This is the continuation of the previous chapter, The Two Babylons I. Distinctive Character of the Two Systems.

Section I.—Trinity in Unity

IF there be this general coincidence between the systems of Babylon and Rome, the question arises, Does the coincidence stop here? To this the answer is, Far otherwise. We have only to bring the ancient Babylonian Mysteries to bear on the whole system of Rome, and then it will be seen how immensely the one is borrowed from the other. These Mysteries were long shrouded in darkness, but now the thick darkness begins to pass away. All who have paid the least attention to the literature Of Greece, Egypt, Phoenicia, or Rome, are aware of the place which the “Mysteries” occupied in these countries, and that, whatever circumstantial diversities there might be, in all essential respects these “Mysteries” in the different countries were the same.

Now, as the language of Jeremiah already quoted, would indicate that Babylon was the primal source from which all these systems of idolatry flowed, so the deductions of the most learned historians, on mere historical grounds, have led to the same conclusion. From Zonaras we find that the concurrent testimony Of the ancient authors he had consulted was to this effect; for speaking of arithmetic and astronomy, he says: “It is said that these came from the Chaldees to the Egyptians, and thence to the Greeks.” If the Egyptians and Greeks derived their arithmetic and astronomy from Chaldea, seeing these in Chaldea were sacred sciences, and monopolized by the priests, that is sufficient evidence that they must have derived their religion from the same quarter.

Both Bunsen and Layard in their researches have come substantially to the same result. The statement of Bunsen is to the effect that the religious system of Egypt was derived from Asia, and “the primitive empire in Babel.“ Layard, again, though taking a somewhat more favourable view of the system of the Chaldean MAGI than I am persuaded, the facts of history warrant, nevertheless thus speaks of that system:—“Of the great antiquity of this primitive worship there is abundant evidence, and that it originated among the inhabitants of the Assyrian plains, we have the united testimony of sacred and profane history. It obtained the epithet of perfect, and was believed to be the most ancient of religious systems, having preceded that of the Egyptians.

“The identity,” he adds, “of many of the Assyrian doctrines with those of Egypt is alluded to by Porphyry and Clemens;” and, in connection with the same subject, he quotes the following from Birch on Babylonian cylinders and monuments:——“ he zodiacal signs ….. show unequivocally that the Greeks derived their notions and arrangements of the zodiac [and consequently their Mythology, that was intertwined with it] from the Chaldees. The identity of Nimrod with the constellation Orion is not to be rejected.”

Ouvaroff, also, in his learned work on the Eleusinian mysteries, has come to the same conclusion. After referring to the fact that the Egyptian priests claimed the honor of having transmitted to the Greeks the first elements of Polytheism, he thus concludes:—“These positive facts would sufficiently prove, even without the conformity of ideas, that the Mysteries transplanted into Greece, and there united with a certain number of local notions, never lost the character of their origin derived from the cradle of the moral and religious ideas of the universe. All these separate facts—all these scattered testimonies, recur to that fruitful principle which places in the East the center of science and civilization.”

If thus we have evidence that Egypt and Greece derived their religion from Babylon, we have equal evidence that the religious system of the Phoenicians came from the same source. Macrobius shows that the distinguishing feature of the Phoenician idolatry must have been imported from Assyria, which in classic writers, included Babylonia. “The worship of the Architic Venus,” says he, “formerly flourished as much among the Assyrians as it does now among the Phoenicians.”

Now, to establish the identity between the systems of ancient Babylon and Papal Rome, we have just to inquire in how far does the system of the Papacy agree with the system established in these Babylonian Mysteries. In prosecuting such an inquiry there are considerable difficulties to be overcome; for, as in geology, it is impossible at all points to reach the deep, underlying strata of the earth’s surface, so it is not to be expected that in any one country we should find a complete and connected account of the system established in that country. But yet, even as the geologist, by examining the contents of a fissure here, an upheaval there, and what “crops out” of itself on the surface elsewhere, is enabled to determine, with wonderful certainty, the order and general contents of the different strata over all the earth, so it is with the subject of the Chaldean Mysteries. What is wanted in one country is supplemented in another; and what actually “crops out” in different directions, to a large extent necessarily determines the character of much that does not directly appear on the surface.

Taking, then, the admitted unity and Babylonian character of the ancient Mysteries of Egypt, Greece, Phoenicia, and Rome, as the clue to guide us in our researches, let us go on from step to step in our comparison of the doctrine and practice of the two Babylons—the Babylon of the Old Testament, and the Babylon of the New.

And here I have to notice, first, the identity of the objects of worship in Babylon and Rome. The ancient Babylonians, just as the modern Romans, recognized in words the unity of the Godhead; and, while worshiping innumerable minor deities, as possessed of certain influence on human affairs, they distinctly acknowledged that there was ONE infinite and Almighty Creator, supreme over all. Most other nations did the same. “In the early ages of mankind,” says Wilkinson in his “Ancient Egyptians,” “the existence of a sole and omnipotent Deity, who created all things, seems to have been the universal belief: and tradition taught men the same notions on this subject, which, in later times, have been adopted by all civilized nations.”

“The Gothic religion,” says Mallet, “taught the being of a supreme God, Master of the Universe, to whom all things were submissive and obedient.”—(Tacit. de Morib. Germ.) The ancient Icelandic mythology calls him “the Author of every thing that existeth, the eternal, the living, and awful Being; the searcher into concealed things, the Being that never changeth.” It attributeth to this deity “an infinite power, a boundless knowledge, and incorruptible justice.”

We have evidence of the same having been the faith of ancient Hindostan. Though modern Hinduism recognizes millions of gods, yet the Indian sacred books show that originally it had been far otherwise. Major Moor, speaking of Brahm, the supreme God of the Hindus, says:—“Of Him whose glory is so great, there is no image.” (Veda) He “illumines all, delights all, whence all proceeded; that by which they live when born, and that to which all must return.” (Veda.)

In the “Institutes of Menu,” he is characterized as “He whom the mind alone can perceive; whose essence eludes the external organs, who has no visible parts, who exists from eternity . . . . the soul of all beings, whom no being can comprehend.” In these passages, there is a trace of the existence of Pantheism; but the very language employed bears testimony to the existence among the Hindus at one period of a far purer faith.

Nay, not merely had the ancient Hindus exalted ideas of the natural perfections of God, but there is evidence that they were all aware of the gracious character of God, as revealed in his dealings with a lost and guilty world. This is manifest from the very name Brahm, appropriated by them to the one infinite and eternal God.

There has been a great deal of unsatisfactory speculation in regard to the meaning of this name, but when the different statements in regard to Brahm are carefully considered, it becomes evident that the name Brahm is just the Hebrew Rahm, with the digamma prefixed, which is very frequent in Sanskrit words derived from Hebrew or Chaldee. Rahm in Hebrew signifies “The merciful or compassionate one.” But Rahm also signifies the WOMB or the bowels as the seat of compassion.

Now we find such language applied to Brahm, the one supreme God, as cannot be accounted for, except on the supposition that Brahm had the very same meaning as the Hebrew Rahm. Thus, we find the god Krishna, in one of the Hindu sacred books, when asserting his high dignity as a divinity and his identity with the Supreme, using the following words: “The great Brahm is my WOMB, and in it I place my fetus, and from it is the procreation of all nature. The great Brahm is the WOMB of all the various forms which are conceived in every natural WOMB.” How could such language ever have been applied to “The supreme Brahm, the most holy, the most high God, the Divine being, before all other gods; Without birth, the mighty Lord, God of gods, the universal Lord,” but from the connection between Rahm “the womb,” and Rahm “the merciful one?” Here, then, we find that Brahm is just the same as “Er-Rahman,” “The all-merciful one,”— a title applied by the Turks to the Most High, and that the Hindus, notwithstanding their deep religious degradation now, had once known that “the most holy, most high God,” is also “the God of Mercy,” in other words, that he is “a just God and a Saviour.“

And proceeding on this interpretation of the name Brahm, we see how exactly their religious knowledge as to the creation had coincided with the account of the origin of all things, as given in Genesis. It is well known that the Brahmans, to exalt themselves as a priestly half-divine caste, to whom all others ought to bow down, have for many ages taught that, while the other castes came from the arms, and body, and feet of Brahma—the visible representative and manifestation of the invisible Brahm, and identified with him —they alone came from the mouth of the creative God.

Now we find statements in their sacred books which prove that once a very different doctrine must have been taught. Thus, in one of the Vedas, speaking of Brahma, it is expressly stated that “ALL beings” “ are created from his MOUTH.” In the passage in question an attempt is made to mystify the matter; but, taken in connection with the meaning of the name Brahm, as already given, who can doubt what was the real meaning of the statement, opposed though it be to the lofty and exclusive pretensions of the Brahmans? It evidently meant that He who, ever since the fall, has been revealed to man as the “Merciful: and Gracious One” (Exod. xxxiv. 6), was known at the same time as the Almighty One, who in the beginning “spake and it was done,” “ commanded and all things stood fast,” who made all things by the “Word of his power.”

After what has now been said, any one who consults the “Asiatic Researches,” vol. vii., p. 293, may see that it is in a great measure from a wicked perversion of this divine title of the One Living and True God, a title that ought to have been so dear to sinful men, that all those moral abominations have come that make the symbols of the pagan temples of India so offensive to the eye of purity.

So utterly idolatrous was the Babylonian recognition of the Divine unity, that Jehovah, the Living God, severely condemned his own people for giving any countenance to it: “They that sanctify themselves, and purify themselves in the gardens, after the rites of the ONLY ONE, eating swine’s flesh, and the abomination, and the mouse, shall be consumed together” (Isaiah lxvi. 17). In the unity of that only one God of the Babylonians, there were three persons, and to symbolize that doctrine of the Trinity, they employed, as the discoveries of Layard prove, the equilateral triangle, just as it is well known the Romish Church does at this day. In both cases such a comparison is most degrading to the King Eternal, and is fitted utterly to pervert the minds of those who contemplate it, as if there was or could be any similitude between such a figure and Him who hath said, “To whom will ye liken God, and what likeness will ye compare unto him?”

The Papacy has in some of its churches, as for instance, in the monastery of the so—called Trinitarians of Madrid, an image of the Triune God, with three heads on one body. The Babylonians had something of the same. Mr Layard, in his last work, has given a specimen of such a triune divinity, worshiped in ancient Assyria. (Fig. 3.)

The accompanying cut (fig. 4) of such another divinity, worshiped among the Pagans of Siberia, is taken from a medal in the Imperial Cabinet of St. Petersburg, and given in Parsons’ “Japhet.” The three heads are differently arranged in Layard’s specimen, but both alike are evidently intended to symbolize the same great truth, although all such representations of the Trinity necessarily and utterly debase the conceptions of those, among whom such images prevail, in regard to that sublime mystery of our faith. In India, the supreme divinity, in like manner, in one of the most ancient cave-temples, is represented with three heads on one body, under the name of “ Eko Deva Trimurtti,” “ One God, three forms.”

In Japan, the Buddhists worship their great divinity Buddha, with three heads, in the very same form, under the name of “San Pao Fuh.” All these have existed from ancient times. While overlaid with idolatry, the recognition of a Trinity was universal in all the ancient nations of the world, proving how deep-rooted in the human race was the primeval doctrine on this subject, which comes out so distinctly in Genesis.

When we look at the symbols in the triune figure of Layard, already referred to, and minutely examine them, they are very instructive. Layard regards the circle in that figure as signifying “Time without bounds.” But the hieroglyphic meaning of the circle is evidently different. A circle in Chaldee was Zero; and Zero also signified “the seed” Therefore, according to the genius of the mystic system of Chaldea, which was to a large extent founded on double meanings, that which, to the eyes of men in general, was only zero, “ a circle,” was understood by the initiated to signify zero, “the seed.”

Now, viewed in this light, the triune emblem of the supreme Assyrian divinity shows clearly what had been the original patriarchal faith. First, there is the head of the old man; next, there is the zero, or circle, for “the seed ;” and, lastly, the wings and tail of the bird or dove; showing, though blasphemously, the unity of Father, Seed, or Son, and Holy Ghost. While this had been the original way in which Pagan idolatry had represented the Triune God, and though this kind of representation had survived to Sennacherib’s time, yet there is evidence that, at a very early period, an important change had taken place in the Babylonian notions in regard to the divinity; and that the three persons had come to be, the eternal Father, the Spirit of God incarnate in a human mother, and a divine Son, the fruit of that incarnation.

Section II.—The Mother and Child. Sub-Section I – The Child in Assyria

While this was the theory, the first person in the Godhead was practically overlooked. As the Great Invisible, taking no immediate concern in human affairs, he was “to be worshiped through silence alone,” that is, in point of fact, he was not worshiped by the multitude at all. The same thing is strikingly illustrated in India at this day. Though Brahma, according, to the sacred books, is the first person of the Hindu Triad, and the religion of Hindustan is called by his name, yet he is never worshiped, and there is scarcely a single temple in all India now in existence of those that were formerly erected to his honor.

So also is it in those countries of Europe where the Papal system is most completely developed. In Papal Italy, as travelers universally admit (except where the gospel has recently entered), all appearance of worshiping the King Eternal and Invisible is almost extinct, while the Mother and the Child are the grand objects of worship. Exactly so, in this latter respect, also was it in Ancient Babylon. The Babylonians, in their popular religion, supremely worshiped a Goddess Mother and a Son, who was represented in pictures and in images as an infant or child in his mother’s arms (figs. 5 and 6). From Babylon this worship of the Mother and the Child spread to the ends of the earth. In Egypt the Mother and the Child were worshiped under the names of Isis and Osiris. In India, even to this day, as Isi and Iswara; in Asia, as Cybele and Deoius; in Pagan Rome, as Fortuna and Jupiter—puer, or, Jupiter, the boy; in Greece, as Ceres, the great Mother, with the babe at her breast, or as Irene, the goddess of Peace, with the boy Plntus in her arms; and even in Tibet, in China, in Japan, the Jesuit missionaries were astonished to find the counterpart of Madonna and her child as devoutly worshiped as in Papal Rome itself; Shing Moo, the Holy Mother in China, being represented with a child in her arms, and a glory around her, exactly as if a Roman Catholic artist had been employed to set her up.

Sub-Section I.—The Child In Assyria.

The original of that mother, so widely worshiped, there is reason to believe, was Semiramis, already referred to, who, it is well known, was worshiped by the Babylonians, and other eastern nations, and that under the name of Rhea, the great “Goddess Mother.”

It was from the son, however, that she derived all her glory and her claims to deification. That son, though represented as a child in his mother’s arms, was a person of great stature and immense bodily powers, as well as most fascinating manners. In Scripture he is referred to (Ezek. viii. 14:) under the name of Tammuz, but he is commonly known among classical writers under the name of Bacchus, that is,“ The Lamented one.” To the ordinary reader the name of Bacchus suggests nothing more than revelry and drunkenness; but it is now well known, that amid all the abominations that attended his orgies, their grand design was professedly “the purification of souls,” and that from the guilt and defilement of sin.

This lamented one, exhibited and adored as a little child in his mother’s arms, seems, in point of fact, to have been the husband of Semiramis, whose name, Ninus, by which he is commonly known in classical history, literally signified “The Son.” As Semiramis, the wife, was worshiped as Rhea, whose grand distinguishing character was that of the great goddess “Mother,” the conjunction with her of her husband, under the name of Ninus, or “The Son,” was sufficient to originate the peculiar worship of the “Mother and Son,” so extensively diffused among the nations of antiquity; and this, no doubt, is the explanation of the fact which has so much puzzled the inquirers into ancient history, that Ninus is sometimes called the husband, and sometimes the son of Semiramis. This also accounts for the origin of the very same confusion of relationship between Isis and Osiris, the mother and child of the Egyptians; for, as Bunsen shows, Osiris was represented in Egypt as at once the son and husband of his mother; and actually bore, as one of his titles of dignity and honor, the name “Husband of the Mother.” This still further casts light on the fact already noticed, that the Indian god Iswara is represented as a babe at the breast of his own wife Isi, or Parvati.

Now, this Ninus, or “Son,” borne in the arms of the Babylonian Madonna, is so described as very clearly to identify him with Nimrod. “ Ninus, king of the Assyrians,” says Trogus Pompeius, epitomized by Justin, “first of all changed the contented moderation of the ancient manners, incited by a new passion, the desire of conquest. He was the first who carried on war against his neighbors, and he conquered all nations from Assyria to Lybia, as they were yet unacquainted with the arts of war.” This account points directly to Nimrod, and can apply to no other.

