it was, it was appointed in derision of his false pretensions, whereby he gave himself out as the crucified spirit of the world." "The four spokes represent St. Andrew's cross, adapted to the four limbs extended, and furnish perhaps the oldest profane allusion to the crucifixion. The same cross of St. Andrew was the Taw, which Ezekiel commands them to mark upon the foreheads of the faithful, as appears from all Israelitish coins whereon that letter is engraved. The same idea was familiar to Lucian, who calls T the letter of crucifixion. Certainly, the veneration for the cross is very ancient. Iynx, the bird of Mautic inspiration, bound to the four-legged wheel, gives the notion of Divine Love crucified. The wheel denotes the world, of which she is the spirit, and the cross the sacrifice made for that world."[486:1]

This "Divine Love," of whom Nimrod speaks, was "The First-begotten Son" of the Platonists. The crucifixion of "Divine Love" is often found among the Greeks. IÖnah or Juno, according to the Iliad, was bound with fetters, and suspended in space, between heaven and earth. Ixion, Prometheus, Apollo of Miletus, (anciently the greatest and most flourishing city of Ionia, in Asia Minor), were all crucified.[486:2]

Semi-Ramis was both a queen of unrivaled celebrity, and also a goddess, worshiped under the form of a Dove. Her name signifies the Supreme Dove. She is said to have been slain by the last survivor of her sons, while others say, she flew away as a bird—a Dove. In both Grecian and Hindoo histories this mystical queen Semiramis is said to have fought a battle on the banks of the Indus, with a king called Staurobates, in which she was defeated, and from which she flew away in the form of a Dove. Of this Nimrod says:

"The name Staurobates, the king by whom Semiramis was finally overpowered, alluded to the cross on which she perished," and that, "the crucifixion was made into a glorious mystery by her infatuated adorers."[486:3]

Here again we have the crucified Dove, the Sun, for it is well known that the ancients personified the Sun female as well as male.

We have also the fable of the Crucified Rose, illustrated in the jewel of the Rosicrucians. The jewel of the Rosicrucians is formed of a transparent red stone, with a red cross on one side, and a red rose on the other—thus it is a crucified rose. "The Rossi, or Rosy-crucians' idea concerning this emblematic red cross," says Hargrave Jennings, in his History of the Rosicrucians, "probably came from the fable of Adoniswho was the Sun whom we have so often seen crucified—being changed into a red rose by Venus."[487:1]

The emblem of the Templars is a red rose on a cross. "When it can be done, it is surrounded with a glory, and placed on a calvary (Fig. No. 36). This is the Naurutz, Natsir, or Rose of Isuren, of Tamul, or Sharon, or the Water Rose, the Lily Padma, Pena, Lotus, crucified in the heavens for the salvation of man."[487:2]

emblem of the Templars, a red rose on a cross

Christ Jesus was called the Rose—the Rose of Sharon—of Isuren. He was the renewed incarnation of Divine Wisdom. He was the son of Maia or Maria. He was the Rose of Sharon and the Lily of the Valley, which bloweth in the month of his mother Maia. Thus, when the angel Gabriel gives the salutation to the Virgin, he presents her with the lotus or lily; as may be seen in hundreds of old pictures in Italy. We see therefore that Adonis, "the Lord," "the Virgin-born," "the Crucified," "the Resurrected Dove," "the Restorer of Light," is one and the same with the "Rose of Sharon," the crucified Christ Jesus.

Plato (429 B. C.) in his PimÆus, philosophizing about the Son of God, says:

"The next power to the Supreme God was decussated or figured in the shape of a cross on the universe."

This brings to recollection the doctrine of certain so-called Christian heretics, who maintained that Christ Jesus was crucified in the heavens.

The ChrÈstos was the Logos, the Sun was the manifestation of the Logos or Wisdom to men; or, as it was held by some, it was his peculiar habitation. The Sun being crucified at the time of the winter solstice was represented by the young man slaying the Bull (an emblem of the Sun) in the Mithraic ceremonies, and the slain lamb at the foot of the cross in the Christian ceremonies. The Chrest was the Logos, or Divine Wisdom, or a portion of divine wisdom incarnate; in this sense he is really the Sun or the solar power incarnate, and to him everything applicable to the Sun will apply.

Fig. No. 37, taken from Mr. Lundy's "Monumental Christianity," is evidently a representation of the Christian Saviour crucified in the heavens. Mr. Lundy calls it "Crucifixion in Space," and believes that it was intended for the Hindoo Saviour Crishna, who is also represented crucified in space (See Fig. No. 8, Ch. XX.). This (Fig. 37) is exactly in the form of a Romish crucifix, but not fixed to a piece of wood, though the legs and feet are put together in the usual way. There is a glory over it, coming from above, not shining from the figure, as is generally seen in a Roman crucifix. It has a pointed Parthian coronet instead of a crown of thorns. All the avatars, or incarnations of Vishnu, are painted with Ethiopian or Parthian coronets. For these reasons the Christian author will not own that it is a representation of the "True Son of Justice," for he was not crucified in space; but whether it was intended to represent Crishna, Wittoba, or Jesus,[488:1] it tells a secret: it shows that some one was represented crucified in the heavens, and undoubtedly has something to do with "The next power to the Supreme God," who, according to Plato, "was decussated or figured in the shape of a cross on the universe."

Who was the crucified god whom the ancient Romans worshiped, and whom they, according to Justin Martyr, represented as a man on a cross? Can we doubt, after what we have seen, that he was this same crucified Sol, whose birthday they annually celebrated on the 25th of December?

In the poetical tales of the ancient Scandinavians, the same legend is found. Frey, the Deity of the Sun, was fabled to have been killed, at the time of the winter solstice, by the same boar who put the god Adonis to death, therefore a boar was annually offered to him at the great feast of Yule.[489:1] "Baldur the Good," son of the supreme god Odin, and the virgin-goddess Frigga, was also put to death by the sharp thorn of winter.

The ancient Mexican crucified Saviour, Quetzalcoatle, another personification of the Sun, was sometimes represented as crucified in space, in the heavens, in a circle of nineteen figures, the number of the metonic cycle. A serpent (the emblem of evil, darkness, and winter) is depriving him of the organs of generation.[489:2]

We have seen in Chapter XXXIII. that Christ Jesus, and many of the heathen saviours, healers, and preserving gods, were represented in the form of a Serpent. This is owing to the fact that, in one of its attributes, the Serpent was an emblem of the Sun. It may, at first, appear strange that the Serpent should be an emblem of evil, and yet also an emblem of the beneficent divinity; but, as Prof. Renouf remarks, in his Hibbert Lectures, "The moment we understand the nature of a myth, all impossibilities, contradictions, and immoralities disappear." The serpent is an emblem of evil when represented with his deadly sting; he is the emblem of eternity when represented casting off his skin;[489:3] and an emblem of the Sun when represented with his tail in his mouth, thus forming a circle.[489:4] Thus there came to be, not only good, but also bad, serpents, both of which are referred to in the narrative of the Hebrew exodus, but still more clearly in the struggle between the good and the bad serpents of Persian mythology, which symbolized Ormuzd, or Mithra, and the evil spirit Ahriman.[489:5]

As the Dove and the Rose, emblems of the Sun, were represented on the cross, so was the Serpent.[489:6] The famous "Brazen Serpent," said to have been "set up" by Moses in the wilderness, is called in the Targum (the general term for the Aramaic versions of the Old Testament) the Saviour. It was probably a serpentine crucifix, as it is called a cross by Justin Martyr. The crucified serpent (Fig. No. 38) denoted the quiescent Phallos, or the Sun after it had lost its power. It is the Sun in winter, crucified on the tree, which denoted its fructifying power.[490:1] As Mr. Wake remarks, "There can be no doubt that both the Pillar (Phallus) and the Serpent were associated with many of the Sun-gods of antiquity."[490:2]

This is seen in Fig. No. 39, taken from an ancient medal, which represents the serpent with rays of glory surrounding his head.

crucified serpent
serpent with rays of glory surrounding his head

The Ophites, who venerated the serpent as an emblem of Christ Jesus, are said to have maintained that the serpent of Genesis—who brought wisdom into the world—was Christ Jesus. The brazen serpent was called the Word by the Chaldee paraphrast. The Word, or Logos, was Divine Wisdom, which was crucified; thus we have the cross, or Linga, or Phallus, with the serpent upon it. Besides considering the serpent as the emblem of Christ Jesus, or of the Logos, the Ophites are said to have revered it as the cause of all the arts of civilized life. In Chapter XII. we saw that several illustrious females were believed to have been selected and impregnated by the Holy Ghost. In some cases, a serpent was supposed to be the form which it assumed. This was the incarnation of the Logos. The serpent was held in great veneration by the ancients, who, as we have seen, considered it as the symbol of the beneficent Deity, and an emblem of eternity. As such it has been variously expressed on ancient sculptures and medals in various parts of the globe.

