Forlong - Rivers of Life

476
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
shown in conjunction with and inside the Sun, emitting brilliant rays of gold. The Irisbow
of Isis, Cupids, Angels very like Venuses, Saturn and the other planets, could all be
found in this Pantheon. One very grand design was an Agnus Dei covered with Suns
formed suspiciously into a pyramid over the lamb, and from this whole cone there issued
luminous darts, like those seen coming from Siva in Fig. 41, page 22. In a grandly
ornate window, the vernal lamb appeared surrounded equally on every side with orbs
of light; and elsewhere he was shown carrying Solar staves with the cross and orb, in
designs which would be highly approved by all Hindoos, and indeed all Asia.
Truly indeed we abide in Sol and he in us, and from our cradle to our grave; for
every good Christian, say some, should be buried with his feet towards the East, that his
eyes, when he awakes, may at once see the rising God. Christ, as a Jew, was thus
buried; so at least did Gregory vigorously affirm, and this, Bede tries to prove from
the position of the angel in the tomb. When we pray standing, says St Austin, we
must turn our faces to the East, because from thence the day springs, but those who come
to baptism must first turn towards the west to renounce the devil, and after this to
the East to make their covenant with Christ; 1 for even as “the lightning cometh out
of the east and shineth unto the west, so shall the coming of the Son of Man be . . .
He ascended up eastward from Mount Olivet, St. Damascen assures us . . . and his
disciples worship him that way.” It is clear, then, that though historians assert the
actual life of Christ cannot be vouched for by them, he has nevertheless become a
real and living focus, round which a great mass of solar myths have gathered and been
absorbed; these in days of greater purity and enlightenment have produced a spirituality
of life and faith unknown to Westem Asia in any previous times. Thousands of
years before the Christian era, the sons and daughters of Atika were bnried just as the
Church here prescribed for her children, 2 and so also Easterns and Jews; all men turned
to the east in reading and praying, so that in this respect, also, there is nothing new.
Christ, like Serapis, was bom at “cock-crow,” when angels sang the first
Christmas carol to the poor shepherds in the fields of Beth-lehem, and all the heavenly
host (the stars) were present, and then flew abroad to declare the good tidings;
”for at this hour all evil spirits of the night do fly away.” 3
It is a most interesting part of the study of Ancient Faiths, to trace their rise and
fall, but one of the most difficult; for they are ever rising and ever falling, ever on the
move, and never entirely separate from each other. They do not spring up or
grow miraculously, but ceaselessly and unobservedly through eenturies, till of great
strength and stature, when they emerge as it were on the horizon of short-sighted man—
things of power, and led by bold spirits; the growth is but that of ideas and doctrines
which have then required a mouth-piece. The leader but welds into a concrete form
the shadowy ideas of his age now pressing for politica1 expression; and such was
the function of all prophets from Zoroaster to Luther.
1 Brand’s Ants. Ed. 1810, pp. 44-46.
3 Brand, p. 63.
2 Diog. Laert., Vit. Solon, etc.