The Secret Vault presents: The Christian and Pagan Creeds Collated. Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
By the Rev. Robert Taylor, A. B. & M. R. C. S.
Cicero mentions four of this name. Pausanias and Herodotus, rank Apollo among the Egyptian deities. Diodorus Siculus expressly states, that Isis, after having invented the practice of medicine, taught this art to her son Horus, named also Apollo, who was the last of the Gods that reigned in Egypt. It is easy to trace almost all the Grecian fables and mythologies from Egypt. If the Apollo of the Greeks, was said to be the son of Jupiter, it was because Horus, the Apollo of the Egyptians, had Osiris for his father, whom the Greeks confounded with Jupiter. If the Greek Apollo were reckoned the God of eloquence, music, medicine, and poetry, the reason was, that Osiris, who was the symbol of the sun among the Egyptians, as well as his son Horus, had there taught those liberal arts. If the Greek Apollo were the God and conductor of the muses, it was because Osiris carried with him in his expedition to the Indies, singing women and musicians. This parallel might be carried still further, but enough has been said to prove that the true Apollo was probably of Egypt. Plutarch, however, has decisively shown, that the Egyptians worshipped the Sun under the name of Osiris; and as Osiris was believed to have travelled into India, and there, established civilization and religion, we see at once enough to account for the same God coming to be worshipped in India under a designation in the language of that country expressive of the same sense as Chrishna, that is, the Sun. Many have doubted whether Apollo were a real personage, or only the great luminary. Vossius has taken pains to prove this God to be only an ideal being, and that there never was any Apollo but the sun. All the ceremonies performed to his honour, had a manifest relation to the great source of light which he represented; whence, this learned writer concludes it to be in vain to seek for any other divinity than the sun, adored under the name Apollo.
Without any wish to overthrow or to conflict against a conclusion founded upon such just and incontrovertible premises, one yet cannot restrain one's wish to have known whether so sincere a Christian, in considering the language ascribed to the God Apollo, and the manifest relation to the great source of light in all the ceremonies performed to his honour, as constituting a complete demonstration, that such a personage as Apollo never had any real existence, and that it was the sun, and the sun only that was worshipped under that designation; whether he had found any clearer references to the source of light in that language and those ceremonies, than -
1. That God should be believed to have said of himself,
"I am the light of the world." - John 9-5. "I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth in me should not abide in darkness." - John 12-46.
2. "He hath sent me to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." - Luke 9-19.
3. That his sacred legends should abound only with such expressions as can have no possible or conceivable application, but to the God of day: "A light to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory (or brightness) of his people." - Luke 2-32.
4. That this should be the express message which his apostles, or months, were to declare concerning him, that "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." - John 1-5.
5. That his sincerest worshippers should usually have addressed him in such phrases as "Phosphore redde diem." - Sweet Phosphor bring the day, whose conquering ray may chase these fogs, - sweet Phosphor bring the day. Quarle's rendering of Psalm 13.
6. "Lighten our darkness we beseech thee Adonai, and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night." - Collect, in Evening Service.
7. "God of God, light of light, very God of very God." - Nicene Creed.
8. "Merciful Adonai, we beseech thee to cast thy bright beams of light upon thy church." - Collect of St. John.
9. "O God, who, by the leading of a star, didst manifest thy only begotten Son to the nations." -Collect of the Epiphany. [Or shining forth. - A Christian poet will best instruct us what star that was. It was none other than Venus, the star of the God of day,
Fairest of stars, last in the train of night,
If better, thou belong not to the dawn -
Sure, pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling morn
With thy bright circlet! - Morning Hymn.
10. "To thee all angels cry aloud, the heavens, and all the powers therein."
11. "Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of thy Clary," (or brightness).
12. "The clarious company of the (twelve months, or) apostles praise thee.
13. "Thou art the King of Clary, O Christ"
14. "When thou took it upon thee to deliver man, thou pass's through the constellation, or zodiacal sign - the Virgin."
15. "When thou had overcome the sharpness of winter, thou didst open the kingdom of heaven, - i.e. bring on the reign of the summer months, to all believers." And why is it that there should not be one single phrase or form of speech either in the New Testament or in our best Catholic or Protestant liturgies, but in the most strict and literal sense is predicable of the sun but cannot without an inflected and considerably strained use of speech, and still more strained effort of the understanding, apply to the person of a man. Resurgere, to rise again; and ascendere in eoelum, to ascend into heaven, are expressions so plain and obvious, as that we could hardly find any to express the literal sense, nearer, of what we witness of the rising and setting sun every day of our lives; whereas it is only by a most awkward and violent catachresis in language, that they can be made to convey their theological significance.
"All are agreed," says Cicero, "that Apollo is none other than the Sun, because the attributes which are commonly ascribed to Apollo do so wonderfully agree thereto." [a]
[a] Apolinem, aliud nihil esse quam Solem, omnes consentiunt, quippe eai ilia que Apollini vulgo tribuuntur, mire conveniunt. - Cic. 3. De Natura Deo.]
We are not allowed, however, to assume, that reasoning so incontrovertibly just and conclusive with respect to the Pagan deity, would hold in any parity of application to Jesus Christ, whom his holy Apostle so emphatically distinguishes as being "the true light which lights everyman that comes into the world." - John 1-9.
There can be no doubt but that Apollo was more generally received in the Pagan world than any other deity, his worship being so universal, that in almost every region he had temples, oracles, and festivals, as innumerable as his various names and attributes. Among the most conspicuous of his oracles were those of Phocis, at Claros in Ionia, at Delos, Delphi, and Didyma, [b] on Mount Ismenus, in Boeotia, at Larissa among the Argives, and at Heliopolis in Egypt.
[b] It can only be ascribed to a momentary suspension of the divine influence which guided the pen of the Evangelist, that one of the epithets of Apollo - Didymus, should have been left in the possession of an apostle of Jesus Christ. -John 20-24.in Egypt.]
"The Egyptians sometimes symbolized him by a radiated circle, and at others by a sceptre with an eye above it - a symbol which we see at this day consecrated to the representation of the Christian Providence. Nor should we forget the claims of his ministers to a peculiar character of sanctity and holiness, which we may well wonder how they should ever come to surrender to the pretensions of preachers of Christianity: unless, indeed, we should venture to imagine that there was never any real difference between them, and that the priests of Apollo and of Jesus were ministers of the same religion, and of one and the same deity, under different names. It is certain, that Apollo had a celebrated shrine at Mount Soracte in Italy, where his priests were so remarkable for sanctity, and holiness of heart and life, that they could walk on burning coals unhurt." - Bell's Pantheon. in loco.
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Next Chapter 26. Mercury Jesus Christ.