Although generally, it did not always, symbolize the god Sun, or the power of which the Sun is an emblem; but, invested with various meanings, it entered widely into the primitive mythologies. As Mr. Squire observes:

"It typified wisdom, power, duration, the good and evil principles, life, reproduction—in short, in Egypt, Syria, Greece, India, China, Scandinavia, America, everywhere on the globe, it has been a prominent emblem."[491:1]

The serpent was the symbol of Vishnu, the preserving god, the Saviour, the Sun.[491:2] It was an emblem of the Sun-god Buddha, the Angel-Messiah.[491:3] The Egyptian Sun-god Osiris, the Saviour, is associated with the snake.[491:4] The Persian Mithra, the Mediator, Redeemer, and Saviour, was symbolized by the serpent.[491:5] The Phenicians represented their beneficent Sun-god Agathodemon, by a serpent.[491:6] The serpent was, among the Greeks and Romans, the emblem of a beneficent genius. Antipator of Sidon, calls the god Ammon, the "Renowned Serpent."[491:7] The Grecian Hercules—the Sun-god—was symbolized as a serpent; and so was Æsculapius and Apollo. The Hebrews, who, as we have seen in Chapter XI., worshiped the god Sol, represented him in the form of a serpent. This is the seraph—spoken of above—as set up by Moses (Num. xxi. 3) and worshiped by the children of Israel. Seraph is the singular of seraphim, meaning SemilicÉsplendor, fire, light—emblematic of the fiery disk of the Sun, and which, under the name of Nehush-tan, "Serpent-dragon," was broken up by the reforming Hezekiah.

The principal god of the Aztecs was Tonac-atlcoatl, which means the Serpent Sun.[491:8]

The Mexican virgin-born Lord and Saviour, Quetzalcoatle, was represented in the form of a serpent. In fact, his name signifies "Feathered Serpent." Quetzalcoatle was a personification of the Sun.[491:9]

Under the aspect of the active principle, we may rationally connect the Serpent and the Sun, as corresponding symbols of the reproductive or creative power. Figure No. 40 is a symbolical sign, representing the disk of the Sun encircled by the serpent Uraeus, meaning the "King Sun," or "Royal Sun," as it often surmounts the persons of Egyptian monarchs, confirmed by the emblem of LIFE depending from the serpent's neck.[492:1]

Sun encircled by the serpent Uraeus

The mysteries of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, in Egypt; Atys and Cybele, in Phrygia; Ceres and Proserpine, at Eleusis; of Venus and Adonis, in Phenicia; of Bona Dea and Priapus, in Rome, are all susceptible of one explanation. They all set forth and illustrated, by solemn and impressive rites, and mystical symbols, the grand phenomenon of nature, especially as connected with the creation of things and the perpetuation of life. In all, it is worthy of remark, the SERPENT was more or less conspicuously introduced, and always as symbolical of the invigorating or active energy of nature, the Sun.

We have seen (in Chapter XX.) that in early Christian art Christ Jesus also was represented as a crucified Lamb. This crucified lamb is "the Lamb of God taking away the sins of the world, and slain from the foundation of the world."[492:2] In other words, the crucified lamb typifies the crucified Sun, for the lamb was another symbol of the Sun, as we shall presently see.

We find, then, that the stories of the crucifixions of the different so-called Saviours of mankind all melt into one, and that they are allegorical, for "Saviour" was only a title of the Sun,[492:3] and his being put to death on the cross, signifies no more than the restriction of the power of the Sun in the winter quarter. With Justin Martyr, then, we can say:

"There exists not a people, whether Greek or barbarian, or any other race of men, by whatsoever appellation or manners they may be distinguished, however ignorant of arts or agriculture, whether they dwell under the tents, or wander about in crowded wagons, among whom prayers are not offered up in the name of A Crucified Saviour[493:1] to the Father and creator of all things."[493:2]

9. "And many women were there beholding afar off."[493:3] The tender mother who had watched over him at his birth, and the fair maidens whom he has loved, will never forsake him. They yet remain with him, and while their tears drop on his feet, which they kiss, their voices cheer him in his last hour. In these we have the Dawn, who bore him, and the fair and beautiful lights which flush the Eastern sky as the Sun sinks or dies in the West.[493:4] Their tears are the tears of dew, such as EÔs weeps at the death of her child.

All the Sun-gods forsake their homes and virgin mothers, and wander through different countries doing marvellous things. Finally, at the end of their career, the mother, from whom they were parted long ago, is by their side to cheer them in their last hours.[493:5]

The ever-faithful women were to be found at the last scene in the life of Buddha. Kasyapa having found the departed master's feet soiled and wet, asked Nanda the cause of it. "He was told that a weeping woman had embraced Gautama's feet shortly before his death, and that her tears had fallen on his feet and left the marks on them."[493:6]

In his last hours, Œdipous (the Sun) has been cheered by the presence of Antigone.[493:7]

At the death of Hercules, Iole (the fair-haired Dawn) stands by his side, cheering him to the last. With her gentle hands she sought to soothe his pain, and with pitying words to cheer him in his woe. Then once more the face of Hercules flushed with a deep joy, and he said:

"Ah, Iole, brightest of maidens, thy voice shall cheer me as I sink down in the sleep of death. I saw and loved thee in the bright morning time, and now again thou hast come, in the evening, fair as the soft clouds which gather around the dying Sun."

The black mists were spreading over the sky, but still Hercules sought to gaze on the fair face of Iole, and to comfort her in her sorrow.

"Weep not, Iole," he said, "my toil is done, and now is the time for rest. I shall see thee again in the bright land which is never trodden by the feet of night."

The same story is related in the legend of Apollo. The Dawn, from whom he parted in the early part of his career, comes to his side at eventide, and again meets him when his journey on earth has well nigh come to an end.[494:1]

When the Lord Prometheus was crucified on Mt. Caucasus, his especially professed friend, Oceanus, the fisherman, as his name, PetrÆus, indicates,[494:2] being unable to prevail on him to make his peace with Jupiter, by throwing the cause of human redemption out of his hands,[494:3] "forsook him and fled." None remained to be witnesses of his dying agonies, but the chorus of ever amiable and ever-faithful women, which also bewailed and lamented him, but were unable to subdue his inflexible philanthropy.[494:4]

10. "There was darkness all over the land."[494:5] In the same manner ends the tale of the long toil and sorrows of other Sun-gods. The last scene exhibits a manifest return to the spirit of the solar myth. He must not die the common death of all men, for no disease or corruption can touch the body of the brilliant Sun. After a long struggle against the dark clouds who are arrayed against him, he is finally overcome, and dies. Blacker and blacker grow the evening shades, and finally "there is darkness on the face of the earth," and the din of its thunder clashes through the air.[494:6]

It is the picture of a sunset in wild confusion, of a sunset more awful, yet not more sad, than that which is seen in the last hours of many other Sun-gods.[494:7] It is the picture of the loneliness of the Sun, who sinks slowly down, with the ghastly hues of death upon his face, while none is nigh to cheer him save the ever-faithful women.

11. "He descended into hell."[494:8] This is the Sun's descent into the lower regions. It enters the sign Capricornus, or the Goat, and the astronomical winter begins. The days have reached their shortest span, and the Sun has reached his extreme southern limit. The winter solstice reigns, and the Sun seems to stand still in his southern course. For three days and three nights he remains in hell—the lower regions.[495:1] In this respect Christ Jesus is like other Sun-gods.[495:2]

In the ancient sagas of Iceland, the hero who is the Sun personified, descends into a tomb, where he fights a vampire. After a desperate struggle, the hero overcomes, and rises to the surface of the earth. "This, too, represents the Sun in the northern realms, descending into the tomb of winter, and there overcoming the power of darkness."[495:3]

12. He rose again from the dead, and ascended into heaven. Resurrections from the dead, and ascensions into heaven, are generally acknowledged to be solar features, as the history of many solar heroes agree in this particular.

At the winter solstice the ancients wept and mourned for Tammuz, the fair Adonis, and other Sun-gods, done to death by the boar, or crucified—slain by the thorn of winter—and on the third day they rejoiced at the resurrection of their "Lord of Light."[495:4]

With her usual policy, the Church endeavored to give a Christian significance to the rites which they borrowed from heathenism, and in this case, the mourning for Tammuz, the fair Adonis, became the mourning for Christ Jesus, and joy at the rising of the natural Sun became joy at the rising of the "Sun of Righteousness"—at the resurrection of Christ Jesus from the grave.

This festival of the Resurrection was generally held by the ancients on the 25th of March, when the awakening of Spring may be said to be the result of the return of the Sun from the lower or far-off regions to which he had departed. At the equinox—say, the vernal—at Easter, the Sun has been below the equator, and suddenly rises above it. It has been, as it were, dead to us, but now it exhibits a resurrection.[496:1] The Saviour rises triumphant over the powers of darkness, to life and immortality, on the 25th of March, when the Sun rises in Aries.

