Forlong - Rivers of Life

390
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
prayers” in the family, or, as we say, “in private;” for “my God” was not “thy God;”
so, “sacrificing at the hearth” meant “thou art indeed one of us,” or “one who carest
only for thine own family.” The family hearth was concealed from the gaze even of
visitors, the gods being called qeoˆ mucioi—“gods of the recess,” or secret or occult gods,
which I believe in more amcient days meant “deities of the secret parts.” The Rev.
T. C. Barker, to whom I am so much indebted, hesitatingly confesses that there were
certain “peculiar ideas about generation” in all of this!—the ancients “believing
that the re-productive power resided solely in the father, who could alone transmit the
spark of life,” which, of course, is the cause of the honour to and deification of Patriarchs
and Fathers, and explains why the Patriarch was at one Prophet, Priest, and King,
and why neither sons, daughters, brothers, nor sisters of the great Patriarch were of
any account in his presence. “The eldest son,” says Manoo, “is begotten to perform
the duty,” that is to rule, when the rather fails to “perform the necessary Shrādas and
sacrifices, and carry on the family fire,” that is to beget children, for “by children
a man acquits his debt toward his ancestors and secures his own immortality.” The
extinction of the family, says the writer of the Bagava-gita, “is the ruin of religion.”
“If a man die without sons,” says the Jewish Lawgiver, “let his brother marry the
widow and procure him children;” and in accordance with this universal belief,
Athens, following older peoples, declared that it was the duty of the chief magistrate
to see that no family ever became extinct. Sparta and some other States deprived a
bachelor of citizenship, whilst Rome, by legal enactments, commanded that every citizen
should marry.
These, and all the states of the Mediterranean and Persia had, like India, baptismal
forms connected with Fire. With the Greeks and Romans the baptismal
ceremony took place between. the ninth and twelfth days of birth and generally commenced
by women seizing the infant and running round, or darting through the fire
with it. So also at marriages, fire was the active and “covenant god.” No account was
taken of a bride’s faith to marry was to embrace the husband’s religions, to be to him
in filiæ loco, and to break entirely with her own family; nay, marriage was for long
entered into with a show of violence, as if to demonstrate the separation. It certainly
reminds one of early times when men thus obtained their wives. The principal part
of the marriage ceremony was to bring the bride before her husband’s hearth; anoint
her with holy water, and make her touch the sacred fire; after which she “broke
bread,” or ate a cake with him. Fire was also the God who witnessed the separation
of husband and wife, which, if there were offspring, was a rare and difficult act; but
if the couple were childless, divorce was an easy matter.
In the root of the term Agnatus—“Relation,” I believe we see a word sprung
originally from Sun or Fire, or both—probably from the Sanskrit Agni, though in
Latin days said to be from Ad, and Nasror. We want to get at the root Ad, which is
equivalent to Ar, Ak, Al, etc., and comes, I expect, from Sun and Fire. I speak of Vedic