"The Sun is asked to drive away illness and bad dreams (R. V.
x.)."

"Having once, and more than once, been invoked as the
life-bringer, the Sun is also called the breath or life of all
that moves and rests (R. V. i.); and lastly, he becomes _the
maker of all things_, by whom all the worlds have been brought
together (R. V. x.), and . . . Lord of man and of all living
creatures."

"He is the God among gods (R. V. i.); he is the divine leader
of all the gods (R. V. viii.)."

"He alone rules the whole world (R. V. v.). The laws which he
has established are firm (R. V. iv.), and the other gods not
only praise him (R. V. vii.), but have to follow him as their
leader (R. V. v.)."[473:1]

That the history of _Christ_ Jesus, the Christian Saviour,--"the true
_Light_, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,"[473:2]--is
simply the history of the _Sun_--the real Saviour of mankind--is
demonstrated beyond a doubt from the following indisputable facts:

1. _The birth of Christ Jesus_ is said to have taken place at _early
dawn_[473:3] on the 25th day of December. Now, this is the _Sun's
birthday_. At the commencement of the sun's apparent annual revolution
round the earth, he was said to have been born, and, on the first moment
after midnight of the 24th of December, all the heathen nations of the
earth, as if by common consent, celebrated the accouchement of the
"_Queen of Heaven_," of the "_Celestial Virgin of the Sphere_," and the
birth of the god _Sol_. On that day the sun having fully entered the
winter solstice, the _Sign of the Virgin_ was rising on the eastern
horizon. The woman's symbol of this stellar sign was represented first
by ears of corn, then with a new-born male child in her arms. Such was
the picture of the _Persian_ sphere cited by Aben-Ezra:

"The division of the first decan of the Virgin represents a
beautiful virgin with flowing hair, sitting in a chair, with
two ears of corn in her hand, and suckling an infant called
IESUS by some nations, and _Christ_ in Greek."[474:1]

This denotes the _Sun_, which, at the moment of the winter solstice,
precisely when the Persian magi drew the horoscope of the new year, was
placed on the bosom of the Virgin, rising heliacally in the eastern
horizon. On this account he was figured in their astronomical pictures
under the form of a child suckled by a chaste virgin.[474:2]