Throughout all the ancient world, the resurrection of the god Sol, under different names, was celebrated on March 25th, with great rejoicings.[496:2]

In the words of the Rev. Geo. W. Cox:

"The wailing of the Hebrew women at the death of Tammuz, the crucifixion and resurrection of Osiris, the adoration of the Babylonian Mylitta, the Sacti ministers of Hindu temples, the cross and crescent of Isis, the rites of the Jewish altar of Baal-Peor, wholly preclude all doubt of the real nature of the great festivals and mysteries of Phenicians, Jews, Assyrians, Egyptians, and Hindus."[496:3]

All this was Sun and Nature worship, symbolized by the Linga and Yoni. As Mr. Bonwick says:

"The philosophic theist who reflects upon the story, known from the walls of China, across Asia and Europe, to the plateau of Mexico, cannot resist the impression that no materialistic theory of it can be satisfactory."[496:4]

Allegory alone explains it.

"The Church, at an early date, selected the heathen festivals of Sun worship for its own, ordering the birth at Christmas, a fixed time, and the resurrection at Easter, a varying time, as in all Pagan religions; since, though the Sun rose directly after the vernal equinox, the festival, to be correct in a heathen point of view, had to be associated with the new moon."[496:5]

The Christian, then, may well say:

"When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of winter, thou didst open the kingdom of heaven (i. e., bring on the reign of summer), to all believers."

13. Christ Jesus is Creator of all things. We have seen (in Chapter XXVI.) that it was not God the Father, who was supposed by the ancients to have been the Creator of the world, but God the Son, the Redeemer and Saviour of Mankind. Now, this Redeemer and Saviour was, as we have seen, the Sun, and Prof. Max MÜller tells us that in the Vedic mythology, the Sun is not the bright Deva only, "who performs his daily task in the sky, but he is supposed to perform much greater work. He is looked upon, in fact, as the Ruler, as the Establisher, as the Creator of the world."[496:6]

Having been invoked as the "Life-bringer," the Sun is also called—in the Rig-Veda—"the Breath or Life of all that move and rest;" and lastly he becomes "The Maker of all things," by whom all the worlds have been brought together.[497:1]

There is a prayer in the Vedas, called Gayatree, which consists of three measured lines, and is considered the holiest and most efficacious of all their religious forms. Sir William Jones translates it thus:

"Let us adore the supremacy of that spiritual Sun, the godhead, who illuminates all, who re-creates all, from whom all proceed, to whom all must return; whom we invoke to direct our undertakings aright in our progress toward his holy seat."

With Seneca (a Roman philosopher, born at Cordova, Spain, 61 B. C.) then, we can say:

"You may call the Creator of all things by different names (Bacchus, Hercules, Mercury, etc.), but they are only different names of the same divine being, the Sun."

14. He is to be Judge of the quick and the dead. Who is better able than the Sun to be the judge of man's deeds, seeing, as he does, from his throne in heaven, all that is done on earth? The Vedas speak of SÛrya—the pervading, irresistible luminary—as seeing all things and hearing all things, noting the good and evil deeds of men.[497:2]

According to Hindoo mythology, says Prof. Max MÜller:

"The Sun sees everything, both what is good and what is evil; and how natural therefore that (in the Indian Veda) both the evil-doer should be told that the sun sees what no human eye may have seen, and that the innocent, when all other help fails him, should appeal to the sun to attest his guiltlessness."

"Frequent allusion is made (in the Rig-Veda), to the sun's power of seeing everything. The stars flee before the all-seeing sun, like thieves. He sees the right and the wrong among men. He who looks upon the world knows also the thoughts in all men. As the sun sees everything and knows everything, he is asked to forget and forgive what he alone has seen and knows."[497:3]

On the most ancient Egyptian monuments, Osiris, the Sun personified, is represented as Judge of the dead. The Egyptian "Book of the Dead," the oldest Bible in the world, speaks of Osiris as "seeing all things, and hearing all things, noting the good and evil deeds of men."

15. He will come again sitting on a white horse. The "second coming" of Vishnu (Crishna), Christ Jesus, and other Sun-gods, are also astronomical allegories. The white horse, which figures so conspicuously in the legend, was the universal symbol of the Sun among Oriental nations.

Throughout the whole legend, Christ Jesus is the toiling Sun, laboring for the benefit of others, not his own, and doing hard service for a mean and cruel generation. Watch his sun-like career of brilliant conquest, checked with intervals of storm, and declining to a death clouded with sorrow and derision. He is in constant company with his twelve apostles, the twelve signs of the zodiac.[498:1] During the course of his life's journey he is called "The God of Earthly Blessing," "The Saviour through whom a new life springs," "The Preserver," "The Redeemer," &c. Almost at his birth the Serpent of darkness attempts to destroy him. Temptations to sloth and luxury are offered him in vain. He has his work to do, and nothing can stay him from doing it, as nothing can arrest the Sun in his journey through the heavens. Like all other solar heroes, he has his faithful women who love him, and the Marys and Martha here play the part. Of his toils it is scarcely necessary to speak in detail. They are but a thousand variations on the story of the great conflict which all the Sun-gods wage against the demon of darkness. He astonishes his tutor when sent to school. This we might expect to be the case, when an incomparable and incommunicable wisdom is the heritage of the Sun. He also represents the wisdom and beneficence of the bright Being who brings life and light to men. As the Sun wakens the earth to life when the winter is done, so Crishna, Buddha, Horus, Æsculapius, and Christ Jesus were raisers of the dead. When the leaves fell and withered on the approach of winter, the "daughter of the earth" would be spoken of as dying or dead, and, as no other power than that of the Sun can recall vegetation to life, this child of the earth would be represented as buried in a sleep from which the touch of the Sun alone could rouse her.

Christ Jesus, then, is the Sun, in his short career and early death. He is the child of the Dawn, whose soft, violet hues tint the clouds of early morn; his father being the Sky, the "Heavenly Father," who has looked down with love upon the Dawn, and overshadowed her. When his career on earth is ended, and he expires, the loving mother, who parted from him in the morning of his life, is at his side, looking on the death of the Son whom she cannot save from the doom which is on him, while her tears fall on his body like rain at sundown. From her he is parted at the beginning of his course; to her he is united at its close. But Christ Jesus, like Crishna, Buddha, Osiris, Horus, Mithras, Apollo, Atys and others, rises again, and thus the myth takes us a step beyond the legend of Serpedon and others, which stop at the end of the eastward journey, when the night is done.

According to the Christian calendar, the birthday of John the Baptist is on the day of the summer solstice, when the sun begins to decrease. How true to nature then are the words attributed to him in the fourth Gospel, when he says that he must decrease, and Jesus increase.

Among the ancient Teutonic nations, fires were lighted, on the tops of hills, on the 24th of June, in honor of the wending Sun. This custom is still kept up in Southern Germany and the Scotch highlands, and it is the day selected by the Roman Catholic church to celebrate the nativity of John the Baptist.[499:1]

Mosheim, the ecclesiastical historian, speaking of the uncertainty of the time when Christ Jesus was born, says: "The uncertainty of this point is of no great consequence. We know that the Sun of Righteousness has shone upon the world; and although we cannot fix the precise period in which he arose, this will not preclude us from enjoying the direction and influence of his vital and salutary beams."

These sacred legends abound with such expressions as can have no possible or conceivable application to any other than to the "God of day." He is "a light to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory (or brightness) of his people."[499:2] He is come "a light into the world, that whosoever believeth in him should not abide in darkness."[499:3] He is "the light of the world."[499:4] He "is light, and in him no darkness is."[499:5]

"Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, Adonai, and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night."—Collect, in Evening Service.

God of God, light of light, very God of very God."—Nicene Creed."Merciful Adonai, we beseech thee to cast thy bright beams of light upon thy Church."—Collect of St. John.

"To thee all angels cry aloud, the heavens, and all the powers therein."

"Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of thy glory" (or brightness).

"The glorious company of the (twelve months, or) apostles praise thee."

"Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ!"

"When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man, thou passest through the constellation, or zodiacal sign—the Virgin."

"When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of winter, thou didst open the kingdom of heaven (i. e., bring on the reign of the summer months) to all believers."

"All are agreed," says Cicero, "that Apollo is none other than the Sun, because the attributes which are commonly ascribed to Apollo do so wonderfully agree thereto."

Just so surely as Apollo is the Sun, so is the Lord Christ Jesus the Sun. That which is so conclusive respecting the Pagan deities, applies also to the God of the Christians; but, like the Psalmist of old, they cry, "Touch not MY Christ, and do my prophets no harm."

