he Mexican temples teocallis, or Houses of God were very numerous, there
being several hundreds in each of the principal cities of the kingdom. There
were long processions of priests, and numerous festivals of unusual sacredness,
as well as appropriate monthly and daily celebrations of worship. The great
cities were divided into districts, each of which was placed under the charge
of a sort of parochial clergy, who regulated every act of religion within
their precincts, and who administered the rites of Confession and Absolution.
The form of absolution contained, among other things, the following :
Oh, merciful Lord, thou who knowest the secrets of all hearts, let thy
forgiveness and favor descend, like the pure waters of Heaven, to wash away the
stains from the soul. Thou knowest that this poor man has sinned, not from his
own free will, but from the influence of the sin under which he was born.
The Mayas, of Yucatan, had a virgin-born god, corresponding entirely with
Quetzalcoatle, if he was not indeed the same under another name. The Muyscas,
of Colombia, had a similar god, who was the incarnation of the Great Father,
whose sovereignty and paternal care he emblematized. The inhabitants of
Nicaragua claimed that the son of their principal god came down to earth and in-
structed them. There was a corresponding character in the traditionary
history of Peru. The Sun,
the god of the Peruvians, deploring their miserable condition, sent down
his son, Manco Capac, to instruct them in religion. They believed in a Trinity.
In Brazil, besides the common belief in an age of violence, during which the
world was destroyed by water, there is a tradition of a supernatural being,
called Zomo, whose history is similar to that of Quetzalcoatle. The semi-
civilized tribes of Florida had like traditions. Among the savage tribes the
same notions prevailed. (See Note 12.)
The Edues of the Californians taught that there is a supreme Creator, and that
his son came down to earth and instructed them in religion. Finally, through
hatred, the Indians killed him; but, although dead, he is incorruptible and
beautiful. To him they pay adoration, as the mediatory power between earth
and the Supreme Niparaga. They believed in a triune God. The Iroquois also had
a beneficent being, uniting in himself the character of a god and man, who
imparted to them the laws of the Great Spirit, and established their forms of
government.
Among the Algonquins, and particularly among the Ojibways and other remnants of
the Algonquin stock, this intermediary teacher, denominated the Great
Incarnation of the Northwest, is fully recognized. He bears the name of
Michabou, is represented as the first-born son of a great celestial man
itou, or spirit, by an earthly mother, and is esteemed the friend and protector
of the human race.
The ancient Chaldees believed in a celestial virgin, to whom the erring
sinner could appeal. She was represented as a mother with a child in her arms.
The ancient Assyrians and Babylonians worshipped a goddess-mother and son.
The mother's name was Mylitta, and the son was Tammuz, or Adonis, the Saviour,
who was worshipped as the Mediator. Tammuz was born on the twenty-fifth of
December, and, like other sun-gods, suffered and was slain. The accounts of his
death are conflicting. One, however, states that he was crucified. He
descended into Hell ; he rose from the dead on the third day, and ascended into
Heaven. His worshippers celebrated annually, in early spring, a feast in
commemoration of his death and resurrection, with the utmost display. An
image, intended as the representation of their Lord, was laid on a bier and
bewailed in mournful ditties ; precisely as the Roman Catholics, at the present
day, lament the death of Jesus, in their Good Friday mass. During the ceremony
the priest murmured : " Trust ye in your Lord, for the pains which he endured
our salvation have procured." This image was carried with great solemnity to
a tomb. The large wound in the side was shown, just as, centuries later, the
wound was displayed which Christ received from the spear-thrust. (See Note 13.)
After the attendants had for a long time bewailed the death of this just
person, he was at length understood to be restored to life, to have experi
enced a resurrection, signified by the readmission of light. The people then
exclaimed : " Hail to the Dove ! the Restorer of Light."
The worshippers of Tammuz believed in the Trinity, observed the rite of Baptism
and the sacrament of the bread and wine. The symbol of the cross was honored
by the ancient Babylonians, and is found on their oldest monuments.
The Chaldeans had their Memra, or Word of God, corresponding to the Greek
Logos. In their oracles the doctrine of the Only-Begotten Son, I. A. O. (as
Creator) is plainly taught.
The Babylonians had a myth of the Creation and Fall of Man, which is almost
identical with the account contained in Genesis. As they had this account
fifteen hundred years or more before the Hebrews heard of it the account in
Genesis was unquestionably taken from the Babylonians. Cuneiform
inscriptions, discovered by Mr. George Smith, of the British Museum, show
conclusively that the Babylonians had this myth two thousand years before the
time assigned as the birth of Christ. The myth appears to be a combination of
the phases of sun-worship which denoted the generating power of the Sun. (See
Note 14.)
The Babylonians had an account of a deluge, which was very similar to the
Hebrew account. This was also on the terra-cotta tablets discovered by Mr.