The account of Diodorus Siculus entirely agrees with it, and adds another trait that goes still further to determine the identity. That account is as follows:— “Ninus, the most ancient of the Assyrian kings mentioned in history, performed great actions. Being naturally of a warlike disposition, and ambitious of glory that results from valor, he armed a considerable number of young men that were brave and vigorous like himself, trained them up a long time in laborious exercises and hardships, and by that means accustomed them to bear the fatigues of war, and to face dangers with intrepidity.” As Diodorus makes Ninus “the most ancient of the Assyrian kings,” and represents him as beginning those wars which raised his power to an extraordinary height by bringing the people of Babylonia under subjection to him, while as yet the city of Babylon was not in existence, this shows that be occupied the very position of Nimrod, of whom the scriptural account is, that he first “began to be mighty on the earth,” and that the “beginning of his kingdom was Babylon.” As the Babal builders, when their speech was confounded, were scattered abroad on the face of the earth, and therefore deserted both the city and the tower which they had commenced to build, Babylon, as a city, could not properly be said to exist till Nimrod, by establishing his power there, made it the foundation and starting-point of his greatness. In this respect, then, the story Of Ninus and of Nimrod exactly harmonize. The way, too, in which Ninus gained his power is the very way in which Nimrod erected his. There can be no doubt that it was by inuring his followers to the toils and dangers Of the chase, that he gradually formed them to the use of arms, and so prepared them for aiding him in establishing his dominion; just as Ninus, by training his companions for a long time “in laborious exercises and hardships,” qualified them for making him the first of the Assyrian kings.

The conclusions deduced from these testimonies of ancient history are greatly strengthened by many additional considerations. In Gen. x. 11, we find a passage, which, when its meaning is properly understood, casts a very steady light on the subject. That passage, as given in the authorized version, runs thus:—“Out of that land went forth Asshur, and builded Nineveh.” This speaks of it as something remarkable, that Asshur went out Of the land Of Shinar, while yet the human race in general went forth from the same land. It goes upon the supposition that Ashur had some sort Of divine right to that land, and that he had been, in a manner, expelled from it by Nimrod, while no divine right is elsewhere hinted at in the context, or seems capable of proof. Moreover, it represents Asshur as setting up IN THE IMMEDIATE NEIGHBORHOOD of Nimrod as mighty a kingdom as Nimrod himself, Asshur building four cities, one of which is emphatically said to have been “great” (ver. 12); ’while Nimrod, on this interpretation, built just the same number of cities, of which none is specially characterized as “great.”

Now, it is in the last degree improbable that Nimrod would have quietly borne so mighty a rival so near him To obviate such difficulties as these, it has been proposed to render the words, “out of that land he (Nimrod) went forth into Asshur, or Assyria.” But then, according to ordinary usage of grammar, the word in the original should have been “Ashurah,” with the sign of motion to a place affixed to it, whereas it is simply Asshur, without any such sign of motion affixed. I am persuaded that the whole perplexity that commentators have hitherto felt in considering this passage, has arisen from supposing that there is a proper name in the passage, where in reality no proper name exists. Ashur is the passive participle of a verb, which, in its Chaldee sense, signifies “to make strong,” and, consequently, signifies “being strengthened,” or “made strong.” Read thus, the whole passage is natural and easy, (ver. 10), “And the beginning of his (Nimrod’s) kingdom was Babel, and Erech, and Accad, and Calneh.” A beginning naturally implies something to succeed, and here we find it; (ver. 11), “Out of that land he went forth, being made strong, or when he had been made strong (asshur), and builded Nineveh,” etc.

Now, this exactly agrees with the statement in the ancient history of Justin: “Ninus strengthened the greatness of his acquired dominion by continued possession. Having subdued, therefore, his neighbors, when, by an accession of forces, being still further strengthened, he went forth against other tribes, and every new victory paved the way for another, he subdued all the peoples of the East“ Thus, then, Nimrod, or Ninus, was the builder of Nineveh; and the origin of the name of that city, as “the habitation of Ninus,” is accounted for, and light is thereby, at the same time, cast on the fact, that the name of the chief part of the ruins of Nineveh is Nimrod at this day.

Now, assuming that Ninus is Nimrod, the way in which that assumption explains what is otherwise inexplicable in the statements of ancient history greatly confirms the truth of that assumption itself. Ninus is said to have been the son of Belus or Bel, and Bel is said to have been the founder of Babylon. If Ninus was in reality the first king of Babylon, how could Belus or Bel, his father, be said to be the founder of it? Both might very well be, as will appear if we consider who was Bel, and what we can trace of his doings. If Ninus was Nimrod, who was the historical Bel? He must have been Cush; for “Cush begat Nimrod,” (Gen. x. 8); and Cush is generally represented as having been a ringleader in the great apostacy. But, again, Cush, as the son of Ham, was Her-mes or Mercury; for Hermes is just an Egyptian synonym for the “son of Ham.” Now, Hermes was the great original prophet of idolatry; for he was recognized by the pagans as the author of their religious rites, and the interpreter of the gods. The distinguished Gesenius identifies him with the Babylonian Nebo, as the prophetic god; and a statement of Hyginus shows that he was known as the grand agent in that movement which produced the division of tongues.

His words are these: “For many ages men lived under the government of Jove [evidently not the Roman Jupiter, but the Jehovah of the Hebrews], without cities and without laws, and all speaking one language. But after that Mercury interpreted the speeches of men (whence an interpreter is called Hermeneutes), the same individual distributed the nations. Then discord began.“

Here there is a manifest enigma. How could Mercury or Hermes have any need to interpret the speeches of mankind when they “all spake one language”? To find out the meaning of this, we must go to the language of the mysteries. Peresh, in Chaldee, signifies “to interpret;” but was pronounced by old Egyptians and by Greeks, and often by the Chaldees themselves, in the same way as “Peres,” to “divide.” Mercury, then, or Hermes, or Cush, “the son of Ham,” was the “DIVIDER of the speeches of men.” He, it would seem, had been the ringleader in the scheme for building the great city and tower of Babel, and, as the well-known title of Hermes,—“the interpreter of the gods,” would indicate, had encouraged them, in the name of God, to proceed in their presumptuous enterprise, and so had caused the language of men to be divided, and themselves to be scattered abroad on the face of the earth.

Now look at the name of Belus, or Bel, given to the father of Ninus, or Nimrod, in connection with this. While the Greek name Belus represented both the Baal and Bel of the Chaldees, these were nevertheless two entirely distinct titles. These titles were both alike often given to the same god, but they had totally different meanings. Baal, as we have already seen, signified “The Lord;” but Bel signified “The Confounder.” When, then, we read that Belus, the father of Ninus, was he that built or founded Babylon, can there be a doubt in what sense it was that the title of Belus was given to him? It must have been in the sense of Bel the “Confounder.” And to this meaning of the name of the Babylonian Bel, there is a very distinct allusion in Jeremiah l. 2, where it is said “Bel is confounded,” that is, “The Confounder is brought to confusion.”

That Cush was known to Pagan antiquity under the very character of Bel “The Confounder,” a statement of Ovid very clearly proves. The statement to which I refer is that in which Janus “the god of gods,” from whom all the other gods had their origin, is made to say of himself: “The ancients . . . called me Chaos.” Now, first this decisively shows that Chaos was known not merely as a state of confusion, but as the “god of Confusion.” But, secondly, who that is at all acquainted with the laws of Chaldaic pronunciation, does not know that Chaos is just one of the established forms of the name of Chus or Cush? Then, look at the symbol of Janus (see fig.7), whom “the ancients called Chaos,” and it will be seen how exactly it tallies with the doings of Cush, when he is identified with Bel, “The Confounder.”

That symbol is a club; and the name of “a club” in Chaldee comes from the very word which signifies “to break in pieces, or scatter abroad.” He who caused the confusion of tongues was he who “broke” the previously united earth (Gen. xi. 1) “in pieces,” and “scattered” the fragments abroad. How significant, then, as a symbol, is the club, as commemorating the work of Cush, as Bel, the “Confounder”? And that significance will be all the more apparent when the reader turns to the Hebrew of Gen. xi. 9, and finds that the very word from which a club derives its name is that which is employed when it is said, that in consequence of the confusion of tongues, the children of men were “scattered abroad on the face of all the earth”: The word there used for scattering abroad is Hephaitz, which, in the Greek form becomes Hephaizt, and hence the origin of the well-known but little understood name of Hephaistos, as applied to Vulcan, “The father of the gods.” Hephaistos is the name of the ringleader in the first rebellion, as “The Scatterer abroad,” as Bel is the name of the same individual as the “Confounder of tongues.”

Here, then, the reader may see the real origin of Vulcan’s Hammer, which is just another name for the club of Janus or Chaos, “The god of Confusion;” and to this, as breaking the earth in pieces, there is a covert allusion in Jer. 50:23, where Babylon, as identified with its primeval god, is thus apostrophized: “How is the hammer of the whole-earth cut asunder and broken!”

Now, as the tower-building was the first act of open rebellion after the flood, and Cush, as Bel, was the ringleader in it, he was, of course, the first to whom the name Merodach, “The great Rebel,” must have been given, and, therefore, according to the usual parallelism of the prophetic language, we find both names of the Babylonian god referred to together, when the judgment on Babylon is predicted: “Bel is confounded: Merodach is broken to pieces,” (Jer. 50:2). The judgment comes upon the Babylonian god according to what he had done. As Bel, he had “confounded” the whole earth, therefore he is “confounded.” As Merodach, by the rebellion he had stirred up, he had “broken” the united world to pieces; therefore he himself is “broken to pieces.”

So much for the historical character of Bel, as identified with Janus or Chaos, the god of confusion, with his symbolical club. Proceeding, then, on these deductions, it is not difficult to see how it might be said that Bel or Belus, the father of Ninus, founded Babylon, while nevertheless Ninus or Nimrod was properly the builder of it. Now, though Bel or Cush, as being specially concerned in laying the first foundations of Babylon, might be looked upon as the first king, as in some of the copies of “Eusebius’s Chronicle” he is represented, yet it is evident, from both sacred history and profane, that he could never have reigned as king of the Babylonian monarchy, properly so called; and accordingly, in the Armenian version of the “Chronicle of Eusebius,” which bears the undisputed palm for correctness and authority, his name is entirely omitted in the list of Assyrian kings, and that of Ninus stands first, in such terms as exactly correspond with the scriptural account of Nimrod. Thus, then, looking at the fact that Ninus is currently made by antiquity the son of Belus, or Bel, when we have seen that the historical Bel is Cush, the identity of Ninus and Nimrod is still further confirmed.

But when we look at what is said of Semiramis, the wife of Ninus, the evidence receives an additional development. That evidence goes conclusively to show that the wife of Ninus could be none other than the wife of Nimrod, and, further, to bring out one of the grand characters in which Nimrod, when deified, was adored.

In Daniel xi. 38, we read of a god called Ala mahozim, i.e., the “god of fortifications.” Who this god of fortifications could be, commentators have found themselves at a loss to determine. In the records of antiquity the existence of any god of fortifications has been commonly overlooked; and it must he confessed that no such god stands forth there with any prominence to the ordinary reader. But of the existence of a goddess of fortifications, every one knows that there is the amplest evidence. That goddess is Cybele, who is universally represented with a mural or turreted crown, or with a fortification, on her head. Why was Rhea or Cybele thus represented? Ovid asks the question and answers it himself; and the answer is this: The reason, he says, why the statue of Cybele wore a crown of towers was, “because she first erected them in cities.” The first city in the world after the flood (from whence the commencement of the world itself was often dated) that had towers and encompassing walls, was Babylon; and Ovid himself tells us that it was Semiramis, the first queen of that city, who was believed to have “surrounded Babylon with a wall of brick.”

Semiramis, then, the first deified queen of that city and tower whose top was intended to reach to heaven, must have been the prototype of the goddess who “first made towers in cities.” When we look at the Ephesian Diana we find evidence to the very same effect. In general, Diana was depicted as a Virgin, and the patroness of virginity; but the Ephesian Diana was quite different. She was represented with all the attributes of the Mother of the gods (see fig. 8), and, as the Mother of the gods, she wore a turreted crown, such as no one can contemplate without being forcibly reminded of the tower of Babel. Now, this tower-bearing Diana is by an ancient scholiast expressly identified with Semiramis. When, therefore, we remember that Rhea, or Cybele, the tower-bearing goddess, was, in point of fact, a Babylonian goddess, and that Semiramis, when deified, was worshiped under the name of Rhea, there will remain, I think, no doubt as to the personal identity of the “goddess of fortifications.”

Now there is no reason to believe that Semiramis alone (though some have represented the matter so) built the battlements of Babylon. We have the express testimony of the ancient historian, Megasthenes, as preserved by Abydenus, that it was “Belus” who “surrounded Babylon with a wall.” As “Bel the Confounder,” who began the city and tower of Babel, had to leave both unfinished, this could not refer to him. It could refer only to his son Ninus, who inherited his father’s title, and who was the first actual king of the Babylonian empire, and, consequently, Nimrod.

The real reason that Semiramis, the wife of Ninus, gained the glory of finishing the fortifications of Babylon, was, that she came in the esteem of the ancient idolaters to hold a preponderating position, and to have attributed to her all the different characters that belonged, or were supposed to belong, to her husband. Having ascertained, then, one of the characters in which the deified wife was worshiped, we may from that conclude what was the corresponding character of the deified husband. Layard distinctly indicates his belief that Rhea or Cybele, the “tower-crowned” goddess, was just the female counterpart of the “deity presiding over bulwarks or fortresses;” and that this deity was Ninus, or Nimrod, we have still further evidence from what the scattered notices of antiquity say of the first deified king of Babylon, under a name that identifies him as the husband of Rhea, the “tower-bearing” goddess. That name is Kronos or Saturn. It is well known that Kronos, or Saturn, was Rhea’s husband; but it is not so well known who was Kronos himself. Traced back to his original, that divinity is proved to have been the first king of Babylon.

Theophilus of Antioch shows that Kronos in the cast was worshiped under the names of Bel and Bal; and from Eusebius we learn that the first of the Assyrian kings, whose name was Belus, was also by the Assyrians called Kronos. As the genuine copies of Eusebius do not admit of any Belus, as an actual king of Assyria, prior to Ninus, king of the Babylonians, and distinct from him, that shows that Ninus, the first king of Babylon, was Kronos. But, further, we find that Kronos was king of the Cyclops, who were his brethren, and who derived that name from him, and that the Cyclops were known as “the inventors of tower-building.”|| The king of the Cyclops, “the inventors of tower-building,” occupied a position exactly correspondent to that of Rhea, who “first erected (towers) in cities.” If, therefore, Rhea, the wife of Kronos, was the goddess of fortifications, Kronos or Saturn, the husband of Rhea, that is, Ninus or Nimrod, the first king of Babylon, must have been Ala mahozim, “the god of fortifications.”

The name Kronos itself goes not a little to confirm the argument. Kronos signifies “The Horned one.” As a horn is a well-known Oriental emblem for power or might, Kronos, “The Horned one,” was, according to the mystic system, just a synonym for the scriptural epithet applied to Nimrod, viz., Gheber, “ The mighty one.” (Gen. x. 8), “He began to be mighty on the earth.”

The name Kronos, as the classical reader is well aware, is applied to Saturn as the “Father of the gods.” We have already had another “father of the gods” brought under our notice, even Cush in his character of Bel the Confounder, or Hephaistos, “The Scatterer abroad;” and it is easy to understand how, when the deification of mortals began, and the “mighty” Son of Cush was deified, the father, especially considering the part which he seems to have had in concocting the whole idolatrous system, would have to be deified too, and of course, in his character as the Father of the “Mighty one,” and of all the “immortals ” that succeeded him. But, in point of fact, we shall find, in the course of our inquiry, that Nimrod was the actual Father of the gods, as being the first of deified mortals; and that, therefore, it is in exact accordance with historical fact that Kronos, the Horned, or Mighty one, is, in the Classic Pantheon, known by that title.