Many Christian writers have seen that the history of their Lord and Saviour is simply the history of the Sun, but they either say nothing, or, like Dr. Parkhurst and the Rev. J. P. Lundy, claim that the Sun is a type of the true Sun of Righteousness. Mr. Lundy, in his "Monumental Christianity," says:

"Is there no bright Sun of Righteousness—no personal and loving Son of God, of whom the material Sun has been the type or symbol, in all ages and among all nations? What power is it that comes from the Sun to give light and heat to all created things? If the symbolical Sun leads such a great earthly and heavenly flock, what must be said to the true and only begotten Son of God? If Apollo was adopted by early Christian art as a type of the Good Shepherd of the New Testament, then this interpretation of the Sun-god among all nations must be the solution of the universal mythos, or what other solution can it have? To what other historical personage but Christ can it apply? If this mythos has no spiritual meaning, then all religion becomes mere idolatry, or the worship of material things."[500:1]

Mr. Lundy, who seems to adhere to this once-upon-a-time favorite theory, illustrates it as follows:

"The young Isaac is his (Christ's) Hebrew type, bending under the wood, as Christ fainted under the cross; Daniel is his type, stripped of all earthly fame and greatness, and cast naked into the deepest danger, shame and humiliation." "Noah is his type, in saving men from utter destruction, and bringing them across the sea of death to a new world and a new life." "Orpheus is a type of Christ. Agni and Crishna of India; Mithra of Persia; Horus and Apollo of Egypt, are all types of Christ." "Samson carrying off the gates of Gaza and defeating the Philistines by his own death, was considered as a type of Christ bursting open and carrying away the gates of Hades, and conquering His and our enemies by his death and resurrection."[501:1]

According to this theory, the whole Pagan religion was typical of Christ and Christianity. Why then were not the Pagans the Lord's chosen people instead of the children of Israel?

The early Christians were charged with being a sect of Sun worshipers.[501:2] The ancient Egyptians worshiped the god Serapis, and Serapis was the Sun. Fig. No. 11, page 194, shows the manner in which Serapis was personified. It might easily pass for a representation of the Sun-god of the Christians. Mr. King says, in his "Gnostics, and their Remains":

"There can be no doubt that the head of Serapis, marked as the face is by a grave and pensive majesty, supplied the first idea for the conventional portraits of the Saviour."[501:3]

The Imperial Russian Collection boasts of a head of Christ Jesus which is said to be very ancient. It is a fine intaglio on emerald. Mr. King says of it:

"It is in reality a head of Serapis, seen in front and crowned with Persia boughs, easily mistaken for thorns, though the bushel on the head leaves no doubt as to the real personage intended."[501:4]

It must not be forgotten, in connection with this, that the worshipers of Serapis, or the Sun, were called Christians.[501:5]

Mrs. Jameson, speaking on this subject, says:

"We search in vain for the lightest evidence of his (Christ's) human, individual semblance, in the writing of those disciples who knew him so well. In this instance the instincts of earthly affection seem to have been mysteriously overruled. He whom all races of men were to call brother, was not to be too closely associated with the particular lineaments of any one. St. John, the beloved disciple, could lie on the breast of Jesus with all the freedom of fellowship, but not even he has left a word to indicate what manner of man was the Divine Master after the flesh.... Legend has, in various form, supplied this natural craving, but it is hardly necessary to add, that all accounts of pictures of our Lord taken from Himself are without historical foundation. We are therefore left to imagine the expression most befitting the character of him who took upon himself our likeness, and looked at the woes and sins of mankind through the eyes of our mortality."[501:6]

The Rev. Mr. Geikie says, in his "Life of Christ":

"No hint is given in the New Testament of Christ's appearance; and the early Church, in the absence of all guiding facts, had to fall back on imagination.""In its first years, the Christian church fancied its Lord's visage and form marred more than those of other men; and that he must have had no attractions of personal beauty. Justin Martyr (A. D. 150-160) speaks of him as without beauty or attractiveness, and of mean appearance. Clement of Alexandria (A. D. 200), describes him as of an uninviting appearance, and almost repulsive. Tertullian (A. D. 200-210) says he had not even ordinary human beauty, far less heavenly. Origen (A. D. 230) went so far as to say that he was 'small in body and deformed', as well as low-born, and that, 'his only beauty was in his soul and life.'"[502:1]

One of the favorite ways finally, of depicting him, was, as Mr. Lundy remarks:

"Under the figure of a beautiful and adorable youth, of about fifteen or eighteen years of age, beardless, with a sweet expression of countenance, and long and abundant hair flowing in curls over his shoulders. His brow is sometimes encircled by a diadem or bandeau, like a young priest of the Pagan gods; that is, in fact, the favorite figure. On sculptured sarcophagi, in fresco paintings and Mosaics, Christ is thus represented as a graceful youth, just as Apollo was figured by the Pagans, and as angels are represented by Christians."[502:2]

Thus we see that the Christians took the paintings and statues of the Sun-gods Serapis and Apollo as models, when they wished to represent their Saviour. That the former is the favorite at the present day need not be doubted when we glance at Fig. No. 11, page 194.

Mr. King, speaking of this god, and his worshipers, says:

"There is very good reason to believe that in the East the worship of Serapis was at first combined with Christianity, and gradually merged into it with an entire change of name, not substance, carrying with it many of its ancient notions and rites."[502:3]

Again he says:

"In the second century the syncretistic sects that had sprung up in Alexandria, the very hotbed of Gnosticism, found out in Serapis a prophetic type of Christ, or the Lord and Creator of all."[502:4]

The early Christians, or worshipers of the Sun, under the name of "Christ," had, as all Sun-worshipers, a peculiar regard to the East—the quarter in which their god rose—to which point they ordinarily directed their prayers.[502:5]

The followers of Mithra always turned towards the East, when they worshiped; the same was done by the Brahmans of the East, and the Christians of the West. In the ceremony of baptism, the catechumen was placed with his face to the West, the symbolical representation of the prince of darkness, in opposition to the East, and made to spit towards it at the evil one, and renounce his works.

Tertullian says, that Christians were taken for worshipers of the Sun because they prayed towards the East, after the manner of those who adored the Sun. The Essenes—whom Eusebius calls Christians—always turned to the east to pray. The Essenes met once a week, and spent the night in singing hymns, &c., which lasted till sun-rising. As soon as dawn appeared, they retired to their cells, after saluting one another. Pliny says the Christians of Bithynia met before it was light, and sang hymns to Christ, as to a God. After their service they saluted one another. Surely the circumstances of the two classes of people meeting before daylight, is a very remarkable coincidence. It is just what the Persian Magi, who were Sun worshipers, were in the habit of doing.

When a ManichÆan Christian came over to the orthodox Christians, he was required to curse his former friends in the following terms:

"I curse Zarades (Zoroaster?) who, Manes said, had appeared as a god before his time among the Indians and Persians, and whom he calls the Sun. I curse those who say Christ is the Sun, and who make prayers to the Sun, and who do not pray to the true God, only towards the East, but who turn themselves round, following the motions of the Sun with their innumerable supplications. I curse those person who say that Zarades and Budas and Christ and the Sun are all one and the same."

There are not many circumstances more striking than that of Christ Jesus being originally worshiped under the form of a Lamb—the actual "Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world." As we have already seen (in Chap. XX.), it was not till the Council of Constantinople, called In Trullo, held so late as the year 707, that pictures of Christ Jesus were ordered to be drawn in the form of a man. It was ordained that, in the place of the figure of a Lamb, the symbol used to that time, the figure of a man nailed to a cross, should in future be used.[503:1] From this decree, the identity of the worship of the Celestial Lamb and the Christian Saviour is certified beyond the possibility of doubt, and the mode by which the ancient superstitions were propagated is satisfactorily shown. Nothing can more clearly prove the general practice than the order of a council to regulate it.

The worship of the constellation of Aries was the worship of the Sun in his passage through that sign. "This constellation was called by the ancients the Lamb of God. He was also called the Saviour, and was said to save mankind from their sins. He was always honored with the appellation of Dominus or Lord. He was called The Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world. The devotees addressed him in their litany, constantly repeating the words, 'O Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us. Grant us thy peace.'"

On an ancient medal of the Phenicians, brought by Dr. Clark from Citium (and described in his "Travels," vol. ii. ch. xi.) this Lamb of God is described with the Cross and the Rosary, which shows that they were both used in his worship.

Yearly the Sun-god, as the zodiacal horse (Aries) was supposed by the Vedic Aryans to die to save all flesh. Hence the practice of sacrificing horses. The "guardian spirits" of the prince Sakya Buddha sing the following hymn:

"Once when thou wast the white horse,[504:1]
In pity for the suffering of man,
Thou didst fly across heaven to the region of the evil demons,
To secure the happiness of mankind.
Persecutions without end,
Revilings and many prisons,
Death and murder;
These hast thou suffered with love and patience,
Forgiving thine executioners."[504:2]

We have seen, in Chapter XXXIII., that Christ Jesus was also symbolized as a Fish, and that it is to be seen on all the ancient Christian monuments. But what has the Christian Saviour to do with a Fish? Why was he called a Fish? The answer is, because the fish was another emblem of the Sun. Abarbanel says:

"The sign of his (Christ's) coming is the junction of Saturn and Jupiter, in the Sign Pisces."[504:3]

Applying the astronomical emblem of Pisces to Jesus, does not seem more absurd than applying the astronomical emblem of the Lamb. They applied to him the monogram of the Sun, IHS, the astronomical and alchemical sign of Aries, or the ram, or Lamb Aries symbol; and, in short, what was there that was Heathenish that they have not applied to him?

