Forlong - Rivers of Life

Sun Worship.
worshipped in the northern Gule or Yule, the Italian Ops, and Indian Lakshmi.
Christians early chose Saturni dies for weekly rejoicings, enjoining all then to lay
aside their ordinary vocations, and assemble at noon for prayer as a sort of preparation
for Sol’s special day. A law to this effect was issued as soon as all England became
Christian, in the reign of Edgar, about 958 A.C., and in Scotland, by King William, in
1203, when bells were rung for prayers, but as the people did not come together till
3 P.M., this was named noon-tide prayer—hora nona. Christians said this was “the
preparation for the Sabbath,” and they became very partial to these preparations, which
they called WAKES, or VIGILS—words with the same etymological meaning, viz., “times
of wakefulness.” A Church Vigil is the evening of prayer before a festival, or a whole
day of prayer, beginning at eve on one day, and lasting till next evening. Wakes
or Vigils were instituted at the dedication of a Church or Saint, and when conducted
in an orthodox manner, consisted of old and young parading the towns and country
at an early hour, crying “Holy-wakes,” and inciting all to morning matins, and a
day of rest and prayer; but the usual result was idleness and feasting, ending in drunkenness
and debauchery, which has led the great antiquary, Spelman, to derive Wake
from Bacchanalia, and the Saxon word Wak, meaning drunkenness. 1 Wakes existed
long before Christianity, and were no doubt only for the purpose of rousing the elder
or lazy part of the commnuity into the full enjoyment of a fate. Some Wakes, says
Speght in his Glossary to Chaucer, were “festival evens called Vigilæ for parishioners
to meet in their church, houses, or churchyard, and there to have a drinking fit, and
end quarrels between neighbour and neighbour!” In those days a drunken fit was
considered most salutory—equivalent to a medicinal remedy, 2 and no sin was attached
to it. Wakes were occasionally permitted, and commanded by Priests for other purposes
than prayer, even for bringing about an increase of “the Lord’s people;” a practice
which the Church long adopted in the case of her early Paraguayan Colonies. 3
END OF AUGUST AND SEPTEMHER—HARVEST FESTIVALS.
In most parts of India and the East, the principal harvest fetes follow the close
of the cold season, culminating in the vernal equinox of the 21st of March; but in
Europe and the high lands of Asia, and even on the Syrian hills, probably the greatest
is the Autumnal, which the Jews, like most rude peoples, celebrated by going into
tabernacles, booths, or temporary huts, made of leaves or the straw of the harvest fields,
the better to watch over and garner the precious fruits of the earth—a very necessary
proceeding on the part of people located on hills, and cultivating distant strips of valleyground.
As usual, however, a divine command had to be brought in to certify the
imporatance of the priestly office, and ensure full obedienee from the flocks; so we have
the laws of Lev. xxiii and Deut. xvi, said to have been given from Mount Sinai in the
fifteenth century B.C., when, owing to the circumstances of the tribes then, it was not
1 Brand’s Ants., p. 297.
3 Revelations of a Jesuit resident in Paraguay, quoted from memory.
2 Op. Cit., p. 340.
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