The meaning of this name Kronos, “The Horned one,” as applied to Nimrod, fully explains the origin of the remarkable symbol, so frequently occurring among the Nineveh sculptures, the gigantic HORNED man-bull, as representing the great divinities in Assyria. The same word that signified a bull, signified also a ruler or prince. Hence the “Horned bull” signified “The mighty Prince,” thereby pointing back to the first of those “Mighty ones,” who, under the name of Guebres, Gabrs, or Cabiri, occupied so conspicuous a place in the ancient world, and to whom the deified Assyrian monarchs covertly traced back the origin of their greatness and might.

This explains the reason why the Bacchus of the Greeks was represented as wearing horns, and why he was frequently addressed by the epithet “Bull-horned,” as one of the high titles of his dignity. Even in comparatively recent times, Togrul Begh, the leader of the Seljukian Turks, who came from the neighborhood of the Euphrates, was in a similar manner represented with three horns growing out of his head as the emblem of his sovereignty. (Fig. 9)

This, also, in a remarkable way accounts for the origin of one of the divinities worshiped by our Pagan Anglo-Saxon ancestors under the name of Zernebogus. This Zemebogus was “the black, malevolent, ill-omened divinity,” in other words, the exact counterpart of the popular idea of the Devil, as supposed to be black, and equipped with horns and hoofs. This name, analyzed and compared with the accompanying wood-cut (fig. 10), from Layard, casts a very singular light on the source from whence has come the popular superstition in regard to the grand Adversary.

The name Zer-Nebo-Gus is almost pure Chaldee, and seems to unfold itself as denoting “The seed of the prophet Cush.” We have seen reason already to conclude, that under the name Bel, as distinguished from Baal, Cush was the great soothsayer or false prophet worshiped at Babylon. But independent inquirers have been led to the conclusion, that Bel and Nebo were just two different titles for the same god, and that a prophetic god.

Thus does Kitto comment on the words of Isaiah xlvi. 1: “Bel boweth down, Nebo stoppet ,” with reference to the latter name: “The word seems to come from Nibba, to deliver an oracle, or to prophesy; and hence would mean an ‘oracle,’ and may thus, as Calmet suggests, (‘Commentaire Literal,’ in loc.) be no more than another name for Bel himself, or a characterizing epithet applied to him; it being not unusual to repeat the same thing, in the same verse, in equivalent terms.” “Zer-Nebo-Gus,” the great “seed of the prophet Cush,” was, of course, Nimrod; for Cush was Nimrod’s father.

Turn now to Layard, and see how this land of ours and Assyria are thus brought into intimate connection. In the woodcut referred to, first we find “the Assyrian Hercules,” that is “Nimrod the giant,” as he is called in the Septuagint version of Genesis, without club, spear, or weapons of any kind, attacking a bull. Having overcome it, he sets the bull’s horns on his head, as a trophy of victory and a symbol of power; and thenceforth the hero is represented, not only with the horns and hoofs above, but from the middle downwards, with the legs and cloven feet of the bull. Thus equipped, he is represented as turning next to encounter a lion. This, in all likelihood, is intended to commemorate some event in the life of him who first began to be mighty in the chase and in war, and who, according to all ancient traditions, was remarkable also for bodily power, as being the leader of the Giants who rebelled against heaven.

Now Nimrod, as the son of Cash, was black, in other words, was a negro. “Can the Ethiopian change his skin?” is in the original, “Can the Cushite” do so? Keeping this, then, in mind, it will be seen, that in that figure disentombed from Nineveh, we have both the prototype of the Anglo-Saxon Zer-Nebo—Gus, “the seed of the prophet Cush,” and the real original of the black Adversary of mankind, with horns and hoofs. It was in a different character from that of the Adversary that Nimrod was originally worshiped; but among a people of a fair complexion, as the Anglo-Saxons, it was inevitable, that if worshiped at all, it must generally be simply as an object of fear; and so Kronos, “The Horned one,” who wore the “horns,” as the emblem both ‘of his physical might and sovereign power, has come to be, in popular superstition, the recognized representative of the Devil.

In many and far-severed countries, horns became the symbols of sovereign power. The corona or crown, that still encircles the brows of European monarchs, seems remotely to be derived from the emblem of might adopted by Kronos, or Saturn, who, according to Pherecydes, was “the first before all others that ever wore a crown.” The first regal crown appears to have been only a band, in which the horns were set. From the idea of power contained in the “ horn,” even subordinate rulers seem to have worn a circlet adorned with a single horn, in token of their derived authority. Bruce, the Abyssinian traveler, gives examples of Abyssinian chiefs thus decorated (fig. 11); in regard to whom he states that the horn attracted his particular attention, when he perceived that the governors of provinces were distinguished by this headdress.

In the case of sovereign powers, the royal head-band was adorned sometimes with a double, sometimes with a triple horn. The double horn had evidently been the original symbol of power or might on the part of sovereigns; for, on the Egyptian monuments, the heads of the deified royal personages have generally no more than the two horns to shadow forth their power.

As sovereignty in Nimrod’s case was founded on physical force, so the two horns of the bull were the symbols of that physical force. And, in accordance with this, we read in “Sanchuniathon,” that “ Astarte put on her own head a bull’s head, as the ensign of royalty.” By and by, however, another and a higher idea came in, and the expression of that idea was seen in the symbol of the three horns.

A cap seems in course of time to have come to be associated with the regal horns. In Assyria the three-horned cap was one of the “sacred emblems,” in token that the power connected with it was of celestial origin,—the three horns evidently pointing at the power of the Trinity. Still we have indications that the horned band, without any cap, was anciently the corona or royal crown. The crown borne by the Hindu god Vishnu, in his avatar of the Fish, is just an open circle or band, with three horns standing erect from it, with a knob on the top of each horn (fig. 12).

All the avatars are represented as crowned with a crown that seems to have been modeled from this, consisting of a coronet with three points standing erect from it, in which Sir William Jones recognizes the Ethiopian or Parthian coronet. The open tiara of Agni, the Hindu god of fire, shows in its lower round the double horn made in the very same way as in Assyria, proving at once the ancient custom, and whence that custom had come. Instead of the three horns, three horn—shaped leaves came to be substituted (fig. 13); and thus the horned band gradually passed into the modern coronet or crown with the three leaves ‘ of the fieur-de-lis, or other familiar three-leaved adornings.

Among the Red Indians of America there had evidently been something entirely analogous to the Babylonian custom of wearing the horns; for, in the “buffalo dance” there, each of the dancers had his head arrayed with buffalo’s horns; and it is worthy of especial remark, that the “Satyric dance,” or dance of the Satyrs in Greece, seems to have been the counterpart of this Red Indian solemnity; for the satyrs were horned divinities, and consequently those who imitated their dance must have had their heads set off in imitation of theirs. When thus we find a custom that is clearly founded on a form of speech that characteristically distinguished the region where Nimrod’s power was wielded, used in so many different countries far removed from one another, where no such form of speech was used in ordinary life, we may be sure that such a custom was not the result of mere accident, but that it indicates the wide-spread diffusion of an influence that went forth in all directions from Babylon, from the time that Nimrod first “ began to be mighty on the earth.”

There was another way in which Nimrod’s power was symbolized besides by the “horn.” A synonym for Gheber, “The mighty one,” was “Abir,” while “Aber” also signified a “wing.” Nimrod, as Head and Captain of those men of war, by whom he surrounded himself, and who were the instruments of establishing his power, was “Baal-abirin,” “Lord of the mighty ones.” But “ Baal-aberin” (pronounced nearly in the same way) signified “The winged one,” and therefore in symbol he was represented, not only as a horned bull, but as at once a horned and winged bull—as showing not merely that he was mighty himself, but that he had mighty ones under his command, who were ever ready to carry his will into effect, and to put down all opposition to his power; and to shadow forth the vast extent of his might, he was represented with great and wide-expanding wings.

To this mode of representing the mighty kings of Babylon and Assyria, who imitated Nimrod and his successors, there is manifest illusion in Isaiah viii. 6—8: “Forasmuch as this people refuseth the waters of Shiloah that go softly, and rejoice in Rezin and Remaliah’s ,son; now therefore, behold the Lord bringeth up upon them the waters of the river, strong and mighty, even the king of Assyria, and all his glory; and he shall come up over all his banks. And he shall pass through Judah; he shall overflow and go over; he shall reach even unto the neck; and the STRETCHING OUT OF HIS WINGS shall FILL the breadth of thy land, O Immanuel.”

When we look at such figures as those which are here presented to the reader (figs. 14 and 15), with their great extent of expanded wing, as symbolizing an Assyrian king, what a vividness and force does it give to. the inspired language of the prophet! And how clear is it, also, that the stretching forth of the Assyrian monarch’s WINGS, that was to “fill the breadth of Immanuel’s land,” has that very symbolic meaning to which I have referred, viz., the overspreading of the land by his “mighty ones,” or hosts of armed men, that the king of Babylon was to bring with him in his overflowing invasion! The knowledge of the way in which the Assyrian monarchs were represented, and of the meaning of that representation, gives additional force to the story of the dream of Cyrus the Great, as told by Herodotus.

Cyrus, says the historian, dreamt that he saw the son of one of his princes who was at the time in a distant province, with two great “wings on his shoulders, the one of which overshadow Asia, and the other Europe,” from which he immediate ly concluded that he was organizing rebellion against him.The symbols of the Babylonians, whose capital Cyrus had taken, and to whose power he had succeeded, were entirely familiar to him, and if the “wings” were the symbols of sovereign power, and the possession of them implied the lordship over the might, or the armies of the empire, it is easy to see how very naturally any suspicions of disloyalty affecting the individual in question might take shape in the manner related, in the dreams of “him who might harbour these suspicions.

Now the understanding of this equivocal sense of “Baalaberin” can alone explain the remarkable statement of Aristphanes, that at the beginning of the world “the birds” were first created, and then, after their creation, came the “race of the blessed immortal gods.” This has been regarded as either an atheistical or nonsensical utterance on the part of the poet, but with the true key applied to the language, it is found to contain an important historical fact. Let it only be borne in mind that “the birds” ——that is, “the winged ones”-—symbolized “the Lords of the mighty ones,” and then the meaning is clear: viz., that men first “began to be mighty on the earth,” and then, that the “Lords,” or Leaders of “these mighty ones” were deified.

The knowledge of the mystic sense of this symbol accounts also for the origin of the story of Perseus, the son of Jupiter, miraculously born of Danaé, who did such wondrous things, and who passed from country to country on wings divinely bestowed on him. This equally casts light on the symbolic myths in regard to Bellerophon, and the feats which he performed on his winged horse, and their ultimate disastrous issue; how high he mounted in the air, and how terrible was his fall; and of Icarus, the son of Daedalus, who, flying on wax-cemented wings over the Icarian sea, had his wings melted off through his too near approach to the sun, and so gave his name to the sea where he was supposed to have fallen. These fables all referred to those who trode, or were supposed to have trodden, in the steps of Nimrod, the first “Lord of the mighty ones,” and who in that character was symbolized as equipped with wings.

Now, it is remarkable that, in the passage of Aristophanes already referred to, that speaks of the birds, or “the winged ones,” being produced before the gods, we are informed that he from whom both “mighty ones” and gods derived their origin, was none other than the winged boy Cupid. Cupid, the son of Venus, occupied, as will afterwards be proved, in the mystic mythology the very same position as Nin, or Ninus, “the son,” did to Rhea, the mother of the gods. As Nimrod was unquestionably the first of “the mighty ones” after the flood, this statement of Aristophanes, that the boy-god Cupid, himself a winged one, produced all the birds or “winged ones,” while occupying the very position of Nin or Ninus, “the son,” shows that in this respect also Ninus and Nimrod are identified. While this is the evident meaning of the poet, this also, in a strictly historical point of view, is the conclusion of the historian Apollodorus; for he states that “Ninus is Nimrod.” And then, in conformity with this identity of Ninus and Nimrod, we find, in one of the most celebrated sculptures of ancient Babylon, Ninus and his wife Semiramis represented as actively engaged in the pursuits of the chase—“the quiver-bearing Semiramis” being a fit companion for “the mighty Hunter before the Lord.”

Sub-Section II. The Child in Egypt

When we turn to Egypt, we find remarkable evidence of the same thing there also. Justin, as we have already seen, says that “Ninus subdued all nations, as far as Lybia,” and consequently Egypt. The statement of Diodorus Siculus is to the same effect, Egypt being one of the countries that, according to him, Ninus brought into subjection to himself. In exact accordance with these historical statements, we find that the name of the third person in the primeval triad of Egypt was Khons. But Khons, in Egyptian, comes from a word that signifies “to chase.” Therefore, the name of Khons, the son of Maut, the goddess mother, who was adorned in such a way as to identify her with Rhea, the great Goddess mother of Chaldea, properly signifies “The Huntsman,” or god of the chase.

As Khon stands in the very same relation to the Egyptian Maut as Ninus does to Rhea, how does this title of “The Huntsman” identify the Egyptian god with Nimrod? Now this very name Khons, brought into contact with the Roman mythology, not only explains the meaning of a name in the Pantheon there, that hitherto has stood greatly in need of explanation, but causes that name, when explained, to reflect light back again on this Egyptian divinity,and to strengthen the conclusion already arrived at. The name to which I refer is the name of the Latin god Consus, who was in one aspect identified with Neptune, but was also regarded as “the god of hidden counsels,” or “the concealer of secrets,” who was looked up to as the patron of horsemanship, and was said to have produced the horse. Who could have been the “god of hidden counsels,” or the “concealer of secrets,” but Saturn, the god of the “mysteries,” and whose name, as used at Rome, signified “ The hidden one?”

The father of Khons, or Khonso (as he was also called), that is, Amoun, was, as we are told by Plutarch, known as “The hidden God;” and as father and son in the same triad have ordinarily a correspondence of character, this shows that Khons also must have been known in the very same character of Saturn, “The hidden one.” If the Latin Consus, then, thus exactly agreed with the Egyptian Khons, as the god of “Mysteries,” or “hidden counsels,” can there be a doubt that Khons, the Huntsman, also agreed with the same Roman divinity as the supposed producer of the horse? Who so likely to get the credit of producing the horse as the great huntsman of Babel, who no doubt enlisted it in the toils of the chase, and by this means must have been signally aided in his conflicts with the wild beasts of the forest? In this connection, let the reader call to mind that fabulous creature, the Centaur, half-man, half-horse, that figures so much in the mythology of Greece. That imaginary creation, as is generally admitted, was intended to commemorate the man who first taught the art of horsemanship. But that creation was not the offspring of Greek fancy. Here, as in many other things, the Greeks have only borrowed from an earlier source. The Centaur is found on coins struck in Babylonia, (fig. 16), showing that the idea must have originally come from that quarter.

The Centaur is found in the Zodiac (fig. 17),: the antiquity of which goes up to a high period, and which had its origin in Babylon. The Centaur was represented, as we are expressly assured by Berosus, the Babylonian historian, in the temple of Babylon, and his language would seem to show that so also it had been in primeval times The Greeks did themselves admit this antiquity and derivation of the Centaur; for though Ixion was commonly represented as the father of the Centaurs, yet they also acknowledged, that the primitive Centaurus Was the same as Kronos, or Saturn, the father of the gods. But we have seen that Kronos was the first King of Babylon, or Nimrod; consequently, the first Centaur was the same. Now the way in which the Centaur was represented on the Babylonian coins, and in the Zodiac, viewed in this light, is very striking. The Centaur was the same as the sign Sagittarius, or “The Archer.”

If the founder of Babylon’s glory was “The mighty Hunter,” whose name, even in the days of Moses, was a proverb,—(Gen. x. 9, “Wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod, the mighty hunter before the Lord”)—when we find the “Archer,” with his bow and arrow, in the symbol of the supreme Babylonian divinity, and the “Archer,” among the signs of the Zodiac that originated in Babylon, I think we may safely conclude that this Man-horse or Horseman Archer primarily referred to him, and was intended to perpetuate the memory at once of his fame as a huntsman and his skill as a horse-breaker.

Now, when we thus compare the Egyptian Khons, the “Huntsman,” with the Latin Consus, the god of horse-races, who “produced the horse,” and the Centaur of Babylon, to whom was attributed the honor of being the author of horsemanship, while we see how all the lines converge in Babylon, it will be very clear, I think, whence the primitive Egyptian god Khons has been derived.

Khons, the son of the great goddess-mother, seems to have been generally represented as a full-grown god. The Babylonian divinity was also represented very frequently in Egypt in the very same way as in the land of his nativity, i.e., as a child in his mother’s arms. This was the way in which Osiris, “the son, the husband of his mother,” was Often exhibited, and what we learn of this god, equally as in the case of Khonso, shows that in his original he was none other than Nimrod.

