You are requested to read the above title carefully. Notice the spelling
of the last word. It is _son_, not _sun_. The difference to the eye is
only in one letter. The substantial difference is very great. Yet in the
end the distinction between the Son and the Sun vanishes. Originally
they were one and the same thing, and they will be so again when
Christianity is properly understood.
Supposing that Jesus of Nazareth ever lived, it is impossible to know,
with any approach to accuracy, what he really was. With the exception of
four epistles by Saint Paul--in which we find a highly mystical Christ,
and not a portrait or even a sketch of an actual man--we have no
materials for a biography of Jesus written within a hundred years of
his death. Undoubtedly _some_ documents existed before the Canonical and
Apocryphal Gospels, but they were lost through neglect or suppression,
and what we have is simply the concoction of older materials by an
unscrupulous Church.
During the interval between the real or supposed death of Jesus and the
date of the gospels, there was plenty of time for the accumulation of
any quantity of mythology. The east was full of such material, only
waiting, after the destruction of the old national religions under the
sway of Rome, to be woven into the texture of a non-national system as
wide as the limits of the Empire.
Protestants are able to recognise a vast deal of Paganism in the
teaching and ritual of the Roman Catholic Church. On that side they keep
an open eye. On the other side their eye is shut. If they opened it they
would see plenty of Paganism in the gospels.
The only fixed date in the career of Jesus is his birthday. This is
known by every scholar to be fictitious. The primitive Church was
ignorant of the day on which Jesus was born. But what was unknown to
the apostles, one of whom is said to have been his very brother, was
opportunely discovered by the Church three hundred years afterwards.
For some time the nativity of Jesus had been celebrated on all sorts
of days, but the Church brought about uniformity by establishing the
twenty-fifth of December. This was the Pagan festival of the nativity of
the Sun. The Church simply appropriated it, in order to bring over the
Pagan population by a change of doctrine without a change or rites and
customs.
It may be objected that the primitive Church did not inquire as to
the birthday of Jesus until it was too late to ascertain it. But this
objection cannot possibly apply to the resurrection, the date of which
is involved in equal uncertainty, although one would expect it to
be precisely known and regularly commemorated. For many ages the
celebration was irregular. Different Sundays were kept, and sometimes
other days, in various weeks of March and April. Finally, after fierce
disputes and excommunications, the present system was imposed upon the
whole Catholic world.
Easter is, in fact, decided astronomically, by a process in which
sun-worship and moon-worship are both conciliated. The starting point is
the vernal equinox, which was the time of a common Pagan festival. The
very name of Easter is of heathen origin. All its customs are bequeathed
to us from far-off Pagan ancestors. Easter eggs, symbolising the life of
the universe, have been traced back to the Romans, Greeks, Persians, and
Egyptians.
When the Christians celebrate the resurrection of Christ they are
imitating the ancient "heathen," who at the same time of the year
commemorated the resurrection of the Sun, and his manifest triumph over
the powers of darkness. And when the moderns prepare to celebrate the
ascension of Christ, they are really welcoming the ascension of the
Sun. The great luminary--father of light and lord of life--is then
(apparently) rising higher and higher in heaven, shedding his warmer
beams on the earth, and gladdening the hearts of men.
Churches and altars are decked with vegetation, which is another relic
of nature-worship. Life is once more bursting forth under the kindling
rays of the sun. Hope springs afresh in the heart of man. His fancy
sees the pastures covered with flocks and herds, the corn waving in the
breeze, and the grapes plumping in the golden sunshine, big with the
blood of earth and the fire of heaven.
According to the Apostles' Creed, Jesus descended into hell between his
death and resurrection. That is also a relic of sun-worship. During the
dark, cold winter the sun descended into the underworld, which is
the real meaning of Hades. Misunderstanding this circumstance, or
deliberately perverting it, the early Church fabricated the monstrous
fable that Jesus "preached unto the spirits in prison," as we read in
the first epistle of Peter. One of the apocryphal gospels gives a lively
account of how he harried the realm of Old Harry, emptying the place
wholesale, and robbing the poor Devil of all his illustrious subjects,
from Adam to John the Baptist.
A volume might be filled with illustrations of the mythology of the
Resurrection. Our present space is limited, and we must let the above
suffice. Anyone who reads the gospel story of the resurrection and
ascension of Jesus Christ, with a careful eye and a critical mind, will
see that it is not historical. Such witnesses, so loose in statement and
so contradictory of each other, would collapse in a few minutes in
any court of law. They do not write as spectators, and they were not
spectators. What they give us is the legendary and mythical story
that had taken possession of the Christian mind long after all the
contemporaries of Jesus were dead.
Our belief, in conclusion, is that the Rising Sun will outlast the
Rising Son. The latter is gradually, but very surely, perishing. Even
professed Christians are giving up the miraculous elements of the
gospels. But who would give up the Sun, which has warmed, lighted, and
fertilised the earth for millions of years, and will do so for millions
of years after the death of Christianity?