All of them fasted for forty days.
All met with a violent death.
All rose from the dead.
The history of these gods is the history of our Christ. He had a god for
a father, a virgin for a mother. He was born in a manger, or a cave--on
the 2 5th of December. His birth was announced by angels. He was
worshiped by wise men, guided by a star. Herod, seeking his life, caused
the death of many babes. Christ fasted for forty days. So, it rained for
forty days before the flood--Moses was on Mt. Sinai for forty days. The
temple had forty pillars and the Jews wandered in the wilderness for
forty years. Christ met with a violent death, and rose from the dead.
These things are not accidents--not coincidences. Christ was a sun-god.
All religions have been born of sun-worship. To-day, when priests
pray, they shut their eyes. This is a survival of sun-worship. When men
worshiped the sun, they had to shut their eyes. Afterwards, to flatter
idols, they pretended that the glory of their faces was more than the
eyes could bear.
In the religion of our day there is nothing original. All of its
doctrines, its symbols and ceremonies are but the survivals of creeds
that perished long ago. Baptism is far older than Christianity--than
Judaism. The Hindus, the Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans had holy
water. The eucharist was borrowed from the Pagans. Ceres was the goddess
of the fields, Bacchus the god of the vine. At the harvest festival they
made cakes of wheat and said: "These are the flesh of the goddess." They
drank wine and cried: "This is the blood of our god."
The cross has been a symbol for many thousands of years. It was a symbol
of immortality--of life, of the god Agni, the form of the grave of a
man. An ancient people of Italy, who lived long before the Romans, long
before the Etruscans, so long that not one word of their language is
known, used the cross, and beneath that emblem, carved on stone, their
dead still rest. In the forests of Central America, ruined temples have
been found, and on the walls the cross with the bleeding victim. On
Babylonian cylinders is the impression of the cross. The Trinity came
from Egypt. Osiris, Isis and Horus were worshiped thousands of years
before our Father, Son and Holy Ghost were thought of. So the Tree of
Life grew in India, China and among the Aztecs long before the Garden
of Eden was planted. Long before our Bible was known, other nations
had their sacred books, temples and altars, sacrifices, ceremonies and
priests. The "Fall of Man" is far older than our religion, and so are
the "Atonement" and the Scheme of Redemption.
In our blessed religion there is nothing new, nothing original.
Among the Egyptians the cross was a symbol of the life to come. And
yet the first religion was, and all religions growing out of that, were
naturally produced. Every brain was a field in which Nature sowed the
seeds of thought. The rise and set of sun, the birth and death of day,
the dawns of silver and the dusks of gold, the wonders of the rain and
snow, the shroud of Winter and the many colored robe of Spring, the
lonely moon with nightly loss or gain, the serpent lightning and the
thunder's voice, the tempest's fury and the zephyr's sigh, the threat
of storm and promise of the bow, cathedral clouds with dome and spire,
earthquake and strange eclipse, frost and fire, the snow-crowned
mountains with their tongues of flame, the fields of space sown thick
with stars, the wandering comets hurrying past the fixed and sleepless
sentinels of night, the marvels of the earth and air, the perfumed
flower, the painted wing, the waveless pool that held within its magic
breast the image of the startled face, the mimic echo that made a record
in the viewless air, the pathless forests and the boundless seas,
the ebb and flow of tides--the slow, deep breathing of some vague and
monstrous life--the miracle of birth, the mystery of dream and death,
and over all the silent and immeasurable dome. These were the warp and
woof, and at the loom sat Love and Fancy, Hope and Fear, and wove the
wondrous tapestries whereon we find pictures of gods and fairy lands
and all the legends that were told when Nature rocked the cradle of the
infant world.