ng,"
"The Saviour through whom a new life springs," "The Preserver," "The
Redeemer," &c. Almost at his birth the Serpent of darkness attempts to
destroy him. Temptations to sloth and luxury are offered him in vain. He
has his work to do, and nothing can stay him from doing it, as nothing
can arrest the Sun in his journey through the heavens. Like all other
solar heroes, he has his faithful women who love him, and the Marys and
Martha here play the part. Of his toils it is scarcely necessary to
speak in detail. They are but a thousand variations on the story of the
great conflict which all the Sun-gods wage against the demon of
darkness. He astonishes his tutor when sent to school. This we might
expect to be the case, when an incomparable and incommunicable wisdom is
the heritage of the Sun. He also represents the wisdom and beneficence
of the bright Being who brings life and light to men. As the Sun wakens
the earth to life when the winter is done, so Crishna, Buddha, Horus,
AEsculapius, and _Christ_ Jesus were raisers of the dead. When the leaves
fell and withered on the approach of winter, the "daughter of the earth"
would be spoken of as dying or dead, and, as no other power than that of
the Sun can recall vegetation to life, this child of the earth would be
represented as buried in a sleep from which the touch of the Sun alone
could rouse her.

_Christ_ Jesus, then, is the Sun, in his short career and early death.
He is the child of the Dawn, whose soft, violet hues tint the clouds of
early morn; his father being the Sky, the "Heavenly Father," who has
looked down with love upon the Dawn, and overshadowed her. When his
career on earth is ended, and he expires, the loving mother, who parted
from him in the morning of his life, is at his side, looking on the
death of the Son whom she cannot save from the doom which is on him,
while her tears fall on his body like rain at sundown. From her he is
parted at the beginning of his course; to her he is united at its close.
But _Christ_ Jesus, like Crishna, Buddha, Osiris, Horus, Mithras,
Apollo, Atys and others, _rises again_, and thus the myth takes us a
step beyond the legend of Serpedon and others, which stop at the end of
the eastward journey, when the night is done.

According to the Christian calendar, the birthday of John the Baptist is
on the day of the summer solstice, when the sun begins to decrease. How
true to nature then are the words attributed to him in the f