It is admitted that the secret system of Free Masonry was originally founded on the Mysteries of the Egyptian Isis, the goddess-mother, or wife of Osiris. But what could have led to the union of a Masonic body with these Mysteries, had they not had particular reference to architecture, and had the god who was worshiped in them not been celebrated for his success in perfecting the arts of fortification and building? Now, if such were the case, considering the relation in which, as we have already seen, Egypt stood to Babylon, who would naturally be looked up to there as the great patron of the Masonic art? The strong presumption is, that Nimrod must have been the man. He was the first that gained fame in this way. As the child of the Babylonian goddess-mother, he was worshiped, as we have seen, in the character of Ala mahozim, “The god of fortifications.”

Osiris, in like manner, the child of the Egyptian Madonna, was equally celebrated as “the strong chief of the buildings.” This strong chief of the buildings was originally worshiped in Egypt with every physical characteristic of Nimrod. I have already noted the fact, that Nimrod, as the son of Cush, was a negro. Now, there was a tradition in Egypt, recorded by Plutarch, that “Osiris was black,” which, in a land where the general complexion was dusky, must have implied something more than ordinary in its darkness. Plutarch also states that Horus, the son of Osiris, “was of a fair complexion,” and it was in this way, for the most part, that Osiris was represented. But we have unequivocal evidence that Osiris, the son and husband of the great goddess-queen of Egypt, was also represented as a veritable negro. In Wilkinson may be found a representation of him (fig. 18) with the unmistakable features of the genuine Cushite or negro. Bunsen would have it that this is a mere random importation from some of the barbaric tribes; but the dress in which this negro god is arrayed tells a different tale. That dress directly connects him with Nimrod. This negro-featured Osiris is clothed from head to foot in a spotted dress, the upper part being a leopard’s skin, the under part also being spotted to correspond with it.

Now the, name Nimrod signifies “The subduer of the leopard.” This name seems to imply, that as Nimrod had gained fame by subduing the horse, and so making use of it in the chase, so his fame as a huntsman rested mainly on this, that he found out the art of making the leopard aid him in hunting the other wild beasts. A particular kind of tame leopard is used in India at this day for hunting; and. of Bagajet I., the Mogul Emperor of India, it is recorded that, in his hunting establishment, he had not only hounds of various breeds, but leopards also, whose “collars were set with jewels.”

Upon the words of the prophet Habakkuk, chap. i. 8, “swifter than leopards,” Kitto has the following remarks:—“The swiftness of the leopard is proverbial in all countries where it is found. This, conjoined with its other qualities, suggested the idea in the East of partially training it, that it might be employed in hunting….. Leopards are now rarely kept for hunting in Western Asia, unless by kings and governors; but they are more common in the eastern parts of Asia. Orosius relates that one was sent by the king of Portugal to the Pope, which excited great astonishment by the way in which it overtook, and the facility with which it killed, deer and wild boars. Le Bruyn mentions a leopard kept by the Pasha who governed Gaza, and the other territories of the ancient Philistines, and which be frequently employed in hunting jackals. But it is in India that the cheetah or hunting leopard is most frequently employed, and is seen in the perfection of his power.”

This custom of taming the leopard, and pressing it into the service of man in this way, is traced up to the earliest times of primitive antiquity. In the works of Sir William Jones, we find it stated from the Persian legends, that Hoshang, the father of Tahmurs, who built Babylon, was the “first who bred dogs and leopards for hunting.” As Tahmurs, who built Babylon, could be none other than Nimrod, this legend only attributes to his father what, as his name imports, he got the fame of doing himself.

Now, as the classic god bearing the lion’s skin is recognized by that sign as Hercules, the slayer of the Nemean lion, so, in like manner, the god clothed in the leopard’s skin, would naturally be marked out as Nimrod, the “Leopard-subduer.” That this leopard skin, as appertaining to the Egyptian god, was no occasional thing, we have clearest evidence. Wilkinson tells us, that on all high occasions when the Egyptian high priest was called to officiate, it was indispensable that he should do so wearing, as his robe of office, the leopard’s skin (fig. 19). As it is a universal principle in all idolatries that the high priest wears the insignia of the god he serves, this indicates the importance which the spotted skin must have had attached to it as a symbol of the god himself.

The ordinary way in which the favorite Egyptian divinity Osiris was mystically represented was under the form of a young bull or calf—the calf Apis—from which the golden calf of the Israelites was borrowed. There was a reason why that calf should not commonly appear in the appropriate symbols of the god here presented,for that calf represented the divinity in the character of Saturn, “The HIDDEN one,” “Apis” being only another name for Saturn. The cow of Athor, however, the female divinity, corresponding to Apis, is well known as a “spotted cow; and it is singular that the Druids of Britain also worshiped “a spotted cow.” Rare though it be, however, to find an instance of the deified calf or young bull represented with the spots, there is evidence still in existence, that even it was sometimes so represented.

The accompanying figure (fig. 20), represents that divinity, as copied by Col. Hamilton Smith “from the original collection made by the artists of the French Institute of Cairo.“ When we find that Osiris, the grand god of Egypt, under different forms, was thus arrayed in a leopard’s skin or spotted dress, and that the leopard—skin dress was so indispensable a part of the sacred robes of his high priest, we may be sure that there was a deep meaning in such a costume. And what could that meaning be, but just to identify Osiris with the Babylonian god, who was celebrated as the “Leopard-tamer,” and who was worshiped even as he was, as Ninus, the CHILD in his mother’s arms?

Sub-Section III. The Child in Greece

Thus much for Egypt. Coming into Greece, not only do we find evidence there to the same effect, but increase of that evidence. The god worshiped as a child in the arms of the great Mother in Greece, under the names of Dionysus, or Bacchus, or Iacchus, is, by ancient inquirers, expressly identified with the Egyptian Osiris. This is the case with Herodotus, who had prosecuted his inquiries in Egypt itself, who ever speaks of Osiris as Bacchus. To the same purpose is the testimony of Diodorus Siculus. “Orpheus,” says he, “introduced from Egypt the greatest part of the mystical ceremonies, the orgies that celebrate the wanderings of Ceres, and the whole fable of the shades below. The rites of Osiris and Bacchus are the same; those of Isis and Ceres exactly resemble each other, except in name.”

Now, as if to identify Bacchus with Nimrod, “the Leopard-tamer,” leopards were employed to draw his car; he himself was represented as clothed with a leopard’s skin; his priests were attired in the same manner, or when a leopard’s skin was dispensed with, the spotted skin of a fawn was used as the priestly robe in its stead. This very custom of wearing the spotted fawn-skin seems to have been imported into Greece originally from Assyria, where a. spotted fawn was a sacred emblem, as we learn from the Nineveh sculptures; for there we find a divinity bearing a spotted fawn, or spotted fallow-deer (fig. 21), in his arm, as a symbol of some mysterious import.

The origin of the importance attached to the spotted fawn and its skin, had evidently come thus: When Nimrod, as the “Leopard-tamer,” began to be clothed in the leopard-skin, as the trophy of his skill, his spotted dress and appearance must have impressed the imaginations of those who saw him; and he came to be called not only the “Subduer of the Spotted one,” (for such is the precise meaning of Nimr—the name of the leopard), but to be called “The spotted one” himself.

We have distinct evidence to this effect borne by Damascius, who tells us that the Babylonians called “the only son” of their great Goddess Mother “ Momis, or Moumis.” Now, Momis, or Moumis, in Chaldee, like Nimr, signified “The spotted one.” Thus, then, it became easy to represent Nimrod by the symbol of the “spotted fawn,” and especially in Greece, and wherever a pronunciation akin to that of Greece prevailed.

The name of Nimrod, as known to the Greeks, was Nebrod. The name of the fawn, as “the spotted one,” in Greece was Nebros; and thus nothing could be more natural than that Nebros, the “spotted fawn,” should become a synonym for Nebrod himself. When, therefore, the Bacchus of Greece was symbolized by the Nebros, or “spotted fawn,” as we shall find he was symbolized, what could be the design but just covertly to identify him with Nimrod?

We have evidence that this god, whose emblem was the Nebros, was known as having the very lineage of Nimrod. From Anacreon, we find that a title of Bacchus was Aithiopais, i.e., “the son of AEthiops.” But who was AEthiops? As the Ethiopians were Cushites, so AEthiops was Cush. “Chus,” says Eusebius, “was he from whom came the Ethiopians.” The testimony of Josephus is to the same effect. As the father of the Ethiopians, Cush was AEthiops, by way of eminence. Therefore Epiphanius, referring to the extraction of Nimrod, thus speaks: “Nimrod, the son of Cush, the AEthiop.”

Now, as Bacchus was the son of AEthiops, or Cush, so to the eye he was represented in that character. As Nin “the Son,” he was portrayed as a youth or child, and that youth or child was generally depicted with a cup in his hand. That cup, to the multitude, exhibited him as the god of drunken revelry; and of such revelry in his orgies, no doubt there was abundance; but yet, after all, the cup was mainly a hieroglyphic, and that of the name of the god.

The name of a cup, in the sacred language, was khus, and thus the cup in the hand of the youthful Bacchus, the son of AEthiops, showed that he was the young Chus, or the son of Chus. In the accompanying woodcut (fig. 22), the cup in the right hand of Bacchus is held up in so significant a way, as naturally to suggest that it must be a symbol; and as to the branch in the other hand, We have express testimony that it is a symbol. But it is worthy of notice that the branch has no leaves to determine what precise kind of branch it is. It must, therefore, be a generic emblem for a branch, or a symbol of a branch in general; and, consequently, it needs the cup as its complement, to determine specifically what sort of a branch it is. The two symbols, then, must be read together; and read thus, they are just equivalent to—the “Branch of Chus,” i.e., “ the scion or son of Cush.”

There is another hieroglyphic connected with Bacchus that goes not a little to confirm this; that is, the Ivy branch. No emblem was more distinctive of the worship of Bacchus than this. Wherever the rites of Bacchus were performed, wherever his orgies were celebrated, the Ivy branch was sure to appear. Ivy, in some form or other, was essential to these celebrations. The votaries carried it in their hands, bound it around their heads, or had the Ivy leaf even indelibly stamped upon their persons. What could be the use, what could be the meaning of this? A few words will suffice to show it. In the first place, then, we have evidence that Kissos, the Greek name for Ivy, was one of the names of Bacchus, and further, that though the name of Cush, in its proper form, was known to the priests in the mysteries, yet that the established way in which the name of his descendants, the Cushites, was ordinarily pronounced in Greece, was not after the Oriental fashion, but as “Kissaioi,” or “Kissioi.” Thus Strabo, speaking of the inhabitants of Susa, who were the people of Chusistan, or the ancient land of Cash, says: “The Susians are called Kissioi,” that is, beyond all question, Cushites. Now, if Kissioi be Cushites, then Kissos is Cush.

Then, further, the branch of Ivy that occupied so conspicuous a place in all Bacchanalian celebrations was an express symbol of Bacchus himself; for Hesychius assures us that Bacchus, as represented by his priest, was known in the mysteries as “The branch.”’ From this, then, it appears how Kissos, the Greek name of Ivy, became the name of Bacchus. As the son of Cush, and as identified with him, he was sometimes called by his father’s name— Kissos. His actual relation, however, to his father was specifically brought out by the Ivy branch; for “the branch of Kissos,” which to the profane vulgar was only “the branch of Ivy,” was to the initiated “the branch of Cush.”

Now, this god, who was recognized as “the scion of Cush,” was worshiped under a name, which, while appropriate to him in his vulgar character as the god of the vintage, did also describe him as the great Fortifier. That name was Bassareus, which in its twofold meaning, signified at once “The houser of grapes, or the vintage gatherer,” and “The Encompasser with a wall,” in this latter sense identifying the Grecian god with the Egyptian Osiris, “the strong chief of the buildings,” and with the Assyrian “Belus, who encompassed Babylon with a wall.”

Thus from Assyria, Egypt, and Greece, we have cumulative and overwhelming evidence, all conspiring to demonstrate that the child worshiped in the arms of the goddess-mother in all these countries in the very character of Ninus or Nin, “The Son,” was Nimrod, the son of Cush. A feature here, or an incident there, may have been borrowed from some succeeding hero; but it seems impossible to doubt, that of that child Nimrod was the prototype, the grand original.

The amazing extent of the worship of this man indicates something very extraordinary in his character; and there is ample reason to believe, that in his own day he was an object of high popularity. Though by setting up as king, Nimrod invaded the patriarchal system, and abridged the liberties of mankind, yet he was held by many to have conferred benefits upon them, that amply indemnified them for the loss of their liberties, and covered him with glory and renown. By the time that he appeared, the wild beasts of the forest multiplying more rapidly than the human race, must have committed great depredations on the scattered and straggling populations of the earth, and must have inspired great terror into the minds of men. The danger arising to the lives of men from such a source as this, when population is scanty, is implied in the reason given by God himself for not driving out the doomed Canaanites before Israel at once, though the measure of their iniquity was full: (Exod. xxiii. 29, 30), “I will not drive them out from before thee in one year, lest the land become desolate, and the beast of the field multiply against thee. By little and little I will drive them out from before thee, until thou be increased.”

The exploits of Nimrod, therefore, in hunting down the wild beasts of the field, and ridding the world of monsters, must have gained for him the character of a pre—eminent benefactor of his race. By this means, not less than by the bands he trained, was his power acquired when he first began to be mighty upon the earth; and in the same way, no doubt, was that power consolidated. Then over and above, as the first great city-builder after the flood, by gathering men together in masses, and surrounding them with walls, he did still more to enable them to pass their days in security, free from the alarms to which they had been exposed in their scattered life, when no one could tell but that at any moment he might be called to engage in deadly conflict with prowling wild beasts, in defense of his own life and of those who were dear to him. Within the battlements of a fortified city no such danger from savage animals was to be dreaded; and for the security afforded in this way, men no doubt looked upon themselves as greatly indebted to Nimrod. No wonder, therefore, that the name of the “mighty hunter,” who was at the same time the prototype of “the god of fortifications,” should have become a name of renown. Had Nimrod gained renown only thus, it had been well. But not content with delivering men from the fear of wild beasts, he set to work also to emancipate them from that fear of the Lord which is the beginning of wisdom, and in which alone true happiness can be found. For this very thing, he seems to have gained, as one of the titles by which men delighted to honour him, the title of the “Emancipator,” or “ Deliverer.”

The reader may remember a name that has already come under his notice. That name is the name of Phoroneus. The era of Phoroneus is exactly the era of Nimrod. He lived about the time when men had used one speech, when the confusion of tongues began, and when mankind was scattered abroad. He is said to have been the first that gathered mankind into communities, the first of mortals that reigned; and the first that offered idolatrous sacrifices. This character can agree with none but that of Nimrod.

Now, the name given to him in connection with his “gathering men together,” and offering idolatrous sacrifice, is very significant. Phoroneus, in one of its meanings, and that one of the most natural, signifies “The Apostate.” That name had very likely been given him by the uninfected portion of the sons of Noah. But that name had also another meaning, that is, “to set free;” and therefore his own adherents adopted it, and glorified the great “Apostate” from the primeval faith, though he was the first that abridged the liberties of mankind, as the grand “Emancipator!”

And hence, in one form or other, this title was handed down to his deified successors as a title of honor. All tradition from the earliest times bears testimony to the apostasy of Nimrod, and to his success in leading men away from the patriarchal faith, and delivering their minds from that awe of God and fear of the judgments of heaven that must have rested on them while yet the memory of the flood was recent. And according to all the principles Of depraved human nature, this too, no doubt, was one grand element in his fame: for men will readily rally around any one can give the least appearance of plausibility to an doctrine Which will teach that they can be assured of happiness and Heaven at last, though their hearts and natures are unchanged, and though they live without God in the world.

How great was the boon conferred by Nimrod on the human race, in the estimation of ungodly men, by emancipating them from the impressions of true religion, and putting the authority of heaven to a distance from them, we find most vividly described in a Polynesian tradition, that carries its own evidence with it. John Williams, the well-known missionary, tells us that, according to one of the ancient traditions of the islanders of the South Seas, “The heavens were originally so close to the earth that men could not walk, but were compelled to crawl” under them. “This was found a very serious evil; but at length an individual conceived the sublime idea of elevating the heavens to a more convenient height. For this purpose he put forth his utmost energy, and by the first effort raised them to the top of a tender plant called teve, about four feet high. There he deposited them until he was refreshed, when, by a second effort, he lifted them to the height of a tree called Kauariki, which is as large as the sycamore. By the third attempt he carried them to the summits of the mountains; and after a long interval of repose, and by a most prodigious effort, he elevated them to their present situation.” For this, as a mighty benefactor of mankind, “this individual was deified; and up to the moment that Christianity was embraced, the deluded inhabitants worshiped him as the ‘Elevator of the heavens.’”