The preserving god Vishnu, the Sun, was represented as a fish, and so was the Syrian Sun-god Dagon, who was also a Preserver or Saviour. The Fish was sacred among many nations of antiquity, and is to be seen on their monuments. Thus we see that everything at last centres in the Sun.

Constantine, the first Christian emperor, had on his coins the figure of the Sun, with the legend: "To the Invincible Sun, my companion and guardian," as being a representation, says Mr. King, "either of the ancient Phoebus, or the new Sun of Righteousness, equally acceptable to both Christian and Gentile, from the double interpretation of which the type was susceptible."[505:1]

The worship of the Sun, under the name of Mithra, "long survived in Rome, under the Christian emperors, and, doubtless, much longer in the remoter districts of the semi-independent provinces."[505:2]

Crishna

Christ Jesus is represented with a halo of glory surrounding his head, a florid complexion, long golden locks of hair, and a flowing robe. Now, all Sun-gods, from Crishna of India (Fig. No. 41) to Baldur of Scandinavia, are represented with a halo of glory surrounding their heads, and the flowing locks of golden hair, and the flowing robe, are not wanting.[505:3] By a process of metaphor, the rays of the Sun were changed into golden hair, into spears and lances, and robes of light. From the shoulders of Phoibus LykÊgenes, the light-born, flow the sacred locks over which no razor might pass. On the head of Nisos, as on that of Samson, they became a palladium invested with a mysterious power. From Helios, the Sun, who can scorch as well as warm, comes the robe of Medeia, which appears in the poisoned garments of Deianeira.[506:1]

We see, then, that Christ Jesus, like Christ Buddha,[506:2] Crishna, Mithra, Osiris, Horus, Apollo, Hercules and others, is none other than a personification of the Sun, and that the Christians, like their predecessors the Pagans, are really Sun worshipers. It must not be inferred, however, that we advocate the theory that no such person as Jesus of Nazareth ever lived in the flesh. The man Jesus is evidently an historical personage, just as the Sakaya prince Buddha, Cyrus, King of Persia, and Alexander, King of Macedonia, are historical personages; but the Christ Jesus, the Christ Buddha, the mythical Cyrus, and the mythical Alexander, never lived in the flesh. The Sun-myth has been added to the histories of these personages, in a greater or less degree, just as it has been added to the history of many other real personages. If it be urged that the attribution to Christ Jesus of qualities or powers belonging to the Pagan deities would hardly seem reasonable, the answer must be that nothing is done in his case which has not been done in the case of almost every other member of the great company of the gods. The tendency of myths to reproduce themselves, with differences only of names and local coloring, becomes especially manifest after perusing the legendary histories of the gods of antiquity. It is a fact demonstrated by history, that when one nation of antiquity came in contact with another, they adopted each other's myths without hesitation. After the Jews had been taken captives to Babylon, around the history of their King Solomon accumulated the fables which were related of Persian heroes. When the fame of Cyrus and Alexander became known over the then known world, the popular Sun-myth was interwoven with their true history. The mythical history of Perseus is, in all its essential features, the history of the Attic hero Theseus, and of the Theban Œdipus, and they all reappear with heightened colors in the myths of Hercules. We have the same thing again in the mythical and religious history of Crishna; it is, in nearly all its essential features, the history of Buddha, and reappears again, with heightened colors, in the history of Christ Jesus. The myths of Buddha and Jesus differ from the legends of the other virgin-born Saviours only in the fact that in their cases it has gathered round unquestionably historical personages. In other words, an old myth has been added to names undoubtedly historical. But it cannot be too often repeated that from the myth we learn nothing of their history. How much we really know of the man Jesus will be considered in our next, and last, chapter.[507:1] That his biography, as recorded in the books of the New Testament, contains some few grains of actual history, is all that the historian or philosopher can rationally venture to urge. But the very process which has stripped these legends of all value as a chronicle of actual events has invested them with a new interest. Less than ever are they worthless fictions which the historian or philosopher may afford to despise. These legends of the birth, life, and death of the Sun, present to us a form of society and a condition of thought through which all mankind had to pass before the dawn of history. Yet that state of things was as real as the time in which we live. They who spoke the language of these early tales were men and women with joys and sorrows not unlike our own. In the following verses of Martianus Capella, the universal veneration for the Sun is clearly shown:

"Latium invokes thee, Sol, because thou alone art in honor, after the Father, the centre of light; and they affirm that thy sacred head bears a golden brightness in twelve rays, because thou formest that number of months and that number of hours. They say that thou guidest four winged steeds, because thou alone rulest the chariot of the elements. For, dispelling the darkness, thou revealest the shining heavens. Hence they esteem thee, Phoebus, the discoverer of the secrets of the future; or, because thou preventest nocturnal crimes. Egypt worships thee as Serapis, and Memphis as Osiris. Thou art worshiped by different rites as Mithra, Dis, and the cruel Typhon. Thou art alone the beautiful Atys, and the fostering son of the bent plough. Thou art the Ammon of arid Libya, and the Adonis of Byblos. Thus under a varied appellation the whole world worship thee. Hail! thou true image of the gods, and of thy father's face! thou whose sacred name, surname, and omen, three letters make to agree with the number 608.[507:2] Grant us, oh Father, to reach the eternal intercourse of mind, and to know the starry heaven under this sacred name. May the great and universally adorable Father increase these his favors."


FOOTNOTES:

[467:1] "In the Vedas, the Sun has twenty different names, not pure equivalents, but each term descriptive of the Sun in one of its aspects. It is brilliant (SÛrya), the friend (Mitra), generous (Aryaman), beneficent (Bhaga), that which nourishes (PÛshna), the Creator (Tvashtar), the master of the sky (Divaspati), and so on." (Rev. S. Baring-Gould: Orig. Relig. Belief, vol. i. p. 150.)

[467:2] Asiatic Researches, vol. i. p. 267.

[468:1] Preface to "Tales of Anct. Greece."

[469:1] Aryan Mytho., vol. ii. pp. 51-53.

[473:1] MÜller: Origin of Religions, pp. 264-268.

[473:2] John, i. 9.

[473:3] The Christian ceremonies of the Nativity are celebrated in Bethlehem and Rome, even at the present time, very early in the morning.

[474:1] Quoted by Volney, Ruins, p. 166, and note.

[474:2] See Ibid. and Dupuis: Origin of Religious Belief, p. 236.

[474:4] The Dawn was personified by the ancients—a virgin mother, who bore the Sun. (See Max MÜller's Chips, vol. ii. p. 137. Fiske's Myths and Mythmakers, p. 156, and Cox: Tales of Ancient Greece, and Aryan Mytho.)

[474:5] In Sanscrit "IdÂ" is the Earth, the wife of Dyaus (the Sky), and so we have before us the mythical phrase, "the Sun at its birth rests on the earth." In other words, "the Sun at birth is nursed in the lap of its mother."

[474:6] "The moment we understand the nature of a myth, all impossibilities, contradictions and immoralities disappear. If a mythical personage be nothing more than a name of the Sun, his birth may be derived from ever so many different mothers. He may be the son of the Sky or of the Dawn or of the Sea or of the Night." (Renouf's Hibbert Lectures, p. 108.)

[474:7] "The sign of the Celestial Virgin rises above the horizon at the moment in which we fix the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ." (Higgins: Anacalypsis, vol. i. p. 314, and Bonwick: Egyptian Belief, p. 147.)

"We have in the first decade the Sign of the Virgin, following the most ancient tradition of the Persians, the Chaldeans, the Egyptians, Hermes and Æsculapius, a young woman called in the Persian language, Seclinidos de Darzama; in the Arabic, Aderenedesa—that is to say, a chaste, pure, immaculate virgin, suckling an infant, which some nations call Jesus (i. e., Saviour), but which we in Greek call Christ." (Abulmazer.)

"In the first decade of the Virgin, rises a maid, called in Arabic, 'Aderenedesa,' that is: 'pure immaculate virgin,' graceful in person, charming in countenance, modest in habit, with loosened hair, holding in her hands two ears of wheat, sitting upon an embroidered throne, nursing a BOY, and rightly feeding him in the place called Hebraea. A boy, I say, names Iessus by certain nations, which signifies Issa, whom they also call Christ in Greek." (Kircher, Œdipus Ægypticus.)

[475:1] Max MÜller: Origin of Religions, p. 261.

[475:2] Ibid. p. 230.

[475:3] "With scarcely an exception, all the names by which the Virgin goddess of the Akropolis was known point to this mythology of the Dawn." (Cox: Aryan Myths, vol. i. p. 228.)

[475:4] We also read in the Vishnu Purana that: "The Sun of Achyuta (God, the Imperishable) rose in the dawn of Devaki, to cause the lotus petal of the universe (Crishna) to expand. On the day of his birth the quarters of the horizon were irradiate with joy," &c.

[475:5] Cox: Aryan Myths, vol. iii. pp. 105, and 130, vol. ii.

[475:6] Ibid. p. 133. See Legends in Chap. XVI.

[475:7] Fiske: Myths and Mythmakers, p. 113.

[476:1] Renouf: Hibbert Lectures, p. 111 and 161.

