The Watchtower Society and John and Morton Edgar - A2Z.org

incalculable blessing to the people.The worship ofBaal was an even more horrible religion than is impliedby presenting children as burnt-offerings to him ;for just as it was required in the Mosaic law that thepriests should eat of part of the animals offered insacrifice by the people (see Num. 18:9, lo), so thepriests of Baal ate part of the human sacrifices offeredto their flre-god Molech ! This shows the true derivationof the name given in the English tongue todevourers of ,puman flesh, for the Chaldean word for"the priests is cahna, so that Cahna-Bal, that is," Priest of Baal," became cannibal. It is common1tnowlc.dge that the priests of the sun-worshippers ofancient Mexico were cannibals.How rejoiced the poor groaning creation will bewhen Christ, the true "Sun of Righteousness." shallarise with healing in his wings (Mal. 4:2). What acontrast to that cruel "sun" of all unrighteousness,which arose with death in his wings I Malachi's allusionto the " wings" of the sun is evidently derivedfrom the well-known symbol of the sun-god in Egyptand Assyria. Above the doors of the ancient templesand tombs in these countries, there is usually to beseen a representation of the sun-god, in the form ofa round disc with wide-spread wings.Along with the sun as the great flre-god, the serpentwas connected. Owen says : "In the Mythology ofthe primitive worl!, the serpent is universally thesymbol of the sun (Owen, apud Davies's Druids, innote, p. 437). In Egypt the commonest sign for thesun, or sun-god, is a disc with a serpent around it(Bunsen, Hieroglyphics, Vo1. i, p. 497). The originalreason for the connection of the serpent with the sunappears to have been that, as the physical worldreceives its light from the clin, so the serpent was he]