Now, what could more graphically describe the position of mankind soon after the flood, and the proceedings of Nimrod and Phoroneus, “The Emancipator,” than this Polynesian fable? While the awful catastrophe by which God had showed his avenging justice on the sinners of the old world was yet fresh in the minds of men, and so long as Noah, and the upright among his descendants, sought with all earnestness to impress upon all under their control the lessons which that solemn event was so well fitted to teach, “heaven,” that is, God, must have seemed very near to earth. To maintain the union between heaven and earth, and to keep it as close as possible, must have been the grand aim of all who loved God and the best interests of the human race. But this implied the restraining and discountenancing of all vice and all those “pleasures of sin,” after which the natural mind, unrenewed and unsanctified, continually pants.

This must have been secretly felt by every unholy mind as a state of insufferable bondage. “The carnal mind is enmity against God,” is “not subject to his law,” neither indeed is “able to be” so. It “says to the Almighty, Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways.” So long as the influence of the great father of the new world was in the ascendant, while his maxims were regarded, and a holy atmosphere surrounded the world, no wonder that those who were alienated from God and godliness, felt heaven and its influence and authority to be intolerably near, and that in such circumstances they “could not walk,” but only “crawl ”— that is, that they had no freedom to “walk after the sight of their own eyes and the imaginations of their own hearts.” From this bondage Nimrod emancipated them. By the apostasy he introduced, by the free life he developed among those who rallied around him, and by separating them from the holy influences that had previously less or more controlled them, he helped them to put God and the strict spirituality of his law at a distance, and thus he became the “Elevator of the heavens,” making men feel and act as if heaven were afar off from earth, and as if either the God of heaven “could not see through the dark cloud,” or did not regard with displeasure the breakers of his laws. Then all such would feel that they could breathe freely, and that now they could walk at liberty. For this, such men could not but regard Nimrod as a high benefactor.

Now, who could have imagined that a tradition from Tahiti would have illuminated the story of Atlas? But yet, when Atlas, bearing the heavens on his shoulders, is brought into juxtaposition with the defied hero of the South Seas, who blessed the world by heaving up the superincumbent heavens that pressed so heavily upon it, who does not see that the one story bears a relation to the other? Thus, then, it appears that Atlas, with the heavens resting on his broad shoulders, refers to no mere distinction in astronomical knowledge, however great, as some have supposed, but to a quite different thing, even to that great apostasy in which the Giants rebelled against Heaven,” and in which apostasy Nimrod, “the mighty one,” as the acknowledged ringleader, occupied a preeminent place:

“God blessed Noah and his sons” (Gen. ix. 1), that had reference not merely to temporal but to spiritual and eternal blessings. Every one, therefore, of the sons of Noah, who had Noah’s faith, and who walked as Noah walked, was divinely assured of an interest in “the everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure.” Blessed were those hands by which God bound the believing children of men to himself—by which heaven and earth were so closely joined together. Those, on the other band, who joined in the apostasy of Nimrod broke the covenant, and in casting off the authority of God, did in effect say, “Let us break his hands asunder, and cast his cords from us.” To this very act of severing the covenant connection between earth and heaven there is very distinct allusion, though veiled in the Babylonian history of Berosus. There Belus, that is Nimrod, after having dispelled the primeval darkness, is said to have separated heaven and earth from one another, and to have orderly arranged the world. These words were intended to represent Belus, as the “Former of the world.” But then it is a new world that he forms; for there are creatures in existence before his Demiurgic power is exerted. The new world that Belus or Nimrod formed, was just the new order of things which he introduced when, setting at nought all divine appointments, he rebelled against heaven. The rebellion of the Giants is represented as peculiarly a rebellion against Heaven. To this ancient quarrel between the Babylonian potentates and Heaven, there is plainly an allusion in the words of Daniel to Nebuchadnezzar, when announcing that sovereign’s humiliation and subsequent restoration, he says (Dan. iv. 26), “Thy kingdom shall be sure unto thee, when thou hast known that the HEAVENS do rule.”

According to the system which Nimrod was the grand instrument in introducing, men were led to believe that a real spiritual change of heart was unnecessary, and that so far as change was needful, they could be regenerated by mere external means. Looking at the subject in the light of the Bacchanalian orgies, which, as the reader has seen, commemorated the history of Nimrod, it is evident that he led mankind to seek their chief good in sensual enjoyment, and showed them how they might enjoy the pleasures of sin, without any fear of the wrath of a holy God. In his various expeditions he was always accompanied by troops of women; and by music and song, and games and revelries, and everything that could please the natural heart, he commended himself to the good graces of mankind.

Sub-Section IV.—The Death of the Child

How Nimrod died, Scripture is entirely silent. There was an ancient tradition that he came to a violent end. The circumstances of that end, however, as antiquity represents them, are clouded with fable. It is said that tempests of wind sent by God against the Tower of Babel overthrew it, and that Nimrod perished in its ruins. This could not be true, for we have sufficient evidence that the Tower of Babel stood long after Nimrod’s day. Then, in regard to the death of Ninus, profane history speaks darkly and mysteriously, although one account tells of his having met with a violent death similar to that of Pentheus, Lycurgus and Orpheus, who were said to have been torn to pieces.

The identity of Nimrod, however, and the Egyptian Osiris, having been established, we have thereby light as to Nimrod’s death. Osiris met with a violent death, and that violent death of Osiris was the central theme of the whole idolatry of Egypt. If Osiris was Nimrod, as we have seen, that violent death which the Egyptians so pathetically deplored in their annual festivals was just the death of Nimrod. The accounts in regard to the death of the god worshiped in the several mysteries of the different countries are all to the same effect. A statement of Plato seems to show, that in his day the Egyptian Osiris was regarded as identical with Tammuz; and Tammuz is well known to have been the same as Adonis, the famous HUNTSMAN, for whose death Venus is fabled to have made such bitter lamentations.

As the women of Egypt wept for Osiris, as the Phoenician and Assyrian women wept for Tammuz, so in Greece and Rome the women wept for Bacchus, whose name, as we have seen, means “The bewailed,” or “Lamented one”. And now, in connection with the Bacchanal lamentations, the importance of the relation established between Nebros “The spotted fawn,” and Nebrod, “The mighty hunter,” will appear. The Nebros, or “spotted fawn,” was the symbol of Bacchus, as representing Nebrod or Nimrod himself. Now, on certain occasions, in the mystical celebrations, the Nebros, or “spotted fawn,” was torn in pieces, expressly, as we learn from Photius, as a commemoration of what happened to Bacchus whom that fawn represented. The tearing in pieces of Nebros, “the spotted one,” goes to confirm the conclusion, that the death of Bacchus, even as the death of Osiris, represented the death of Nebrod, whom, under the very name of “The Spotted one,” the Babylonians worshiped. Though we do not find any account of mysteries observed in Greece in memory of Orion, the giant and mighty hunter celebrated by Homer, under that name, yet he was represented symbolically as having died in a similar way to that in which Osiris died, and as having then been translated to heaven.

From Persian records we are expressly assured that it was Nimrod who was deified after his death by the name of Orion, and placed among the stars. Here, then, we have large and consenting evidence, all leading to one conclusion, that the death of Nimrod, the child worshiped in the arms of the Goddess Mother of Babylon, was a death of violence.

Now, when this mighty hero, in the midst of his career of glory, was suddenly cut off by a violent death, great seems to have been the shock that the catastrophe occasioned. When the news spread abroad, the devotees of pleasure felt as if the best benefactor of mankind were gone, and the gaiety of nations eclipsed. Loud was the wail that everywhere ascended to heaven among the apostates from the primeval faith for so dire a catastrophe. Then began those weepings for Tammuz, in the guilt of which the daughters of Israel allowed themselves to be implicated, and the existence of which can be traced not merely in the annals of classical antiquity, but in the literature of the world from Ultima Thule to Japan.

Of the prevalence of such weepings in China, thus speaks the Rev. W. Gillespie: “The dragon-boat festival happens in midsummer, and is a season of great excitement. About 2000 years ago there lived a young Chinese Mandarin, Wut—yune, highly respected and beloved by the people. To the grief of all, he was suddenly drowned in the river. Many boats immediately rushed out in search of him, but his body was never found. Ever since that time, on the same day of the month, the dragon-boats go out in search of him. It is something,” adds the author, “like the bewailing of Adonis, or the weeping for Tammuz mentioned in Scripture.” As the great god Buddh is generally— represented in China as a Negro, that may serve to identify the beloved Mandarin whose loss is thus annually bewailed.

The religious system of Japan largely coincides with that of China. In Iceland, and throughout Scandinavia, there were similar lamentations for the loss of the god Balder. Balder, through the treachery of the god Loki, the spirit of evil, according as had been written in the book of destiny, “was slain, although the empire of heaven depended on his life”. His father Odin had “learned the terrible secret from the book of destiny, having conjured one of the Volar from her infernal abode. All the gods trembled at the knowledge of this event. Then Frigga [the wife of Odin] called on every object, animate and inanimate, to take an oath not to destroy or furnish arms against Balder. Fire, water, rocks, and vegetables were bound by this solemn obligation. One plant only, the mistletoe, was overlooked. Loki discovered the omission, and made that contemptible shrub the fatal weapon. Among the warlike pastimes of Valhalla [the assembly of the gods] one was to throw darts at the invulnerable deity, who felt a pleasure in presenting his charmed breast to their weapons. At a tournament of this kind, the evil genius putting a sprig of the mistletoe into the hand of the blind Hoder, and directing his aim, the dreaded prediction was accomplished by an unintentional fratricide.

The spectators were struck with speechless wonder; and their misfortune was the greater, that no one, out of respect to the sacredness of the place, dared to avenge it. With tears of lamentation they carried the lifeless body to the shore, and laid it upon a ship, as a funeral pile, with that of Nanna his lovely bride, who had died of a broken heart. His horse and arms were burnt at the same time, as was customary at the obsequies of the ancient heroes of the north. Then Frigga, his mother, was overwhelmed with distress. “Inconsolable for the loss of her beautiful son,” says Dr Crichton, “she dispatched Hermod (the swift) to the abode of Hela, [the goddess of Hell, or the infernal regions,] to offer a ransom for his release. The gloomy goddess promised that he should be restored provided everything on earth were found to weep for him. Then were messengers sent over the whole world, to see that the order was obeyed, and the effect of the general sorrow was ‘as when there is a universal thaw.’

There are considerable variations from the original story in these two legends; but at bottom the essence of the stories is the same, indicating that they must have flowed from one fountain.

Sub-Section V.—The Deification of the Child

If there was one who was more deeply concerned in the tragic death of Nimrod than another, it was his wife Semiramis, who, from an originally humble position, had been raised to share with him the throne of Babylon. What, in this emergency, shall she do? Shall she quietly forego the pomp and pride to which she had been raised? No. Though the death of her husband has given a rude shock to her power, yet her resolution and unbounded ambition were in nowise checked. On the contrary, her ambition took a still higher flight. In life her husband had been honored as a hero; in death she will have him worshiped as a god, yea, as the woman’s promised seed, “Zero-ashta,” (the seed) who was destined to bruise the serpent’s head, and who in doing so was to have his own heel bruised.

The patriarchs, and the ancient world in general, were perfectly acquainted with the grand primeval promise of Eden, and they knew right well that the bruising of the heel of the promised seed implied his death, and that the curse could be removed from the world only by the death of the grand Deliverer. If the promise about the bruising of the serpent’s head, recorded in Genesis, as made to our first parents, was actually made, and if all mankind were descended from them, then it might be expected that some trace of this promise would be found in all nations. And such is the fact.

There is hardly a people or kindred on earth in whose mythology it is not shadowed forth. The Greeks represented their great god Apollo as slaying the serpent Pytho, and Hercules as strangling serpents while yet in his cradle. In Egypt, in India, in Scandinavia, in Mexico, we find clear allusions to the same great truth. “The evil genius,” says Wilkinson, “of the adversaries of the Egyptian god Horus is frequently figured under the form of a snake, whose head he is seen piercing with a spear. The same fable occurs in the religion of India, where the malignant serpent Calyia is slain by Vishnu, in his avatar of Creeshna, (fig. 23); and the Scandinavian deity Thor was said to have bruised the head of the great serpent with his mace.” “The origin of this,” he adds, “may be readily traced to the Bible.”

In reference to a similar belief among the Mexicans, we find Humboldt saying, that “The serpent crushed by the great spirit Teotl, when he takes the form of one of the subaltern (lower) deities, is the genius of evil—a real Cacodaemon.” Now, in almost all cases, when the subject is examined to the bottom, it turns out that the serpent-destroying god is represented as enduring hardships and sufferings that end in his death. Thus the god Thor, while succeeding at last in destroying the great serpent, is represented as, in the very moment of victory, perishing from the venomous effluvia of his breath.

The same would seem to be the way in which the Babylonians represented their great serpent-destroyer among the figures of their ancient sphere. His mysterious suffering is thus described by the Greek poet Aratus, whose language shows that when he wrote, the meaning of the representation had been generally lost, although, when viewed in the light of Scripture, it is surely deeply significant:—

“A human figure, ’whelmed with toil, appears;
Yet still with name uncertain he remains;
Nor known the labour that he thus sustains;
But since upon his knees he seems to fall,
Him ignorant mortals Engonasis call;
And while sublime his awful hands are spread,
Beneath him rolls the dragon’s horrid head,
And his right foot unmoved appears to rest,
Fixed on the writhing monster’s burnished crest.”

The constellation thus represented is commonly known by the name of “The Kneeler,” from this very description of the Greek poet; but it is plain that, as “Engonasis” came from the Babylonians, it must be interpreted, not in a Greek, but in a Chaldee sense; and so interpreted, as the action of the figure itself implies, the title of the mysterious sufferer is just “The Serpent crusher.” Sometimes, however, the actual crushing of the serpent was represented as a much more easy process; yet even, then death was the ultimate result; and that death of the serpent-destroyer is so described as to leave no doubt whence the fable was borrowed.

This is particularly the case with the Indian god Krishna, to whom Wilkinson alludes in the extract already given. In the legend that concerns him, the whole of the primeval promise in Eden is very strikingly embodied. First, he is represented in pictures and images with his foot on the great serpent’s head, and then, after destroying it, he is fabled to have died in consequence of being shot by an arrow in the foot; and, as in the case of Tammuz, great lamentations are annually made for his death.

Even in Greece, also, in the classic story of Paris and Achilles, we have a very plain allusion to that part of the primeval promise, which referred to the bruising of the conqueror’s “heel.” Achilles, the only son of a goddess, was invulnerable in all points except the heel, but there a wound was deadly. At this his adversary took aim, and death was the result.

Now, if there be such evidence still, that even Pagans knew that it was by dying that the promised Messiah was to destroy death and him that has the power of death, that is the devil, how much more vivid must have been the impression of mankind in general in regard to this vital truth in the early days of Semiramis, when they were so much nearer the fountain-head of all divine tradition.

When, therefore, the name Zoroastes, “the seed of the woman,” was given to him who had perished in the midst of a prosperous career of false-worship and apostasy, there can be no doubt of the meaning which that name was intended to convey. And the fact of the violent death of the hero, who, in the esteem of his partisans, had done so much to bless mankind, to make life happy, and to deliver them from the fear of the wrath to come, instead of being fatal to the bestowal of such a title upon him, favoured rather than otherwise the daring design. All that was needed to countenance the scheme on the part of those who wished an excuse for continued apostasy from the true God, was just to give out that, though the great patron of the apostasy had fallen a prey to the malice of men, he had freely offered himself for the good of mankind.

Now, this was what was actually done. The Chaldean version of the story of the great Zoroaster is that he prayed to the supreme God of heaven to take away his life; that his prayer was heard, and that he expired, assuring his followers that, if they cherished due regard for his memory, the empire would never depart from the Babylonians.

