Forlong - Rivers of Life

Sun Worship.
whoever hits upon a bean placed in it, is the stranger or king. It is curious that the
symbolic bean, the phallic pod of Egypt and Japan should be selected, for he has ever
been king in the East who sits upon a Lotus, which is esteemed the bean-bearer, readers
will remember that this vegetable is used before Lent, and in many occult matters.
It was forbidden to bake a sacred cake in honour of the Virgin’s “lying-in,” as she
was not rendered impure for forty days as other women are.
In spite of all the Christian lore which has interlarded and overlaid the festivities
of the winter solstice we can still see clearly the origin of the festival, and all its rites
and customs. I may quote the following from Mahaffy, cited in the “Life of Jesus,” by
Thomas Scott, a sound and learned writer: “There is indeed hardly a great and fruitful
idea of the Jewish and Christian systems which has not its analogy in the Egyptian
faith. The development of the one God into a Trinity; the incarnation of the mediating
Deity in a virgin, and without a father; his conflict and momentary defeat by
the powers of darkness; his partial victory, for the enemy is not destroyed; his resurrection
and reign over an eternal kingdom with his justified saints; his distinction
from, and yet identity with, the uncreated incomprehensible Father whose form is unknown,
and who dwelleth not in temples made with hands. All these theological
conceptions pervade the oldest religion in Egypt. So, too, the contrast and even the
apparent inconsistencies between our moral and theological beliefs. The vacillating
attribution of sin and guilt partly due to moral weakness, partly to the interference of
evil spirits, and likewise of righteousness to moral worth, and again to the help of
good Genii or angels; the immortality of the soul and its final judgment: the purgatorial
fire, the tortures of the damned, all these things have met us in the Egyptian ritual
and moral treatises. So, too, the purely human tide or morals, and the catalogue of
virtues and vices are, by natural consequence, as like as are the theoretical systems. I
recoil from opening this great subject now; it is enough to have lifted the veil and
shown the scene of many a future contest.” 1 The italics are mine. I think I could
without much effort name many another instance to support this “future contest,”
but contests are never good; we must educate rather than argue with men and women.
The Vigil of St. Paul long continued to be known as Dies Egyptiacus, which
shows that “the apostle to the Gentiles”—there may have been one or five— 2 was
thus sought to be connected with the parent root of all the traditions of the new faith.
In the most northern portions of Skandinavia all celtic nations as great Sun worshippers
testify their joy at seeing the bright God return again, and the fete at “this
season was their greatest solemnity in the year. They called it in many places, Yole, or
Yu-ul, from the word hiaul or houl, which even to this day signifies the Sun in the
languages of Bas Britagne and Cornwall.” 3
1 Mahaffey, Proglegomena to Ancient History,
quoted in that invaluable little book The English
Life of Jesus, by Thos. Scott, Esq., of Upper Norwood,
London, p. 41.
435
2 His Epistles, says Mr. T. L. Strange—a strong
writer—show that there must have been five if not
more Pauls.
3 Mallet’s Northern Antiquities, II. 68