of the priests. Of
the catastrophes which from time to time have visited our planet, and
of the belief which has come to be entertained by ecclesiastics that the
earth will be destroyed by fire, Celsus writes:

"The belief has spread among them, from a misunderstanding of the
accounts of these occurrences, that after lengthened cycles of time, and
the returns and conjunctions of planets, conflagrations, and floods are
wont to happen, and because after the last flood, which took place in
the time of Deucalion, the lapse of time, agreeably to the vicissitude
of all things, requires a conflagration; and this made them give
utterance to the erroneous opinion that God will descend, bringing fire
like a torturer."(44)

44) Origen against Celsus, book iv., ch. xi.

The mythologies of all nations are largely founded upon the "religious
history" of a flood. The doctrine of a triplicated God saved from
destruction by a storm-tossed ark which rested on some local mountain
answering to Ararat, and which was filled with the natural elements of
reproduction, is found amongst the traditions of every country of the
globe. In Egypt, the destructive agency drives the God into the ark--or
into the fish's belly, where he is obliged to remain until the flood
subsides. In other words, at the time of the destruction of the world,
the creative agency is forced within the womb of Nature, there to remain
until it again comes forth to recreate the world; nor does the symbolism
end here, for this God--the sun, or the reproductive power within it,
which every year is put to death by the cold of winter, must for a
season remain lifeless, but, at the proper time, will come forth with
healing in his wings. This God must issue forth to life through female
Nature.

The god-man, Noah, who appears under one appellation or another in all
extant mythologies, was slain, or shut up in a box, ark, or chest in
which he or his seed was preserved from the ravages of a mighty flood,
or from destruction by the calamity which had befallen the rest of
mankind. In one sense he represents a Savior, in another sense he is
the saved, for he is the seed of a former world and is born again from
a boat, a symbol which always represents the female energy. Sometimes
he is shut up in a wooden cow, from which he issues forth to new life.
Again this storm tossed mariner is born from a cave, or the door of
a rocky cavern, within which he had been preserved from some