What Berosus, the Babylonian historian, says of the cutting off of the head of the great god Belus, is plainly to the same effect. Belus, says Berosus, commanded one of the gods to cut off his head, that from the blood thus shed by his own command and with his own consent, when mingled with the earth, new creatures might be formed, the first creation being represented as a sort of a failure. Thus the death of Belus, who was Nimrod, like that attributed to Zoroaster, was represented as entirely voluntary, and as submitted to for the benefit of the world.

It seems to have been now only when the dead hero was to be deified, that the secret Mysteries were set up. The previous form of apostasy during the life of Nimrod appears to have been open and public. Now, it was evidently felt that publicity was out of the question. The death of the great ringleader of the apostasy was not the death of a warrior slain in battle, but an act of judicial rigor, solemnly inflicted. This is well established by the accounts of the deaths of both Tammuz and Osiris.

The following is the account of Tammuz, given by the celebrated Maimonides, deeply read in all the learning of the Chaldeans: “When the false prophet named Tammuz preached to a certain king that he should worship the seven stars and the twelve signs of the Zodiac, that king ordered him to be put to a terrible death. On the night of his death all the images assembled from the ends of the earth into the temple of Babylon, to the great golden image of the Sun, which was suspended between heaven and earth. That image prostrated itself in the midst of the temple, and so did all the images around it, while it related to them all that had happened to Tammuz. The images wept and lamented all the night long, and then in the morning they flew away, each to his own temple again, to the ends of the earth. And hence arose the custom every year, on the first day of the month Thammuz, to mourn and to weep for Tammuz.”

There is here, of course, all the extravagance of idolatry, as found in the Chaldean sacred books that Maimonides had consulted; but there is no reason to doubt the fact stated either as to the manner or the cause of the death of Tammuz. In this Chaldean legend, it is stated that it was by the command of a “certain king” that this ringleader in apostasy was put to death. Who could this king be, who was so determinedly opposed to the worship of the host of heaven?

From what is related of the Egyptian Hercules, we get very valuable light on this subject. It is admitted by Wilkinson that the most ancient Hercules, and truly primitive one, was he who was known in Egypt as having, “by the power of the gods” (i.e., by the SPIRIT) fought against and overcome the Giants. Now, no doubt, the title and character of Hercules were afterwards given by the Pagans to him whom they worshiped as the grand Deliverer or Messiah, just as the adversaries of the Pagan divinities came to be stigmatized as the “Giants” who rebelled against Heaven. But let the reader only reflect who were the real Giants that rebelled against Heaven. They were Nimrod and his party; for the “Giants” were just the “Mighty ones,” of whom Nimrod was the leader. Who, then, was most likely to head the opposition to the apostasy from the primitive worship? If Shem was at that time alive, as beyond question he was, who so likely as he? In exact accordance with this deduction, we find that one of the names of the primitive Hercules in Egypt was “Sem.”

If “Sem,” then, was the primitive Hercules, who overcame the Giants, and that not by mere physical force, but by “the power of God,” or the influence of the Holy Spirit, that entirely agrees with his character; and more than that, it remarkably agrees with the Egyptian account of the death of Osiris. The Egyptians say, that the grand enemy of their god overcame him, not by open violence, but that, having entered into a conspiracy with seventy—two of the leading men of Egypt, he got him into his power, put him to death, and then cut his dead body into pieces, and sent the different parts to so many different cities throughout the country.

The real meaning of this statement will appear, if we glance at the judicial institutions of Egypt. Seventy-two was just the number of the judges, both civil and sacred, who, according to Egyptian law, were required to determine what was to be the punishment of one guilty of so high an offense as that of Osiris, supposing this to have become a matter of judicial inquiry. In determining such a case, there were necessarily two tribunals concerned. First, there were the ordinary judges, who had power of life and death, and who amounted to thirty, then there was, over and above, a tribunal consisting of forty-two judges, who, if Osiris was condemned to die, had to determine whether his body should be buried or no, for, before burial, every one after death had to pass the ordeal of this tribunal. As burial was refused him, both tribunals would necessarily be concerned; and thus there would be exactly seventy-two persons, under Typho the president, to condemn Osiris to die and to be cut in pieces.

What, then, does the statement amount to, in regard to the conspiracy, but just to this, that the great opponent of the idolatrous system which Osiris introduced, had so convinced these judges of the enormity of the offense which he had committed, that they gave up the offender to an awful death, and to ignominy after it, as a terror to any who might afterwards tread in his steps. The cutting of the dead body in pieces, and sending the dismembered parts among the different cities, is paralleled, and its object explained, by what we read in the Bible of the cutting of the dead body of the Levite’s concubine in pieces (Judges xix. 29), and sending one of the parts to each of the twelve tribes of Israel; and the similar step taken by Saul, when he hewed the two yoke of oxen asunder, and sent them throughout all the coasts of his kingdom, (1 Sam. xi. 7). It is admitted by commentators that both the Levite and Saul acted on a patriarchal custom, according to which summary vengeance would be dealt to those who failed to come to the gathering that in this solemn way was summoned. This was declared in so many words by Saul, when the parts of the slaughtered oxen were sent among the tribes: “Whosoever cometh not forth after Saul and after Samuel, so shall it be done to his oxen.” In like manner, when the dismembered parts of Osiris were sent among the cities by the seventy-two “conspirators”—in other words, by the supreme judges of Egypt, it was equivalent to a solemn declaration in their name, that “whosoever should do as Osiris had done, so should it be done to him; so should he also be cut in pieces.”

When irreligion and apostasy again rose into the ascendant, this act, into which the constituted authorities who had to do with the ringleader of the apostates were led, for the putting down of the combined system of irreligion and despotism set up by Osiris or Nimrod, was naturally the object of intense abhorrence to all his sympathizers; and for his share in it the chief actor was stigmatized as Typho, or “The Evil One.” The influence that this abhorred Typho wielded over the minds of the so-called “ conspirators,” considering the physical force with which Nimrod was upheld, must have been wonderful, and goes to show, that though his deed in regard to Osiris is veiled, and himself branded by a hateful name, he was indeed none other than that primitive Hercules who overcame the Giants by “the power of God,” by the persuasive might of his Holy Spirit.

In connection with this character of Shem, the myth that makes Adonis, who is identified with Osiris, perish by the tusks of a wild boar, is easily unravelled. The tusk of a wild boar was a symbol. In Scripture, a tusk is called a “horn;” among many of the classic Greeks it was regarded in the very same light. When once it is known that a tusk is regarded as a “horn” according to the symbolism of idolatry, the meaning of the boar’s tusks, by which Adonis perished, is not far to seek. The bull’s horns that Nimrod wore were the symbol of physical power. The boar’s tusks were the symbol of spiritual power. As a “horn” means power, so a tusk, that is, a horn in the mouth, means “power in the mouth;” in other words, the power of persuasion; the very power with which “Sem,” the primitive Hercules, was so signally endowed. Even from the ancient traditions of the Gael, we get an item of evidence that at once illustrates this idea of power in the mouth, and connects it with that great son of Noah, on whom the blessing of the Highest, as recorded in Scripture, did specially rest.

The Celtic Hercules was called Hercules Ogmius, which, in Chaldee, is “Hercules the Lamenter.” No name could be more appropriate, none more descriptive of the history of Shem, than this. Except our first parent, Adam, there was, perhaps, never a mere man that saw so much grief as he. Not only did he see a vast apostasy, which, with his righteous feelings, and witness as he had been of the awful catastrophe of the flood, must have deeply grieved him; but he lived to bury SEVEN GENERATIONS of his descendants. He lived 502 years after the flood, and as the lives of men were rapidly shortened after that event, no less than SEVEN generations of his lineal descendants died before him (Gen. xi. 10-32). How appropriate a name Ogmius, “The Lamenter or Mourner,” for one who had such a history!

Now, how is this “Mourning” Hercules represented as putting down enormities and redressing wrongs? Not by his club, like the Hercules of the Greeks, but by the force of persuasion. Multitudes were represented as following him, drawn by fine chains of gold and amber inserted into their ears, and which chains proceeded from his mouth. There is a great difference between the two symbols—the tusks of a boar and the golden chains issuing from the mouth, that draw willing crowds by the ears; but both very beautifully illustrate the same idea—the might of that persuasive power that enabled Shem for a time to withstand the tide of evil that came rapidly rushing in upon the world.

Now when Shem had so powerfully wrought upon the minds of men as to induce them to make a terrible example of the great Apostate, and when that Apostate’s dismembered limbs were sent to the chief cities, where no doubt his system had been established, it will be readily perceived that, in these circumstances, if idolatry was to continue— if, above all, it was to take a step in advance, it was indispensable that it should operate in secret. The terror of an execution, inflicted on one so mighty as Nimrod, made it needful that, for some time to come at least, the extreme of caution should be used. In these circumstances, then, began, there can hardly be a doubt, that system of “Mystery,” which, having Babylon for its center, has spread over the world. In these Mysteries, under the seal of secrecy and the sanction of an oath, and by means of all the fertile resources of magic, men were gradually led back to all the idolatry that had been publicly suppressed, while new features were added to that idolatry that made it still more blasphemous than before.

That magic and idolatry were twin sisters, and came into the world together, we have abundant evidence. “He” (Zoroaster), says Justin the historian, “was said to be the first that invented magic arts, and that most diligently studied the motions of the heavenly bodies.” The Zoroaster spoken of by Justin is the Bactrian Zoroaster; but this is generally admitted to be a mistake. Stanley, in his History of Oriental Philosophy, concludes that this mistake had arisen from similarity of name, and that from this cause that had been attributed to the Bactrian Zoroaster which properly belonged to the Chaldean, “since it cannot be imagined that the Bactrian was the inventor of those arts in which the Chaldean, who lived contemporary with him, was so much skilled.”

Epiphanius had evidently come to the same substantial conclusion before him. He maintains, from the evidence open to him in his day, that it was “Nimrod that established the sciences of magic and astronomy, the invention of which was subsequently attributed to (the Bactrian) Zoroaster.” As we have seen that Nimrod and the Chaldean Zoroaster are the same, the conclusions of the ancient and the modern inquirers into Chaldean antiquity entirely harmonize.

Now the secret system of the Mysteries gave vast facilities for imposing on the senses of the initiated by means of the various tricks and artifices of magic. Notwithstanding all the care and precautions of those who conducted these initiations, enough has transpired to give us a very clear insight into their real character. Everything was so contrived as to wind up the minds of the novices to the highest pitch of excitement, that after having surrendered themselves implicitly to the priests, they might be prepared to receive anything. After the candidates for initiation had passed through the confessional, and sworn the required oaths, “strange and amazing objects,” says Wilkinson, “ presented themselves. Sometimes the place they were in seemed to shake around them; sometimes it appeared bright and resplendent with light and radiant fire, and then again covered with black darkness, sometimes thunder and lightning, sometimes frightful noises and bellowings, sometimes terrible apparitions astonished the trembling spectators.” Then, at last, the great god, the central object of their worship, Osiris, Tammuz, Nimrod or Adonis, was revealed to them in the way most fitted to soothe their feelings and engage their blind affections.

An account of such a manifestation is thus given by an ancient Pagan, cautiously indeed, but yet in such a way as shows the nature of the magic secret by which such an apparent miracle was accomplished: “In a manifestation which one must not reveal . . . . there is seen on a wall of the temple a mass of light, which appears at first at a very great distance. It is transformed, while unfolding itself, into a visage evidently divine and supernatural, of an aspect severe, but with a touch of sweetness. Following the teachings of a mysterious religion, the Alexandrians honor it as Osiris or Adonis.” From this statement, there can hardly be a doubt that the magical art here employed was none other than that now made use of in the modern phantasmagoria (an exhibition of optical effects and illusions).

Such, or similar means were used in the very earliest periods for presenting to the view of the living, in the secret Mysteries, those who were dead. We have statements in ancient history referring to the very time of Semiramis, which imply that magic rites were practiced for this very purpose; and as the magic lantern, or something akin to it, was manifestly used in later times for such an end, it is reasonable to conclude that the same means, or similar, were employed in the most ancient times, when the same effects were produced.

Now, in the hands of crafty, designing men, this was a powerful means of imposing upon those who are willing to be imposed upon, who were averse to the holy spiritual religion of the living God, and who still hankered after the system that was put down. It was easy for those who controlled the Mysteries, having discovered secrets that were then unknown to the mass of mankind, and which they carefully preserved in their own exclusive keeping, to give them what might seem ocular demonstration, that Tammuz, who had been slain, and for whom such lamentations had been made, was still alive, and encompassed with divine and heavenly glory. From the lips of one so gloriously revealed, or what was practically the same, from the lips of some unseen priest, speaking in his name from behind the scenes, what could be too wonderful or incredible to be believed? Thus the whole system of the secret Mysteries of Babylon was intended to glorify a dead man; and when once the worship of one dead man was established, the worship of many more was sure to follow.

This casts light upon the language of the 106th Psalm, where the Lord, upbraiding Israel for their apostasy, says: “They joined themselves to Baalpeor, and ate the sacrifices of the dead.” Thus, too, the way was paved for bringing in all the abominations and crimes of which the Mysteries became the scenes; for, to those who liked not to retain God in their knowledge, who preferred some visible object of worship, suited to the sensuous feelings of their carnal minds, nothing could seem a more cogent reason for faith or practice, than to hear with their own ears a command given forth amid so glorious a manifestation apparently by the very divinity they adored.

The scheme, thus skilfully formed, took effect. Semiramis gained glory from her dead and deified husband; and in course of time both of them, under the names of Rhea and Nin, or “Goddess Mother and Son,” were worshiped with an enthusiasm that was incredible, and their images were everywhere set up and adored. Wherever the negro aspect of Nimrod was found an obstacle to his worship, this was very easily obviated. According to the Chaldean doctrine of the transmigration of souls, all that was needful was just to teach that Ninus had reappeared in the person of a posthumous son, of a fair complexion, supernaturally borne by his widowed wife after the father had gone to glory. As the licentious and dissolute life of Semiramis gave her many children, for whom no ostensible father on earth would be alleged, a plea like this would at once sanctify sin, and enable her to meet the feelings of those who were disaffected to the true worship of Jehovah, and yet might have no fancy to bow down before a negro divinity. From the light reflected on Babylon by Egypt, as well as from the form of the extant images of the Babylonian child in the arms of the goddess mother, we have every reason to believe that this was actually done.

In Egypt the fair Horus, the son of the black Osiris, who was the favourite object of worship, in the arms of the goddess Isis, was said to have been miraculously born in consequence of a connection, on the part of that, goddess, with Osiris after his death, and, in point of fact, to have been a new incarnation of that god, to avenge his death on his murderers. It is wonderful to find in what widely-severed countries, and amongst what millions of the human race at this day, who never. saw a negro, a negro god is worshiped. But yet, as we shall afterwards see, among the civilized nations of antiquity, Nimrod almost everywhere fell into disrepute, and was deposed from his original pre-eminence, expressly ob deformitatem, “on account of his ugliness.” Even in Babylon itself, the posthumous child, as identified with his father, and inheriting all his father’s glory, yet possessing more of his mother’s complexion, came to be the favourite type of the Madonna’s divine son.

This son,thus worshiped in his mother’s arms,was looked upon as invested with all the attributes, and called by almost all the names of the promised Messiah. As Christ, in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, was called Adonai, The Lord, so Tammuz was called Adon or Adonis. Under the name of Mithras, he was worshiped as the “Mediator.” As Mediator and head of the covenant of grace, he was styled Baal-berith, Lord of the Covenant (fig. 24:) —(Judges viii. 33). In this character he is represented in Persian monuments as seated on the rainbow, the wellknown symbol of the covenant. In India, under the name of Vishnu, the Preserver or Savior of men, though a god, he was worshiped as the great “Victim-Man,” who before the worlds were, because there was nothing else to offer, offered himself as a sacrifice. The Hindu sacred writings teach that this mysterious offering before all creation is the foundation of all the sacrifices that have ever been offered since.

Do any marvel at such a statement being found in the sacred books of a Pagan mythology? Why should they? Since sin entered the world there has been only one way of salvation, and that through the blood of the everlasting covenant——a way that all mankind once knew, from the days of righteous Abel downwards. When Abel, “by faith,” offered unto God his more excellent sacrifice than that of Cain, it was his faith “in the blood of the Lamb slain ” in the purpose of God “from the foundation of the world,” and in due time to be actually offered up on Calvary, that gave all the “excellence” to his offering. If Abel knew of “the blood of the Lamb,” why should Hindus not have known of it?