[476:2] Ibid. p. 161 and 179.

[476:3] Ibid. pp. 179.

[476:4] See Tales of Ancient Greece, pp. xxxi. and 82.

[476:5] The Bull symbolized the productive force in nature, and hence it was associated with the Sun-gods. This animal was venerated by nearly all the peoples of antiquity. (Wake: Phallism in Anct. Religs., p. 45.)

[476:6] See Aryan Myths, vol. i. p. 229.

[477:2] See Tales of Ancient Greece, p. xviii.

[477:3] "The idea entertained by the ancients that these god-begotten heroes were engendered without any carnal intercourse, and that they were the sons of Jupiter, is, in plain language, the result of the ethereal spirit, i. e., the Holy Spirit, operating on the virgin mother Earth." (Knight: Ancient Art and Mythology, p. 156.)

[477:4] Cox: Aryan Myths, p. 87.

[477:5] See Williams' Hinduism, p. 24, and MÜller's Chips, vol. ii. pp. 277 and 290.

[477:6] See Bulfinch, p. 389.

[477:7] See Renouf's Hibbert Lectures, pp. 110, 111.

[477:8] Manners of the Germans, p. xi.

[478:1] See Knight: Ancient Art and Mythology, pp. 81, 99, and 166.

The Moon was called by the ancients, "The Queen;" "The Highest Princess;" "The Queen of Heaven;" "The Princess and Queen of Heaven;" &c. She was Istar, Ashera, Diana, Artemis, Isis, Juno, Lucina, AstartÊ. (Goldzhier, pp. 158. Knight, pp. 99, 100.)

In the beginning of the eleventh book of Apuleius' Metamorphosis, Isis is represented as addressing him thus: "I am present; I who am Nature, the parent of things, queen of all the elements, &c., &c. The primitive Phrygians called me Pressinuntica, the mother of the gods; the native Athenians, Ceropian Minerva; the floating Cyprians, Paphian Venus; the arrow-bearing Cretans, Dictymian Diana; the three-tongued Sicilians, Stygian Proserpine; and the inhabitants of Eleusis, the ancient goddess Ceres. Some again have invoked me as Juno, others as Beliona, others as Hecate, and others as Rhamnusia: and those who are enlightened by the emerging rays of the rising Sun, the Ethiopians, Ariians and Egyptians, powerful in ancient learning, who reverence my divinity with ceremonies perfectly proper, call me by a true appellation, 'Queen Isis.'" (Taylor's Mysteries, p. 76.)

[478:2] The "God the Father" of all nations of antiquity was nothing more than a personification of the Sky or the Heavens. "The term Heaven (pronounced Thien) is used everywhere in the Chinese classics for the Supreme Power, ruling and governing all the affairs of men with an omnipotent and omniscient righteousness and goodness." (James Legge.)

In one of the Chinese sacred books—the Shu-king—Heaven and Earth are called "Father and Mother of all things." Heaven being the Father, and Earth the Mother. (Taylor: Primitive Culture, pp. 294-296.)

The "God the Father" of the Indians is Dyaus, that is, the Sky. (Williams' Hinduism, p. 24.)

Ormuzd, the god of the ancient Persians, was a personification of the sky. Herodotus, speaking of the Persians, says: "They are accustomed to ascend the highest part of the mountains, and offer sacrifice to Jupiter (Ormuzd), and they call the whole circle of the heavens by the name of Jupiter." (Herodotus, book 1, ch. 131.)

In Greek iconography Zeus is the Heaven. As Cicero says: "The refulgent Heaven above is that which all men call, unanimously, Jove."

The Christian God supreme of the nineteenth century is still Dyaus Pitar, the "Heavenly Father."

[478:3] Williams' Hinduism, p. 24.

[478:4] MÜller: Origin of Religions, pp. 261, 290.

[478:5] Renouf: Hibbert Lectures, pp. 110, 111.

[478:7] See Cox: Tales of Ancient Greece, pp. xxxi. and 82, and Aryan Mythology, vol. i. p. 229.

[479:1] Quoted by Westropp: Phallic Worship, p. 24.

[479:2] Squire: Serpent Symbol, p. 66. "In Phenician Mythology Ouranos (Heaven) weds Ghe (the Earth) and by her becomes father of Oceanus, Hyperon, Iapetus, Cronos, and other gods." (Phallic Worship, p. 26.)

[479:3] Squire: Serpent Symbol, p. 64.

[479:4] See Mallet's Northern Antiquities, pp. 80, 93, 94, 406, 510, 511.

[480:2] See Dupuis: Orig. Relig. Belief, p. 234. Higgins' Anacalypsis, vol. ii. pp. 96, 97, and Prog. Relig. Ideas, vol. i. p. 272.

[480:3] Extracts from the Vedas. MÜller's Chips, vol. ii. pp. 96 and 187.

[481:1] Cox: Aryan Mythology, vol. i. p. 153.

[481:2] Aryan Mythology, vol. ii. p. 133.

[481:3] When Christ Jesus was born, on a sudden there was a great light in the cave, so that their eyes could not bear it. (Protevangelion, Apoc. ch. xiv.)

[481:4] "Perseus, Oidipous, Romulus and Cyrus are doomed to bring ruin on their parents. They are exposed in their infancy on the hill-side, and rescued by a shepherd. All the solar heroes begin life in this way. Whether, like Apollo, born of the dark night (Leto), or like Oidipous, of the violet dawn (Iokaste), they are alike destined to bring destruction on their parents, as the Night and the Dawn are both destroyed by the Sun." (Fiske: p. 198.)

[481:5] "The exposure of the child in infancy represents the long rays of the morning sun resting on the hill-side." (Fiske: Myths and Mythmakers, p. 198.)

The Sun-hero Paris is exposed on the slopes of Ida, Oidipous on the slopes of Kithairon, and Æsculapius on that of the mountain of Myrtles. This is the rays of the newly-born sun resting on the mountain-side. (Cox: Aryan Myths, vol. i. pp. 64 and 80.)

In Sanscrit Ida is the Earth, and so we have the mythical phrase, the Sun at its birth is exposed on Ida—the hill-side. The light of the sun must rest on the hill-side long before it reaches the dells beneath. (See Cox: vol. i. p. 221, and Fiske: p. 114.)

[482:1] Even as late as the seventeenth century, a German writer would illustrate a thunder-storm destroying a crop of corn, by a picture of a dragon devouring the produce of the field with his flaming tongue and iron teeth. (See Fiske: Myths and Mythmakers, p. 17, and Cox: Aryan Mythology, vol. ii.)

[482:2] The history of the Saviour Hercules is so similar to that of the Saviour Christ Jesus, that the learned Dr. Parkhurst was forced to say, "The labors of Hercules seem to have been originally designed as emblematic memorials of what the REAL Son of God, the Saviour of the world, was to do and suffer for our sakes, bringing a cure for all our ills, as the Orphic hymn speaks of Hercules."

[482:3] Bonwick's Egyptian Belief, pp. 158, 166, and 168.

[482:4] In ancient mythology, all heroes of light were opposed by the "Old Serpent," the Devil, symbolized by Serpents, Dragons, Sphinxes and other monsters. The Serpent was, among the ancient Eastern nations, the symbol of Evil, of Winter, of Darkness and of Death. It also symbolized the dark cloud, which, by harboring the rays of the Sun, preventing its shining, and therefore, is apparently attempting to destroy it. The Serpent is one of the chief mystic personifications of the Rig-Veda, under the names of Ahi, Suchna, and others. They represent the Cloud, the enemy of the Sun, keeping back the fructifying rays. Indra struggles victoriously against him, and spreads life on the earth, with the shining warmth of the Father of Life, the Creator, the Sun.

Buddha, the Lord and Saviour, was described as a superhuman organ of light, to whom a superhuman organ of darkness, Mara, the Evil Serpent, was opposed. He, like Christ Jesus, resisted the temptations of this evil one, and is represented sitting on a serpent, as if its conqueror. (See Bunsen's Angel-Messiah, p. 39.)

Crishna also overcame the evil one, and is represented "bruising the head of the serpent," and standing upon it. (See vol. i. of Asiatic Researches, and vol. ii. of Higgins' Anacalypsis.)

In Egyptian Mythology, one of the names of the god-Sun was . He had an adversary who was called Apap, represented in the form of a serpent. (See Renouf's Hibbert Lectures, p. 109.)

Horus, the Egyptian incarnate god, the Mediator, Redeemer and Saviour, is represented in Egyptian art as overcoming the Evil Serpent, and standing triumphantly upon him. (See Bonwick's Egyptian Belief, p. 158, and Monumental Christianity, p. 402.)

Osiris, Ormuzd, Mithras, Apollo, Bacchus, Hercules, Indra, Œdipus, Quetzalcoatle, and many other Sun-gods, overcame the Evil One, and are represented in the above described manner. (See Cox's Tales of Ancient Greece, p. xxvii. and Aryan Mythology, vol. ii. p. 129. Baring-Gould's Curious Myths, p. 256. Bulfinch's Age of Fable, p. 34. Bunsen's Angel-Messiah, p. x., and Kingsborough's Mexican Antiquities, vol. vi. p. 176.)