Smith ; and is supposed to be a solar myth, written, apparently, with a view to
make a story.
fitting to the sign of the zodiac, called Aquarius. The Chaldeans were skilled
astronomers, and, it is said, they asserted that whenever all the planets met
in the sign Capricornus, the whole earth must be overwhelmed with a deluge of
water.
The Babylonians had a legend of the Building of the Tower of Babel, which
antedates the Hebrew account. A tower in Babylonia, which was evidently built
for astronomical purposes, appears to have been the foundation for the legend.
This was also described on the terra-cotta tablets discovered by Mr. Smith. The
tower was called the Sta^s of the Seven Spheres ; and each one of these stages
was consecrated to the Sun, Moon, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and Mercury.
Nebuchadonazar says of it, in his cylinders :
The building, named the Stages of the Seven Spheres, which was the tower of
Borsippa [Babel], had been built by a former king. He had completed forty-two
cubits, but did not finish its head. From the lapse of time it had become
ruined . . . Merodach, my great Lord, inclined my heart to repair the building.
There is not a word in these cylinders touching the confusion of tongues, or of
anything pertaining thereto. It appears from other sources that the word Babel,
which is really Bab-il (the Gate of God), was erroneously supposed to be from
the root i/ada/ /o confuse; and hence arises the mystical explanation that
Babel was a place where human speech became confused.
The ancient Babylonians had a legend, some two thousand years B.C., of a mighty
man, Izdubar, who was a lion-slayer. From this legend the Hebrews probably
obtained their story of Samson. The legend is without doubt a sun-myth. The
Assyrians worshipped a sun-god named Sandon, who was believed to be a lion-
killer, and was frequently figured as struggling with the lion, or standing
upon the slain lion.
The Chaldeans had an account of one Zerban (rich in gold)^ which corresponds in
many respects to the account of Abraham. The Assyrians had an account of a War
in Heaven, which was like that described in the Book of Enoch and the
Apocalypse.
" It seems," says Mr. George Smith, " from the indications in the inscriptions
[the cuneiform], that there happened, in the interval between 2000 and 1850
B.C., a general collection [by the Babylonians] of the development of the
various traditions of the Creation, Flood, Tower of Babel, and other similar
legends. These legends were, however, traditions before they were committed to
writing, and were common, in some form, to all the country."
The Hebrews undoubtedly became familiar with these legends of the Babylonians,
during their captivity in Chaldea, and afterwards wrote them as their own
history.
It is a fact, demonstrated by history, that when one nation of antiquity came
into contact with another, each adopted the other's myths without hesitation.
The tendency of myths to reproduce themselves, with differences only of names
and local coloring, becomes especially manifest as we peruse the legendary
history of antiquity.
It is said of the ancient Hebrews, that they adopted forms, terms, ideas, and
myths of other nations, with whom they came in contact, and cast them all in a
peculiar Jewish religious mould.
" The opinion that the Pagan religions were corruptions of the religion of
the Old Testament, once supported by men of high authority and great learn
ing, is now," in the words of Professor Miiller, " as completely surrendered,
as the attempts of explaining Greek and Latin as the corruptions of Hebrew."
The Hebrew was a Semitic race, and consequently had inherited none of the Aryan
myths and legends.
From the time of Moses till the time of the prophet Hezekiah, a period of seven
hundred years or more, the Hebrews were idolaters, as their records show. The
serpent was reverenced as the Healer of the Nation ; they worshipped a bull
called Apis, as did the Egyptians ; they worshipped the sun, moon, stars, and
all the hosts of heaven ; they worshipped fire, and kept it burning on an
altar, as did the Persians and other nations ; they worshipped stones, revered
an oak-tree, and bowed down to images ; they worshipped a virgin mother and
child ; they worshipped Baal, Moloch, and Chemosh (names given to the sun), and
offered up human sacrifices to them, after which, in some' instances, they ate
the victim. The Hebrews only began to abandon their gross Syrian idolatries
after their Eastern captivity. Then also they began to collate the legends they
had acquired, and write what they term history. It was not until this time that
the dogmas about Satan, the angels Michael, Uriel, Yar, Nisan, the Rebel
Angels, the Battle in Heaven, the Immortality of the Soul, and the Resurrection
of the Dead, were introduced and naturalized among the Jews.
The theory that man was originally created a perfect being, and is now only a
fallen and depraved remnant of his original self, must be abandoned, with the
belief that the account of the creation in Genesis was not a revelation direct
from God to the Hebrews.
With the abandonment of this theor}^, the whole Orthodox scheme must be
abandoned ; for upon this mylh the theology of Christendom is built. The
doctrines of the Inspiration of the Scriptures, the Fall of Man, his Total
Depravity, the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Devil, Hell, in fact, the
entire theology of the Christian church, fall to pieces with the inaccuracy
of this story.
