o, Krishna, Jesus, and others,
born in caves or underground chambers? (1) Why, at the Easter Eve
festival of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem is a light brought from the
grave and communicated to the candles of thousands who wait outside, and
who rush forth rejoicing to carry the new glory over the world? (2) Why
indeed? except that older than all history and all written records has
been the fear and wonderment of the children of men over the failure of
the Sun's strength in Autumn--the decay of their God; and the anxiety
lest by any means he should not revive or reappear?

(1) This same legend of gods (or idols) being born in caves has,
curiously enough, been reported from Mexico, Guatemala, the Antilles,
and other places in Central America. See C. F. P. von Martius,
Etknographie Amerika, etc. (Leipzig, 1867), vol. i, p. 758.

(2) Compare the Aztec ceremonial of lighting a holy fire and
communicating it to the multitude from the wounded breast of a human
victim, celebrated every 52 years at the end of one cycle and the
beginning of another--the constellation of the Pleiades being in the
Zenith (Prescott's Conquest of Mexico, Bk. I, ch. 4).

Think for a moment of a time far back when there were absolutely NO
Almanacs or Calendars, either nicely printed or otherwise, when all that
timid mortals could see was that their great source of Light and Warmth
was daily failing, daily sinking lower in the sky. As everyone now knows
there are about three weeks at the fag end of the year when the days are
at their shortest and there is very little change. What was happening?
Evidently the god had fallen upon evil times. Typhon, the prince of
darkness, had betrayed him; Delilah, the queen of Night, had shorn his
hair; the dreadful Boar had wounded him; Hercules was struggling
with Death itself; he had fallen under the influence of those malign
constellations--the Serpent and the Scorpion. Would the god grow weaker
and weaker, and finally succumb, or would he conquer after all? We can
imagine the anxiety with which those early men and women watched for the
first indication of a lengthening day; and the universal joy when the
Priest (the representative of primitive science) having made some
simple observations, announced from the Temple steps that the day WAS
lengthening--that the Sun was really born again to a new and glorious
career. (1)

(1) It was such things as these which doubtless gave the
Priesthood its power.

L