[483:1] The crucifixion of the Sun-gods is simply the power of Darkness triumphing over the "Lord of Light," and Winter overpowering the Summer. It was at the Winter solstice that the ancients wept for Tammuz, the fair Adonis, and other Sun-gods, who were put to death by the boar, slain by the thorn of winter. (See Cox: Aryan Mythology, vol. ii. p. 113.)

Other versions of the same myth tell us of Eurydike stung to death by the hidden serpent, of Sifrit smitten by Hagene (the Thorn), of Isfendiyar slain by the thorn or arrow of Rustem, of Achilleus vulnerable only in the heel, of Brynhild enfolded within the dragon's coils, of Meleagros dying as the torch of doom is burnt out, of Baldur, the brave and pure, smitten by the fatal mistletoe, and of Crishna and others being crucified.

In Egyptian mythology, Set, the destroyer, triumphs in the West. He is the personification of Darkness and Winter, and the Sun-god whom he puts to death, is Horus the Saviour. (See Renouf's Hibbert Lectures, pp. 112-115.)

[483:2] "In the Rig-Veda the god Vishnu is often named as a manifestation of the Solar energy, or rather as a form of the Sun." (Indian Wisdom, p. 322.)

[483:3] Crishna says: "I am Vishnu, Brahma, Indra, and the source as well as the destruction of things, the creator and the annihilator of the whole aggregate of existences." (Cox: Aryan Mythology, vol. ii. p. 131.)

[484:2] Indra, who was represented as a crucified god, is also the Sun. No sooner is he born than he speaks to his mother. Like Apollo and all other Sun-gods he has golden locks, and like them he is possessed of an inscrutable wisdom. He is also born of a virgin—the Dawn. Crishna and Indra are one. (See Cox: Aryan Mythology, vol. i. pp. 88 and 341; vol. ii. p. 131.)

[484:3] Wake: Phallism, &c., p. 55.

[484:4] See Cox: Aryan Mythology, vol. ii. p. 113.

[484:5] Ibid. pp. 115 and 125.

[484:6] See Bonwick's Egyptian Belief, p. 157.

[484:7] Knight: Ancient Art and Mythology, p. 88.

A great number of the Solar heroes or Sun-gods are forced to endure being bound, which indicates the tied-up power of the sun in winter. (Goldzhier: Hebrew Mythology, p. 406.)

[484:8] The Sun, as climbing the heights of heaven, is an arrogant being, given to making exorbitant claims, who must be bound to the fiery cross. "The phrases which described the Sun as revolving daily on his four-spoked cross, or as doomed to sink in the sky when his orb had reached the zenith, would give rise to the stories of Ixion on his flaming wheel." (Cox: Aryan Mythology, vol. ii. p. 27.)

[484:9] "So was Ixion bound on the fiery wheel, and the sons of men see the flaming spokes day by day as it whirls in the high heaven."

[485:1] Cox: Tales of Ancient Greece, p. xxxii.

[485:2] Ibid. p. xxxiii.

[485:3] "That the story of the Trojan war is almost wholly mythical, has been conceded even by the stoutest champions of Homeric unity." (Rev. G. W. Cox.)

[485:4] See MÜller's Science of Religion, p. 186.

[485:5] See Calmet's Fragments, vol. ii. pp. 21, 22.

[486:1] Nimrod: vol. i. p. 278, in Anac., i. p. 503.

[486:2] At Miletus was the crucified Apollo—Apollo, who overcome the Serpent or evil principle. Thus Callimachus, celebrating this achievement, in his hymn to Apollo, has these remarkable words:

"Thee thy blest mother bore, and pleased assign'd
The willing Saviour of distressed mankind."

[486:3] These words apply to Christ Jesus, as well as Semiramis, according to the Christian Father Ignatius. In his Epistle to the Church at Ephesus, he says: "Now the virginity of Mary, and he who was born of her, was kept in secret from the prince of this world, as was also the death of our Lord: three of the mysteries the most spoken of throughout the world, yet done in secret by God."

[487:1] The Rosicrucians, p. 260.

[487:2] Ibid.

[488:1] The Sun-gods Apollo, Indra, Wittoba or Crishna, and Christ Jesus, are represented as having their feet pierced with nails (See Cox: Aryan Mytho., vol. ii. p. 23, and Moor's Hindu Pantheon.)

[489:1] Knight: Anct. Art and Mytho., pp. 87, 88.

[489:2] Anacalypsis, vol. ii. p. 32.

[489:3] "This notion is quite consistent with the ideas entertained by the Phenicians as to the Serpent, which they supposed to have the quality of putting off its old age, and assuming a second youth." Sanchoniathon: (Quoted by Wake: Phallism, &c., p. 43.)

[489:4] Une serpent qui tient sa queue dans sa gueule et dans le circle qu'il decrit, ces trois lettres Greques G??, qui sont le nombre 365. Le Serpent, qui est d'ordinaire un emblÈme de l'eternetÈ est ici celui de Soleil et des ses revolutions. (Beausobre: Hist. de Manich. tom. ii. p. 55. Quoted by Lardner, vol. viii. p. 379.)

"This idea existed even in America. The great century of the Aztecs was encircled by a serpent grasping its own tail, and the great calendar stone is entwined by serpents bearing human heads in their distended jaws."

"The annual passage of the Sun, through the signs of the zodiac, being in an oblique path, resembles, or at least the ancients thought so, the tortuous movements of the Serpent, and the facility possessed by this reptile of casting off his skin and producing out of itself a new covering every year, bore some analogy to the termination of the old year and the commencement of the new one. Accordingly, all the ancient spheres—the Persian, Indian, Egyptian, Barbaric, and Mexican—were surrounded by the figure of a serpent holding its tail in its mouth." (Squire: Serpent Symbol, p. 249.)

[489:5] Wake: Phallism, p. 42.

[489:6] See Cox: Aryan Mytho., vol. ii. p. 128.

[490:1] Being the most intimately connected with the reproduction of life on earth, the Linga became the symbol under which the Sun, invoked with a thousand names, has been worshiped throughout the world as the restorer of the powers of nature after the long sleep or death of Winter. In the brazen Serpent of the Pentateuch, the two emblems of the Cross and Serpent, the quiescent and energizing Phallos, are united. (Cox: Aryan Mytho. vol. ii. pp. 113-118.)

[490:2] Wake: Phallism, &c., p. 60.

[491:1] Squire: Serpent Symbol, p. 155.

[491:2] Wake: Phallism in Anct. Religs., p. 72.

[491:3] Ibid. p. 73. Squire: Serpent Symbol, p. 195.

[491:4] Faber: Orig. Pagan Idol., in Squire, p. 158.

[491:5] Ibid.

[491:6] Kenrick's Egypt, vol. i. p. 375.

[491:7] Ibid.

[491:8] Squire: p. 161.

[491:9] Ibid. p. 185.

[492:1] Squire: p. 169.

[492:2] Lundy: Monumental Christianity, p. 185.

[492:3] "Saviour was a common title of the Sun-gods of antiquity." (Wake: Phallism in Anct. Religs., p. 55.)

The ancient Greek writers speak of the Sun, as the "Generator and Nourisher of all Things;" the "Ruler of the World;" the "First of the Gods," and the "Supreme Lord of all Beings." (Knight: Ancient Art and Mytho., p. 37.)

Pausanias (500 B. C.) speaks of "The Sun having the surname of Saviour." (Ibid. p. 98, note.)

"There is a very remarkable figure copied in Payne Knight's Work, in which we see on a man's shoulders a cock's head, whilst on the pediment are placed the words: "The Saviour of the World." (Inman: Anct. Faiths, vol. i. p. 537.) This refers to the Sun. The cock being the natural herald of the day, he was therefore sacred, among the ancients, to the Sun." (See Knight: Anct. Art and Mytho., p. 70, and Lardner: vol. viii. p. 377.)

[493:1] The name Jesus is the same as Joshua, and signifies Saviour.

[493:2] Justin Martyr: Dialog. Cum Typho. Quoted in Gibbon's Rome, vol. i. p. 582.

[493:3] Matt. xxvii. 55.

[493:4] The ever-faithful woman who is always near at the death of the Sun-god is "the fair and tender light which sheds its soft hue over the Eastern heaven as the Sun sinks in death beneath the Western waters." (Cox: Aryan Myths, vol. i. p. 223.)

[493:5] See Ibid. vol. i. p. 80.

[493:6] Bunsen: The Angel-Messiah, p. 49.

[493:7] Cox: Aryan Mythology, vol. i. p. 223.

[494:1] See Tales of Ancient Greece, p. xxxi.

[494:2] PetrÆus was an interchangeable synonym of the name Oceanus.

[494:3] "Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord, this shall not be unto thee." (Matt. xvi. 22.)

[494:4] See Potter's Æschylus.

[494:5] Matt. xxvii. 45.

