bolical_, and contain some moral, religious, or philosophical truth
or historical fact under the form of an allegory, which came in process
of time to be understood literally.

In the preceding pages we have spoken of the several virgin-born,
crucified and resurrected Saviours, as real personages. We have
attributed to these individuals words and acts, and have regarded the
words and acts recorded in the several sacred books from which we have
quoted, as said and done by them. But in doing this, we have simply used
the language of others. These gods and heroes were not real personages;
_they are merely personifications of the_ SUN. As Prof. Max Mueller
observes in his Lectures on the Science of Religion:

"One of the earliest objects that would strike and stir the
mind of man, and for which a _sign_ or a _name_ would soon be
wanted, is surely the _Sun_.[467:1] It is very hard for us to
realize the feelings with which the first dwellers on the
earth looked upon the Sun, or to understand fully what they
meant by a morning prayer or a morning sacrifice. Perhaps
there are few people who have watched a sunrise more than once
or twice in their life; few people who have ever known the
meaning of a morning prayer, or a morning sacrifice. But think
of man at the very dawn of time. . . . think of the Sun
awakening the eyes of man from sleep, and his mind from
slumber! Was not the sunrise to him the first wonder, the
first beginning of all reflection, all thought, all
philosophy? Was it not to him the first revelation, the first
beginning of all trust, of all religion? . . . .

"Few nations only have preserved in their ancient poetry some
remnants of the natural awe with which the earlier dwellers on
the earth saw that brilliant being slowly rising from out of
the darkness of the night, raising itself by its own might
higher and higher, till it stood triumphant on the arch of
heaven, and then descended and sank down in its fiery glory
into the dark abyss of the heaving and hissing sea. In the
hymns of the _Veda_, the poet still wonders whether the Sun
will rise again; he asks how he can climb the vault of heaven?
why he does not fall back? why there is no dust on his path?
And when the rays of the morning rouse him from sleep and call
him back to new life, when he sees the Sun, as he says,