Forlong - Rivers of Life

400
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
like many Hindoo and all English priests to the present hour. Barker thus describes the
Greek Eucharistic Festival: “The whole feast was of a religious character. . . . Eneas
finds Evander sacrificing amidst his people, who are all crowned with white flowers,
and all seated at the same table singing a hymn to the god of the City. . . . . The
Senators feasted in the Capitol; the representatives of the Curiæ in the large hall of
some temple; whilst, on great occasions, when all the people had to be entertained,
tables were placed in the streets (Scotch covenanters placed theirs on the Moor), which
at first the Pontiffs superintended, but afterwards certain priests called Epulones.”
Here, too, Christians have followed suit. The representatives of the Scotch Covenanters
—the Presbyterians of our day, depute certain representative men whom they call Elders
and Deacons “to wait on the tables.” 1 The Persian got his Mithraic Eucharistic Festival
from Zoroaster, who like his Indo-Aryan brother, used scrupulously to observe this.
The Jewish Essenes, from whom Christ sprang, got both the “Passover” and “Supper”
from the Mithraic faith. It was a most natural rite, seeing that the Sun was regarded
as a personal deity, who at this season manifested himself with vast physical force.
So men said they should solemnly eat and drink to his honour, praying and chanting
sacred hymns of the same nature as:
“ Into bread his heat is turned.
Into generous wine his light.”
For his power, which as a personal god, would be flesh and blood, was then actually
manifested in the abundance of grain and generous wine which his forces had poured
forth upon earth. Here is the true origin of Transubstantiation and the Real Presence.
Verily, there is nothing radically new under the sun, if we only knew where to
seek for its prototype! Long before this hallowed Vernal festival which I have described,
it is said that most ancient Oskans—Ophiolaters though they were—used
solemnly and religiously to feast and sing around their Prutanes, on the Akropolis of
Athene, and we see the same rite again renewed here, as well as on the seven hills of
the Eternal City. If Rome prayed and feasted at her Amburbalia or Amlbervalia when
she besought the gods to preserve the walls of her city and the bounds of her territory, so
did Jewish Priests purify themselves, their people, gates and walls (perambulating these
last), praying and singing to their Jahveh with cymbals, psalteries, and harps, as they
delight still to read of in Neh. xii., and Christians delight to imitate at consecrations.
As a Roman city was but an aggregation of families, so a Roman army on
the move was but an image of the city. Sacred fire had to accompany the Greek,
the Roman, and the Jewish camp. The Greeks, like most peoples possessing statues
of their gods, carried these as well as diviners with them, whilst the Romans carried
sacred fowls and augurs, a.nd the Jews their Eduth-Ark, and all the paraphernalia
of divination; and what so powerful as this Art? The Spartans stood calm
1 Small coins like shillings are used throughout Scotland, called Tokens, which admit to the “Sacred
Table,” and some are stamped with The Burning Tree or Bush—the arms of the Kirk.