[494:6] As the Sun dies, or sinks in the West, blacker and blacker grows the evening shades, till there is darkness on the face of the earth. Then from the high heavens comes down the thick clouds, and the din of its thunder crashes through the air. (Description of the death of Hercules, Tales of Ancient Greece, pp. 61, 62.)

[494:7] It Is the battle of the clouds over the dead or dying Sun, which is to be seen in the legendary history of many Sun-gods. (Cox: Aryan Mythology, vol. ii. p. 91.)

[494:8] This was one of the latest additions of the Sun-myth to the history of Christ Jesus. This has been proved not only to have been an invention after the Apostles' time, but even after the time of Eusebius (A. D. 325). The doctrine of the descent into hell was not in the ancient creeds or rules of faith. It is not to be found in the rules of faith delivered by IrenÆus (A. D. 190), by Origen (A. D. 230), or by Tertullian (A. D. 200-210). It is not expressed in those creeds which were made by the Councils as larger explications of the Apostles' Creed; not in the Nicene, or Constantinopolitan; not in those of Ephesus, or Chalcedon; not in those confessions made at Sardica, Antioch, Selencia, Sirmium, &c.

[495:1] At the end of his career, the Sun enters the lowest regions, the bowels of the earth, therefore nearly all Sun-gods are made to "descend into hell," and remain there for three days and three nights, for the reason that from the 22d to the 25th of December, the Sun apparently remains in the same place. Thus Jonah, a personification of the Sun (see Chap. IX.), who remains three days and three nights in the bowels of the earth—typified by a fish—is made to pay: "Out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardst my voice."

[495:3] Baring-Gould: Curious Myths, p. 260.

"The mighty Lord appeared in the form of a man, and enlightened those places which had ever before been in darkness; and broke asunder the fetters which before could not be broken; and with his invincible power visited those who sat in the deep darkness by iniquity, and the shadow of death by sin. Then the King of Glory trampled upon Death, seized the Prince of Hell, and deprived him of all his power." (Description of Christ's Descent into Hell. Nicodemus: Apoc.)

[495:4] "The women weeping for Tammuz was no more than expressive of the Sun's loss of power in the winter quarter." (King's Gnostics, p. 102. See also, Cox: Aryan Mytho., vol. ii. p. 113.)

After remaining for three days and three nights in the lowest regions, the Sun begins to ascend, thus he "rises from the dead," as it were, and "ascends into heaven."

[496:1] Bonwick: Egyptian Belief, p. 174.

[496:2] Anacalypsis, vol. ii. p. 100.

[496:3] Aryan Mythology, vol. ii. p. 125.

[496:4] Egyptian Belief, p. 182.

[496:5] Ibid.

[496:6] Origin of Religions, p. 264.

[497:1] Origin of Religions, p. 268.

[497:2] Aryan Mythology, vol. i. p. 384.

[497:3] Origin of Religion, pp. 264-268.

[498:1] The number twelve appears in many of the Sun-myths. It refers to the twelve hours of the day or night, or the twelve moons of the lunar year. (Cox: Aryan Mythology, vol. i. p. 165. Bonwick: Egyptian Belief, p. 175.)

Osiris, the Egyptian Saviour, had twelve apostles. (Bonwick, p. 175.)

In all religions of antiquity the number twelve, which applies to the twelve signs of the zodiac, are reproduced in all kinds and sorts of forms. For instance: such are the twelve great gods; the twelve apostles of Osiris; the twelve apostles of Jesus; the twelve sons of Jacob, or the twelve tribes; the twelve altars of James; the twelve labors of Hercules; the twelve shields of Mars; the twelve brothers Arvaux; the twelve gods Consents; the twelve governors in the Manichean System; the adectyas of the East Indies; the twelve asses of the Scandinavians; the city of the twelve gates in the Apocalypse; the twelve wards of the city; the twelve sacred cushions, on which the Creator sits in the cosmogony of the Japanese; the twelve precious stones of the rational, or the ornament worn by the high priest of the Jews, &c., &c. (See Dupuis, pp. 39, 40.)

[499:1] See Mallet's Northern Antiquities, p. 505.

[499:2] Luke, ii. 32.

[499:3] John, xii, 46.

[499:4] John, ix. v.

[499:5] I. John, i. 5.

[500:1] Monumental Christianity, p. 117.

[501:1] See Monumental Christianity, pp. 189, 191, 192, 238, and 296.

[501:2] See Bonwick's Egyptian Belief, p. 283.

[501:3] King's Gnostics, p. 68.

[501:4] Ibid. p. 137.

[501:6] Hist. of Our Lord in Art, vol. i. p. 31.

[502:1] Geikie: Life of Christ, vol. i. p. 151.

[502:2] Monumental Christianity, p. 231.

[502:3] King's Gnostics, p. 48.

[502:4] Ibid. p. 68.

[502:5] See Bell's Pantheon, vol. i. p. 13.

[503:1] Following are the words of the decree now in the Vatican library: "In quibusdam sanctorum imaginum picturis agnus exprimitur, &c. Nos igitur veteres figuras atque umbras, et veritatis notas, et signa ecclesiÆ tradita, complectentes, gratiam, et veritatem anteponimus, quam ut plenitudinem legis acceptimus. Itaque id quod perfectum est, in picturis etiam omnium oculis subjiciamus, agnum illum qui mundi peccatum tollit, Christum Deum nostrum, loco veteris Ayni, human form posthÆ exprimendum decrevimus," &c.

[504:1] "The solar horse, with two serpents upon his head (the Buddhist Aries) is Buddha's symbol, and Aries is the symbol of Christ." (Arthur Lillie: Buddha and Early Buddhism, p. 110.)

[504:2] Quoted by Lillie: Buddha and Early Buddhism, p. 93.

[504:3] Quoted by King: The Gnostics &c., p. 138.

[505:1] Quoted by King: The Gnostics, &c., p. 49.

[505:2] Ibid. p. 45.

[505:3] Indra, the crucified Sun-god of the Hindoos, was represented with golden locks. (Cox: Aryan Myths, vol. i. p. 341.)

Mithras, the Persian Saviour, was represented with long flowing locks.

Izdubar, the god and hero of the Chaldeans, was represented with long flowing locks of hair (Smith: Chaldean Account of Genesis, p. 193), and so was his counterpart, the Hebrew Samson.

"The SÂkya-prince (Buddha) is described as an Aryan by Buddhistic tradition; his face was reddish, his hair of light color and curly, his general appearance of great beauty." (Bunsen: The Angel-Messiah, p. 15.)

"Serapis has, in some instances, long hair formally turned back, and disposed in ringlets hanging down upon his breast and shoulders like that of a woman. His whole person, too, is always enveloped in drapery reaching to his feet." (Knight: Ancient Art and Mythology, p. 104.)

"As for yellow hair, there is no evidence that Greeks have ever commonly possessed it; but no other color would do for a solar hero, and it accordingly characterizes the entire company of them, wherever found." (Fiske: Myths and Mythmakers, p. 202.)

Helios (the Sun) is called by the Greeks the "yellow-haired." (Goldzhier: Hebrew Mytho., p. 137.)

The Sun's rays is signified by the flowing golden locks which stream from the head of Kephalos, and fall over the shoulders of Bellerophon. (Cox: Aryan Mytho., vol. i. p. 107.)

Perseus, son of the virgin Danae, was called the "Golden Child." (Ibid. vol. ii. p. 58.) "The light of early morning is not more pure than was the color on his fair cheeks, and the golden locks streamed bright over his shoulders, like the rays of the sun when they rest on the hills at midday." (Tales of Ancient Greece, p. 83.)

The Saviour Dionysus wore a long flowing robe, and had long golden hair, which streamed from his head over his shoulders. (Aryan Mythology, vol. ii. p. 293.)

Ixion was the "Beautiful and Mighty," with golden hair flashing a glory from his head, dazzling as the rays which stream from Helios, when he drives his chariot up the heights of heaven; and his flowing robe glistened as he moved, like the vesture which the Sun-god gave to the wise maiden Medeia, who dwelt in Kolchis. (Tales of Ancient Greece, p. 47.)

Theseus enters the city of Athens, as Christ Jesus is said to have entered Jerusalem, with a long flowing robe, and with his golden hair tied gracefully behind his head. His "soft beauty" excites the mockery of the populace, who pause in their work to jest with him. (Cox: Aryan Mythology, vol. ii. p. 63.)

Thus we see that long locks of golden hair, and a flowing robe, are mythological attributes of the Sun.

[506:1] Cox: Aryan Mythology, vol. i. p. 49.

[506:2] We have already seen (in Chapter XX.) that the word "Christ" signifies the "Anointed," or the "Messiah," and that many other personages beside Jesus of Nazareth had this title affixed to their names.

[507:1] The theory which has been set forth in this chapter, is also more fully illustrated in Appendix C.

[507:2] These three letters, the monogram of the Sun, are the celebrated I. H. S., which are to be seen in Roman Catholic churches at the present day, and which are now the monogram of the Sun-god Christ Jesus. (See Chapter XXXVI.)


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

Clyx.com


Top of Page
Top of Page