One little word shows that even in Greece the virtue of “the blood of God” had once been known, though that virtue, as exhibited in its poets, was utterly obscured and degraded. That word is Ichor. Every reader of the bards of classic Greece knows that Ichor is the term peculiarly appropriated to the blood of a divinity. Thus Homer refers to it:—

“From the clear vein the immortal Ichor flowed,
Such stream as issues from a wounded god,
Pure emanation, uncorrupted flood,
Unlike our gross, diseased terrestrial blood.”

Now, what is the proper meaning of the term Ichor? In Greek it has no etymological meaning whatever; but, in Chaldee, Ichor signifies “The precious thing.” Such a name, applied to the blood of a divinity, could have only one origin. It bears its evidence on the very face of it, as coming from that grand patriarchal tradition, that led Abel to look forward to the “precious blood” of Christ, the most “precious” gift that love divine could give to a guilty world, and which, while the blood of the only genuine “Victim-Man,” is, at the same time, in deed and in truth, “The blood of God ”—(Acts xx. 28).

Even in Greece itself, though the doctrine was utterly perverted, it was not entirely lost. It was mingled with falsehood and fable, it was hid from the multitude; but yet, in the secret mystic system, it necessarily occupied an important place. As Servius tells us that the grand purpose of the Bacchic orgies “was the purification of souls,” and as in these orgies there was regularly the tearing asunder and the shedding of the blood of an animal, in memory of the shedding of the life’s blood of the great divinity commemorated in them, could this symbolical shedding of the blood of that divinity have no bearing on the “purification ” from sin these mystic rites were intended to effect?

We have seen that the sufferings of the Babylonian Zoroaster and Belus were expressly represented as voluntary, and as submitted to for the benefit of the world, and that in connection with crushing the great serpent’s head, which implied the removal of sin and the curse. If the Grecian Bacchus was just another form of the Babylonian divinity, then his sufferings and blood-shedding must have been represented as having been undergone for the same purpose, viz., for “the purification of souls.”

From this point of view, let the well-known name of Bacchus in Greece be looked at. That name was Dionysus or Dionusos. What is the meaning of that name? Hitherto it has defied all interpretation. But deal with it as belonging to the language of that land from which the god himself originally came, and the meaning is very plain. D’ion-nuso-s signifies “THE SIN—BEARER,” a name entirely appropriate to the character of him whose sufferings were represented as so mysterious, and who was looked up to as the great “purifier of souls.”

Now this Babylonian god known in Greece as “The sin-bearer,” and in India as the “Victim-Man,” among the Buddhists of the east, the original elements of whose system are clearly Babylonian, was commonly addressed as “The Savior of the world.” It has been all along well enough known that the Greeks occasionally worshiped the supreme god, under the title of “Zeus the Savior;” but this title was thought to have reference only to deliverance in battle, or some such-like temporal deliverance. But when it is known that “Zeus the Savior” was only a title of Dionysus, the “sin-bearing Bacchus, his character, as “The Savior,” appears in quite a different light.

In Egypt, the Chaldean god was held up as the great object of love and adoration, as the god through whom “goodness and truth were revealed to mankind”: He was regarded as the predestined heir of all things; and, on the day of his birth, it was believed that a voice was heard to proclaim, “The Lord of all the earth is born.” In this character he was styled “King of kings, and Lord of lords,” it being as a professed representative of this hero-god that the celebrated Sesostris caused this very title to be added to his name on the monuments which he erected to perpetuate the fame of his victories. Not only was be honored as the great “World-King,” he was regarded as Lord of the invisible world, and “Judge of the dead;” and it was taught that, in the world of spirits, all must appear before his dread tribunal, to have their destiny assigned them.

As the true Messiah was prophesied of under the title of the “Man whose name was the branch,” he was celebrated not only as the “Branch of Cush,” but as the “Branch of God,” graciously given to the earth for healing all the ills that flesh is heir to. He was worshiped in Babylon under the name of El-Bar, or “God the Son.” Under this very name he is introduced by Berosus, the Chaldean historian, as the second in the list of Babylonian sovereigns.” Under this name he has been found in the sculptures of Nineveh by Layard, the name Bar “the Son,” having the sign denoting El or “God” prefixed to it.* Under the same name he has been found by Sir H. Rawlinson, the names “Beltis” and the “Shining Bar” being in immediate juxtaposition. Under the name of Bar he was worshiped in Egypt in the earliest times, though in later times the god Bar was degraded in the popular Pantheon, to make way for another more popular divinity. In Pagan Rome itself, as Ovid testifies, he was worshiped under the name of the “Eternal Boy.” Thus daringly and directly was a mere mortal set up in Babylon in opposition to the “Son of the Blessed.”

Section III.—The Mother of the Child

Now while the mother derived her glory in the first instance from the divine character attributed to the child in her arms, the mother in the long-run practically eclipsed the son. At first, in all likelihood, there would be no thought whatever of ascribing divinity to the mother. There was an express promise that necessarily led mankind to expect that, at some time or other, the Son of God, in amazing condescension, should appear in this world as the Son of man. But there was no promise whatever, or the least shadow of a promise, to lead any one to anticipate that a woman should ever be invested with attributes that should raise her to a level with Divinity. It is in the last degree improbable, therefore, that when the Mother was first exhibited with the child in her arms, it should be intended to give divine honors to her. She was doubtless used chiefly as a pedestal for the upholding of the divine Son, and holding him forth to the adoration of mankind; and glory enough it would be counted for her, alone of all the daughters of Eve, to have given birth to the promised seed, the world’s only hope.

But while this, no doubt, was the design, it is a plain principle in all idolatries that that which most appeals to the senses must make the most powerful impression. Now the Son, even in his new incarnation, when Nimrod was believed to have reappeared in a fairer form, was exhibited merely as a child, without any very particular attraction; while the mother in whose arms he was, was set off with all the art of painting and sculpture, as invested with much of that extraordinary beauty which in reality belonged to her. The beauty of Semiramis is said on one occasion to have quelled a rising rebellion among her subjects on her sudden appearance among them; and it is recorded that the memory of the admiration excited in their minds by her appearance on that occasion was perpetuated by a statue erected in Babylon, representing her in the guise in which she had fascinated them so much. This Babylonian queen was not merely in character coincident with the Aphrodite of Greece and the Venus of Rome, but was, in point of fact, the historical original of that goddess that by the ancient world was regarded as the very embodiment of everything attractive in female form, and the perfection of female beauty; for Sanchuniathon assures us that Aphrodite or Venus was identical with Astarte, and Astarte being interpreted, is none other than “The woman that made towers or encompassing walls,” i.e., Semiramis.

The Roman Venus, as is well known, was the Cyprian Venus, and the Venus of Cyprus is historically proved to have been derived from Babylon. (See chap. iv., sect. iii.) Now, what in these circumstances might have been expected actually took place. If the child was to be adored, much more the mother. The mother, in point of fact, became the favorite object of worship: To justify this worship, the mother was raised to divinity as well as her son, and she was looked upon as destined to complete that bruising of the serpent’s head, which it was easy, if such a thing was needed, to find abundant and plausible reasons for alleging that Ninus or Nimrod, the great Son, in his mortal life had only begun.

The Roman Church maintains that it was not so much the seed of the woman, as the woman herself, that was to bruise the head of the serpent. In defiance of all grammar, she renders the divine denunciation against the serpent thus: “She shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise her heel.” The same was held by the ancient Babylonians, and symbolically represented in their temples. In the uppermost storey of the tower of Babel, or temple of Belus, Diodorus Siculus tells us, there stood three images of the great divinities of Babylon; and one of these was of a woman grasping a serpent’s head. Among the Greeks the same thing was symbolized; for Diana, whose real character was originally the same as that of the great Babylonian goddess, was represented as bearing in one of her hands a serpent deprived of its head.

As time wore away, and the facts of Semiramis’s history became obscured, her son’s birth was boldly declared to be miraculous; and therefore she was called “ Alma Mater,” “the Virgin Mother.” That the birth of the Great Deliverer was to be miraculous, was widely known long before the Christian era. For centuries, some say for thousands of years before that event, the Buddhist priests had a tradition that a Virgin was to bring forth a child to bless the world. That this tradition came from no Popish or Christian source, is evident from the surprise felt and expressed by the Jesuit missionaries, when they first entered Tibet and China, and not only found a mother and a child worshiped as at home, but that mother worshiped under a character exactly corresponding with that of their own Madonna,“Virgo Deipara,” “the Virgin mother of God,” and that, too, in regions where they could not find the least trace of either the name or history of our Lord Jesus Christ having ever been known.

The primeval promise that the “seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head,” naturally suggested the idea of a miraculous birth. Priest-craft and human presumption set themselves wickedly to anticipate the fulfillment of that promise; and the Babylonian queen seems to have been the first to whom that honor was given. The highest titles were accordingly bestowed upon her. She was called the “queen of heaven.” (Jeremiah xliv. 17, 18, 19, 25). In Egypt she was styled Athor, i.e., “the Habitation of God,” to signify that in her dwelt all the “fullness of the Godhead.” To point out the great goddess mother, in a Pantheistic sense, as at once the Infinite and Almighty one, and the Virgin mother, this inscription was engraven upon one of her temples in Egypt:

“I am all that has been, or that is, or that shall be. No mortal has removed my veil. The fruit which I have brought forth is the Sun.”

In Greece she had the name of Hestia, and amongst the Romans, Vesta, which is just a modification of the same name—a name which, though it has been commonly understood in a different sense, really meant “The Dwelling-place” As the Dwelling-place of Deity, thus is Hestia or Vesta addressed in the Orphic Hymns:—

“Daughter of Saturn, venerable dame,
Who dwell’st amid great fire’s eternal flame,
In thee the gods have fixed their DWELLING-PLACE,
Strong stable basis of the mortal race.”

Even when Vesta is identified with fire, this same character of Vesta as “The Dwelling-place ” still distinctly appears. Thus Philolaus, speaking of a fire in the middle of the center of the world, calls it “The Vesta of the Universe, The HOUSE of Jupiter, The mother of the gods.” In Babylon, the title of the goddess mother as the Dwelling-place of God, was Sacca, or in the emphatic form, Sacta, that is, “The Tabernacle.” Hence, at this day,the great goddesses in India, as wielding all the power of the god Whom they represent, are. called “Sacti,” or the “Tabernacle.” Now in her, as the Tabernacle or Temple of God, not only all power, but all grace and goodness were believed to dwell. Every quality of gentleness and mercy was regarded as centered in her; and when death had closed her career, while she was fabled to have been deified and changed into a pigeon, to express the celestial benignity of her nature, she was called by the name of “D’Iune,” or “The Dove,” or without the article, “Juno,”—the name of the Roman “queen of heaven,” which has the very same meaning; and under the form of a dove, as well as her own, she was worshiped by the Babylonians.

The dove, the chosen symbol of this deified queen, is commonly represented with an olive branch in her mouth (fig. 25), as she herself in her human form also is seen bearing the olive branch in her hand; and from this form of representing her, it is highly probable that she has derived the name by which she is commonly known, for “Zemirami” means “The branch-bearer.”

When the goddess was thus represented as the Dove with the olive branch, there can be no doubt that the symbol had partly reference to the story of the flood; but there was much more in the symbol than a mere memorial of that great event. “A branch,” as has been already proved, was the symbol of the deified son, and when the deified mother was represented as a Dove, what could the meaning of this representation be but just to identify her with the Spirit of all grace, that brooded, dove-like, over the deep at the creation; for, in the sculptures at Nineveh, as we have seen, the wings and tale of the dove represented the third member of the idolatrous Assyrian trinity. In confirmation of this View, it must be stated that the Assyrian “Juno,” or “The Virgin Venus,” as she was called, was identified with the air.

Thus Julius Firmicus says:—“ The Assyrians and part of the Africans wish the air to have the supremacy of the elements, for they have consecrated this same [element], under the name of Juno, or the Virgin Venus.” Why was air thus identified with Juno, whose symbol was that of the third person of the Assyrian trinity? Why, but because in Chaldee the same word which signifies the air signifies also the “Holy Ghost.” The knowledge of this entirely accounts for the statement of Proclus, that “Juno imports the generation of soul.” Whence could the soul —the spirit of man— be supposed to have its origin, but from the Spirit of God? In accordance with this character of Juno as the incarnation of the Divine Spirit, the source of life, and also as the goddess of the air, thus is she invoked in the ‘Orphic Hymns’:—

“O royal Juno, of majestic mien,
Aérial formed, divine, Jove’s blessed queen,
Throned in the bosom of caerulean air,
The race of mortals is thy constant care;
The cooling gales, thy power alone inspires,
Which nourish life, which every life desires;
Mother of showers and winds, from thee alone
Producing all things, mortal life is known;
All natures show thy temperament divine,
And universal sway alone is thine,
With sounding blasts of wind, the swelling sea
And rolling rivers roar when shook by thee.”

Thus, then, the deified queen, when in all respects regarded as a veritable woman, was at the same time adored as the incarnation of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of peace and love. In the temple of Hierapolis in Syria, there was a famous statue of the goddess Juno, to which crowds from all quarters flocked to worship. The image of the goddess was richly habited; on her head was a golden dove, and she was called by a name peculiar to the country, “Semeion.” What is the meaning of Seméion? It is evidently “The Habitation” and the “golden dove” on her head shows plainly who it was that was supposed to dwell in her— even the Spirit of God. When such transcendent dignity was bestowed on her, when such winning characters were attributed to her, and when, over and above all, her images presented her to the eyes of men as Venus Urania, “the heavenly Venus,” the queen of beauty, who assured her worshipers of salvation, while giving loose reins to every unholy passion, and every depraved and sensual appetite— no wonder that everywhere she was enthusiastically adored.

Under the name of the “Mother of the gods,” the goddess queen of Babylon became an object of almost universal worship. “The mother of the gods,” says Clericus, “was worshiped by the Persians, the Syrians, and all the kings of Europe and Asia, with the most profound religious veneration.” Tacitus gives evidence that the Babylonian goddess was worshiped in the heart of Germany, and Caesar, when he invaded Britain, found that the priests of this same goddess, known by the name of Druids, had been there before him.

Herodotus, from personal knowledge, testifies, that in Egypt this “queen of heaven” was “the greatest and most worshiped of all the divinities.” Wherever her worship was introduced, it is amazing what fascinating power it exerted. Truly, the nations might be said to be “made drunk” with the wine of her fornications. So deeply, in particular, did the Jews in the days of Jeremiah, drink of her wine-cup, so bewitched were they by her idolatrous worship, that even after Jerusalem had been burnt, and the land desolated for this very thing, they could not be prevailed on to give it up.

While dwelling in Egypt as forlorn exiles, instead of being witnesses for God against the heathenism around them, they were as much devoted to this form of idolatry as the Egyptians themselves. Jeremiah was sent of God to denounce wrath against them if they continued to worship the queen of heaven; but his warnings were in vain. “Then,” saith the prophet, “all the men which knew that their wives had burnt incense unto other gods, and all the women that stood by, a great multitude, even all the people that dwelt in the land of Egypt, in Pathros, answered Jeremiah, saying, As for the word that thou hast spoken unto us in the name of the Lord, we will not hearken unto thee: but we will certainly do whatsoever thing goeth forth out of our own mouth, to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink-offerings unto her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem: for then had we plenty of victuals, and were well, and saw no evil.” (Jer. xliv. 15—17). Thus did the Jews, God’s own peculiar people, emulate the Egyptians in their devotion to the queen of heaven.

The worship of the goddess mother with the child in her arms continued to be observed in Egypt till Christianity entered. If the gospel had come in power among the mass of the people, the worship of this goddess queen would have been overthrown. With the generality it came only in name. Instead, therefore, of the Babylonian goddess being cast out, in too many cases her name only was changed. She was called the Virgin Mary, and, with her child, was worshiped with the same idolatrous feeling by professing Christians, as formerly by open and avowed Pagans.

The consequence was, that when, in A.D. 325, the Nicene Council was summoned to condemn the heresy of Arius, who denied the true divinity of Christ, that heresy indeed was condemned, but not without the help of men who gave distinct indications of a desire to put the creature on a level with the Creator, to set the Virgin mother side by side with her Son.

