n in this connection. Among the
Egyptians, the _hare_ was the hieroglyphic of _eyes that are open_; and it
was adopted because that timid animal was supposed never to close his
organs of vision, being always on the watch for his enemies. The hare was
afterwards adopted by the priests as a symbol of the mental illumination
or mystic light which was revealed to the neophytes, in the contemplation
of divine truth, during the progress of their initiation; and hence,
according to Champollion, the hare was also the symbol of Osiris, their
chief god; thus showing the intimate connection which they believed to
exist between the process of initiation into their sacred rites and the
contemplation of the divine nature. But the Hebrew word for hare is
ARNaBeT. Now, this is compounded of the two words AUR, _light_, and NaBaT,
_to behold_, and therefore the word which in the Egyptian denoted
_initiation_, in the Hebrew signified _to behold the light_. In two
nations so intimately connected in history as the Hebrew and the Egyptian,
such a coincidence could not have been accidental. It shows the prevalence
of the sentiment, at that period, that the communication of light was the
prominent design of the Mysteries--so prominent that the one was made the
synonyme of the other.[100]

The worship of light, either in its pure essence or in the forms of
sun-worship and fire-worship, because the sun and the fire were causes of
light, was among the earliest and most universal superstitions of the
world. Light was considered as the primordial source of all that was holy
and intelligent; and darkness, as its opposite, was viewed as but another
name for evil and ignorance. Dr. Beard, in an article on this subject, in
Kitto's Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature, attributes this view of the
divine nature of light, which was entertained by the nations of the East,
to the fact that, in that part of the world, light "has a clearness and
brilliancy, is accompanied by an intensity of heat, and is followed in its
influence by a largeness of good, of which the inhabitants of less genial
climates have no conception. Light easily and naturally became, in
consequence, with Orientals, a representative of the highest human good.
All the more joyous emotions of the mind, all the pleasing sensations of
the frame, all the happy hours of domestic intercourse, were described
under imagery derived from light. The transition was natural--from earthly
to heavenly, from