Page:Modern Rationalism (1897).djvu/99

Rh physical phenomena as they appeared to the primitive mind. In particular, the Christology which is found in every organized religion is a mythicized representation of the sun's relation to the earth which has expanded in the lapse of time, and has been adapted to innumerable personalities, and last of all to Jesus of Nazareth; neither are the more ancient Christ-stories predictions of future events, nor is the Christian soteriology the description of an historical episode—all alike are manipulations of a solar myth whose origin had been lost sight of.

It is in the Vedic hymns, as Max Müller says, that we find the development of the sun into a god—a Creator, Preserver, Ruler, Rewarder, and Saviour. The Vedas take us nearest of all to the religion of our Aryan ancestors, and there are passages which explicitly indicate the solar nature of the Redeemer. "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 ever like the wind. His light is powerful, and his mother—the Dawn—gives him the best share of worship among men;" and in the Rig-Veda he is spoken of as "stretching out his arms in the heavens to bless the world, and to rescue it from the terror of darkness." Indeed, from the Aryan name for the supreme being, Dyaus, which has passed into most of the Aryan languages (Theos, deus, dio, etc.), the astronomical nature of the primitive deity is sufficiently apparent: it comes from a root which meant "to shine," and was applied to the bright sky overhead, which was man's first god. The sun was then worshipped as his son, born of the earth, or the darkness, or the dawn, etc., and sent by him to break the power of darkness, to redeem mankind from the misery of night and of winter; the earth was also worshipped as the universal mother.

In support of this theory of the solar nature of the Christs or Saviours of all nations, there is an overwhelming mass of evidence. In the first place, the very names of the Christ and his mother point to an astronomical origin. Aditi and Dahana, the Hindoo virgin-mothers, are names of the dawn. Osiris was a name of the sun; Isis, mother of Horus, was the moon. Theseus was born of Aithra (the pure air), Œdipus of lokasté (violet light of the