At the Council of Nice, says the author of ‘Nimrod’ “the Melchite section,” that is, the representatives of the so-called Christianity of Egypt, “held that there were three persons in the Trinity, the Father, the Virgin Mary, and Messiah their Son.” In reference to this astounding fact, elicited by the Nicene Council, Father Newman speaks exultingly of these discussions as tending to the glorification of Mary. “Thus,” says he, “the controversy opened a question which it did not settle. It discovered a new sphere, if we may so speak, in the realms of light, to which the Church had not yet assigned its inhabitant. Thus there was a wonder in heaven; a throne was seen far above all created powers, mediatorial, intercessory, a title archetypal, a crown bright as the morning star, a glory issuing from the eternal throne; robes pure as the heavens, and a scepter over all, and who was the predestined heir of that majesty? Who was that wisdom, and what was her name, the mother of fair love, and fear, and holy hope, exalted like a palm tree in Engaddi, and a rose-plant in Jericho, created from the beginning before the world, in God’s counsels, and in Jerusalem was her power? The vision is found in the Apocalypse, ‘a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.’” “The votaries of Mary,” adds he, “do not exceed the true faith, unless the blasphemers of her Son came up to it. The Church of Rome is not idolatrous, unless Arianism is orthodoxy.”

This is the very poetry of blasphemy. It contains an argument too; but what does that argument amount to? It just amounts to this, that if Christ be admitted to be truly and properly God, and worthy of divine honors, his mother, from whom be derived merely his humanity, must be admitted to be the same, must be raised far above the level of all creatures, and be worshiped as a partaker of the Godhead. The divinity of Christ is made to stand or fall with the divinity of his mother.

Such is Popery in the nineteenth century; yea, such is Popery in England. It was known already that Popery abroad was bold and unblushing in its blasphemies; that in Lisbon a church was to be seen with these words engraven on its front, “To the virgin goddess of Loretto, the Italian race, devoted to her DIVINITY, have dedicated this temple.” But when till now was such language ever heard in Britain before? This, however, is just the exact reproduction of the doctrine of ancient Babylon in regard to the great goddess Mother.

The Madonna of Rome, then, is just the Madonna of Babylon. The “Queen of heaven” in the one system is the same as the “Queen of heaven” in the other. The goddess worshiped in Babylon and Egypt as the Tabernacle or Habitation of God, is identical with her who, under the name of Mary, is called by Rome “the HOUSE consecrated to God,” “the awful Dwelling-place,” “the Mansion of God,” the “Tabernacle of the Holy Ghost,” the “Temple of the Trinity.”

Some may possibly be inclined to defend such language, by saying that the Scripture makes every believer to be a temple of the Holy Ghost, and, therefore, what harm can there be in speaking of the Virgin Mary, who was unquestionably a saint of God, under that name, or names of a similar import? Now no doubt it is true that Paul says (1 Cor. iii. 16): “ Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?” It is not only true, but it is a great truth, and a blessed one; a truth that enhances every comfort when enjoyed, and takes the sting out of every trouble when it comes, that every genuine Christian has less or more experience of what is contained in these words of the same apostle (2 Cor. vi. 16): “Ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them and walk in them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” It must also be admitted, and gladly admitted, that this implies the indwelling of all the persons of the glorious Godhead; for the Lord Jesus hath said (John xiv. 23): “If a man love me, he will keep my words; and my Father will love him and WE will come unto him, and make our abode with him.”

But while admitting all this, on examination it will be found, that the Popish and the Scriptural ideas conveyed by these expressions, however apparently similar, are essentially different. When it is said that a believer is “a temple of God,” or a temple of the Holy Ghost, the meaning is (Eph. iii. 17) that “Christ dwells in the heart by faith.” But when Rome says that Mary is “The Temple” or “ Tabernacle of God,” the meaning is, the exact Pagan meaning of the term, viz., that the union between her and the Godhead is a union akin to the hypostatical union between the divine and human nature of Christ.

The human nature of Christ is the “Tabernacle of God,” inasmuch as the Divine nature has veiled its glory in such a way, by assuming our nature, that we can come near without overwhelming dread to the Holy God. To this glorious truth John refers, when he says (John i. 14): “The word was made ‘flesh, and dwelt (literally tabernacled) among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” In this sense Christ, the God-man, is the only “Tabernacle of God.”

Now it is precisely in this sense that Rome calls Mary the “Tabernacle of God,” or of the “Holy Ghost.” Thus speaks the author of a Popish work devoted to the exaltation of the Virgin, in which all the peculiar titles and prerogatives of Christ are given to Mary: “Behold the tabernacle of God, the mansion of God, the habitation, the city of God is with men, and in men and for men, for their salvation, and exaltation, and eternal glorification. . . . . Is it most clear that this is true of the holy church? and in like manner also equally true of the most holy sacrament of the Lord’s body? Is it (true) of every one of us in as far as we are truly Christians? Undoubtedly; but we have to contemplate this mystery (as existing) in a peculiar manner in the most Holy Mother of our Lord.”

Then the author, after endeavouring to show that “Mary is rightly considered as the Tabernacle of God with men,” and that in a peculiar sense, a sense different from that in which all Christians are the “temple of God,” thus proceeds with express reference to her in this character of the Tabernacle: “Great truly is the benefit, singular is the privilege, that the Tabernacle of God should be with men, IN WHICH men may safely come near to God become man.” Here the whole mediatorial glory of Christ, as the God-man in whom dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily, is given to Mary, or at least is shared with her.

The above extracts are taken from a work published upwards of two hundred years ago. Has the Papacy improved since then? Has it repented of its blasphemies? No, the very reverse. The quotation already given from Father Newman proves this; but there is still stronger proof. In a recently published work, the same blasphemous idea is even more clearly unfolded. While Mary is called “The HOUSE consecrated to God,” and the “TEMPLE of the Trinity,” the following versicle and response will show in what sense she is regarded as the temple of the Holy Ghost: “
V. Ipse [deus] creavit illam in Spiritu Sancto. R. Et EFFUDIT ILLAM inter omnia opera sua. V. Domina, exandi,” etc., which is thus translated: “V. The Lord himself created HER in the Holy Ghost, and POURED HER out among all his works. V. O Lady, hear,” etc. This astounding language manifestly implies that Mary is identified with the Holy Ghost, when it speaks of her “being poured out” on “all the works of God;” and that, as we have seen, was just the very way in which the Woman regarded as the “Tabernacle” or House of God by the Pagans, was looked upon. Where is such language used in regard to the Virgin? Not in Spain; not in Austria; not in the dark places of Continental Europe; but in London, the seat and center of the world’s enlightenment.

The names of blasphemy bestowed by the Papacy on Mary have not one shadow of foundation in the Bible, but are all to be found in the Babylonian idolatry. Yea, the very features and complexions of the Roman and Babylonian Madonnas are the same. Till recent times, when Raphael somewhat departed from the beaten track, there was nothing either Jewish or even Italian in the Romish Madonnas. Had these pictures or images of the Virgin Mother been intended to represent the mother of our Lord, naturally they would have been cast either in the one mold or the other. But it was not so. In a land of dark-eyed beauties, with raven locks, the Madonna was always represented with blue eyes and golden hair, a complexion entirely different from the Jewish complexion, which naturally would have been supposed to belong to the mother of our Lord, but which precisely agrees with that which all antiquity attributes to the goddess queen of Babylon. In almost all lands the great goddess has been described with golden or yellow hair, showing that there must have been one grand prototype, to which they were all made to correspond. “Flaw Ceres,” the “yellow-haired Ceres,” might not have been accounted of any weight in this argument if she had stood alone, for it might have been supposed in that case that the epithet “yellow-haired ” was borrowed from the corn that was supposed to be under her guardian care.

But many other goddesses have the very same epithet applied to them. Europa, whom Jupiter carried away in the form of a bull, is called “The yellow-haired Europa.” Minerva is called by Homer “the blue-eyed Minerva” and by Ovid “the yellow-haired;” the huntress Diana, who is commonly identified with the moon, is addressed by Anacreon as “the yellow-haired daughter of Jupiter,” a title which the pale face of the silver moon could surely never have suggested. Dione, the mother of Venus, is described by Theocritus as “yellow-haired.” Venus herself is frequently called “ Aurea Venus,” the “golden Venus.” The Indian Goddess Lakshmi, the “Mother of the Universe,” is described as of “a golden complexion.” Ariadne, the wife of Bacchus, was called “the yellow-haired Ariadne.” Thus does Dryden refer to her golden or yellow hair:—

“Where the rude waves in Dian’s harbour play,
The fair forsaken Ariadne lay;
There, sick with grief and frantic with despair,
Her dress she rent, and tore her golden hair.”

The Gorgon Medusa, before her transformation, while celebrated for her beauty, was equally celebrated for her golden hair:—

“Medusa once had charms; to gain her love
A rival crowd of anxious lovers strove.
They who have seen her, own they ne’er did trace
More moving features in a sweeter face;
But above all, her length of hair they own
In golden ringlets waved, and graceful shone.”

The mermaid that figured so much in the romantic tales of the north, which was evidently borrowed from the story of Atergatis, the fish goddess of Syria, who was called the mother of Semiramis, and was sometimes identified with Semiramis herself, was described with hair of the same kind. “The Ellewoman,” such is the Scandinavian name for the mermaid, “is fair,” says the introduction to the ‘Danish Tales’ of Hans Andersen, “and golden-haired, and plays most sweetly on a stringed instrument.” “She is frequently seen sitting on the surface of the waters, and combing her long golden hair with a gold comb.”

Even when Athor, the Venus of Egypt, was represented as a cow, doubtless to indicate the complexion of the goddess that cow represented, the cow’s head and neck were gilded.

When, therefore, it is known that the most famed pictures of the Virgin Mother in Italy represented her as of a fair complexion and with golden hair, and when over all Ireland the Virgin is almost invariably represented at this day in the very same manner, who can resist the conclusion that she must have been thus represented, only because she had been copied from the same prototype as the Pagan divinities.

Nor is this agreement in complexion only, but also in features. Jewish features are everywhere marked, and have a character peculiarly their own. But the original Madonnas have nothing at all of Jewish form or feature; but are declared by those who have personally compared both, entirely to agree in this respect, as well as in complexion, with the Babylonian Madonnas found by Sir Robert Ker Porter among the ruins of Babylon.

There is yet another remarkable characteristic of these pictures worthy of notice, and that is the nimbus or peculiar circle of light that frequently encompasses the head of the Roman Madonna. With this circle the heads of the so called figures of Christ are also frequently surrounded. Whence could such a device have originated? In the case of our Lord, if his head had been merely surrounded with rays, there might have been some pretense for saying that that was borrowed from the Evangelic narrative, where it is stated, that on the holy mount his face became resplendent with light. But where, in the whole compass of Scripture, do we ever read that his head was surrounded with a disk or a circle of light? But what will be searched for in vain in the Word of God, is found in the artistic representations of the great gods and goddesses of Babylon. The disk, and particularly the circle, were the well-known symbols of the Sun-divinity, and figured largely in the symbolism of the East. With the circle or the disk the head of the Sun-divinity was encompassed. The same was the case in Pagan Rome. Apollo, as the child of the Sun, was often thus represented. The goddesses that claimed kindred with the Sun were equally entitled to be adorned with the nimbus or luminous circle. We give from ‘Pompeii’ a representation of Circe, “the daughter of the Sun ” (see fig. 26), with her head surrounded with a circle, in the very same way as the head of the Roman Madonna is at this day surrounded. Let any one compare the nimbus around the head of Circe, with that around the head of the Popish Virgin, and he will see how exactly they correspond.

The explanation of the above woodcut is thus given in Pompeii, vol. ii., pp. 91, 92: “One of them [the paintings] is taken from the Odyssey, and represents Ulysses and Circe, at the moment when the hero, having drunk the charmed cup with impunity, by virtue of the antidote given him by Mercury, [it is well known that Circe had a ‘golden cup,’ even as the Venus of Babylon had,] “draws his sword, and advances to avenge his companions,” who, having drunk of her cup, had been changed into swine. The goddess, terrified, makes her submission at once, as described by Homer; Ulysses himself being the narrator:—

“’Hence, seek the sty, there wallow with thy friends.’
She spake, I drawing from beside my thigh
My falchion keen, with death-denouncing looks,
Rushed on her; she, with a shrill scream of fear,
Ran under my raised arm, seized fast my knees,
And in winged accents plaintive, thus began:
‘Say, who art thou,’ etc.”—Cowper’s Odyssey, x. 320.

“This picture,” adds the author of Pompeii, is remarkable, as teaching us the origin of that ugly and unmeaning glory by which the heads of saints are often surrounded. . . . This glory was called nimbus, or aureola, and is defined by Servius to be ‘the luminous fluid which encircles the heads of the gods.’ (On AENEID, lib. ii., v. 616, vol. i., p. 165). It belongs with peculiar propriety to Circe, as the daughter of the Sun. The emperors, with their usual modesty, assumed it as the mark of their divinity; and under this respectable patronage it passed, like many other Pagan superstitions and customs, into the use of the Church.” The emperors here get rather more than a fair share of the blame due to them. It was not the emperors that brought “Pagan superstition” into the Church, so much as the Bishop of Rome. See Chap. VII., Sect. II.

Now, could any one possibly believe that all this coincidence could be accidental? Of course, if the Madonna had ever so exactly resembled the Virgin Mary, that would never have excused idolatry. But when it is evident that the goddess enshrined in the Papal Church for the supreme worship of its votaries, is that very Babylonian queen who set up Nimrod, or Ninus “the Son,” as the rival of Christ, and who in her own person was the incarnation of every kind of licentiousness, how dark a character does that stamp on the Roman idolatry. What will it avail to mitigate the heinous character of that idolatry, to say that the child she holds forth to adoration is called by the name of Jesus? When she was worshiped with her child in Babylon of old, that child was called by a name as peculiar to Christ, as distinctive of his glorious character, as the name of Jesus. He was called “Zoro-ashta,” “the seed of the woman.”

But that did not hinder the hot anger of God from being directed against those in the days of old who worshiped that “image of jealousy, provoking to jealousy.” Neither can the giving of the name of Christ to the infant in the arms of the Romish Madonna, make it less the “image of jealousy,” less offensive to the Most High, less fitted to provoke His high displeasure, when it is evident that that infant is worshiped as the child of her who was adored as Queen of heaven, with all the attributes of divinity, and was at the same time the “Mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.” Image-worship in every case the Lord abhors; but image-worship of such a kind as this must be peculiarly abhorrent to His holy soul. Now, if the facts I have adduced be true, is it wonderful that such dreadful threatenings should be directed in the Word of God against the Romish apostasy, and that the vials of his tremendous wrath are destined to be outpoured upon its guilty head? If the sethings be true (and gainsay them who can), who will venture now to plead for Papal Rome, or to call her a Christian Church? Is there one, who fears God, and who reads these lines, who would not admit that Paganism alone could ever have inspired such a doctrine as that avowed by the Melchites at the Nicene Council, that the Holy Trinity consisted of “the Father, the Virgin Mary, and the Messiah their Son? Is there one who would not shrink with horror from such a thought? What, then, would the reader say of a church that teaches its children to adore such a Trinity as that contained in the following lines?—

“Heart of Jesus, I adore thee;
Heart of Mary, I implore thee;
Heart of Joseph, pure and just;
IN THESE THREE HEARTS I PUT MY TRUST.”

If this is not Paganism, what is there that can be called by such a name? Yet this is the Trinity which now the Roman Catholics of Ireland from tender infancy are taught to adore. This is the Trinity which, in the latest books of catechetical instruction, is presented as the grand object of devotion to the adherents of the Papacy. The manual that contains this blasphemy comes forth with the express “Imprimatur” of “ Paulus Cullen,” Popish Archbishop of Dublin. Will any one after this say that the Roman Catholic Church must still be called Christian, because it holds the doctrine of the Trinity? So did the Pagan Babylonians, so did the Egyptians, so do the Hindus at this hour, in the very same sense in which Rome does. They all admitted a trinity, but did they worship THE Triune Jehovah, the King Eternal, Immortal, and Invisible? And will any one say, with such evidence before him, that Rome does so? Away, then, with the deadly delusion that Rome is Christian! There might once have been some palliation (excuses) for entertaining such a supposition; but every day the “Grand Mystery” is revealing itself more and more in its true character.

There is not, and there cannot be, any safety for the souls of men in “Babylon.” “Come out of her, my people,” is the loud and express command of God. Those who disobey that command, do it at their peril.

Continued in Chapter III

All chapters of The Two Babylons