Voltaire on the Trinity, Arianism and Servetus 1904

Voltaire on the Trinity, Arianism and Servetus (from A Philosophical Dictionary 1904)

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The great theological disputes, for twelve hundred years, were all Greek. What would Homer, Sophocles, Demosthenes, Archimedes, have said, had they witnessed the subtle cavillings which have cost so much blood.

Arius has, even at this day, the honor of being regarded as the inventor of his opinion, as Calvin is considered to have been the founder of Calvinism. The pride in being the head of a sect is the second of this world's vanities; for that of conquest is said to be the first. However, it is certain that neither Arius nor Calvin is entitled to the melancholy glory of invention. The quarrel about the Trinity existed long before Arius took part in it, in the disputatious town of Alexandria, where it had been beyond the power of Euclid to make men think calmly and justly. There never was a people more frivolous than the Alexandrians; in this respect they far exceeded even the Parisians.

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There must already have been warm disputes about the Trinity; since the patriarch, who composed the "Alexandrian Chronicle," preserved at Oxford, assures us that the party embraced by Arius was supported by two thousand priests.

We will here, for the reader's convenience, give what is said of Arius in a small book which every one may not have at hand: Here is an incomprehensible question, which, for more than sixteen hundred years, has furnished exercise for curiosity, for sophistic subtlety, for animosity, for the spirit of cabal, for the fury of dominion, for the rage of persecution, for blind and sanguinary fanaticism, for barbarous credulity, and which has produced more horrors than the ambition of princes, which ambition has occasioned very many. Is Jesus the Word? If He be the Word, did He emanate from God in time or before time? If He emanated from God, is He coeternal and consubstantial with Him, or is He of a similar substance? Is He distinct from Him, or is He not? Is He made or begotten? Can He beget in his turn? Has He paternity? or productive virtue without paternity? Is the Holy Ghost made? or begotten? or produced? or proceeding from the Father? or proceeding from the Son? or proceeding from both? Can He beget? can He produce? is His hypostasis consubstantial with the hypostasis of the Father and the Son? and how is it that, having the same nature—the same essence as the Father and the Son, He cannot do the same things done by these persons who are Himself?

These questions, so far above reason, certainly needed the decision of an infallible church. The Christians sophisticated, cavilled, hated, and excommunicated one another, for some of these dogmas inaccessible to human intellect, before the time of Arius and Athanasius. The Egyptian Greeks were remarkably clever; they would split a hair into four, but on this occasion they split it only into three. Alexandros, bishop of Alexandria, thought proper to preach that God, being necessarily individual—single—a monad in the strictest sense of the word, this monad is triune.

The priest Arius, whom we call Arius, was quite scandalized by Alexandros's monad, and explained the thing in quite a different way. He cavilled in part like the priest Sabellius, who had cavilled like the Phrygian Praxeas, who was a great caviller. Alexandros quickly assembled a small council of those of his own opinion, and excommunicated his priest. Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia, took the part of Arius. Thus the whole Church was in a flame.

The Emperor Constantine was a villain; I confess it—a parricide, who had smothered his wife in a bath, cut his son's throat, assassinated his father-in-law, his brother-in-law, and his nephew; I cannot deny it—a man puffed up with pride and immersed in pleasure; granted—a detestable tyrant, like his children; transeat—but he was a man of sense. He would not have obtained the empire, and subdued all his rivals, had he not reasoned justly.

When he saw the flames of civil war lighted among the scholastic brains, he sent the celebrated Bishop Osius with dissuasive letters to the two belligerent parties. "You are great fools," he expressly tells them in this letter, "to quarrel about things which you do not understand. It is unworthy the gravity of your ministry to make so much noise about so trifling a matter."

By "so trifling a matter," Constantine meant not what regards the Divinity, but the incomprehensible manner in which they were striving to explain the nature of the Divinity. The Arabian patriarch, who wrote the history of the Church of Alexandria, makes Osius, on presenting the emperor's letter, speak in nearly the following words:

"My brethren, Christianity is just beginning to enjoy the blessings of peace, and you would plunge it into eternal discord. The emperor has but too much reason to tell you that you quarrel about a very trifling matter. Certainly, had the object of the dispute been essential, Jesus Christ, whom we all acknowledge as our legislator, would have mentioned it. God would not have sent His Son on earth, to return without teaching us our catechism. Whatever He has not expressly told us is the work of men and error is their portion. Jesus has commanded you to love one another, and you begin by hating one another and stirring up discord in the empire. Pride alone has given birth to these disputes, and Jesus, your Master, has commanded you to be humble. Not one among you can know whether Jesus is made or begotten. And in what does His nature concern you, provided your own is to be just and reasonable? What has the vain science of words to do with the morality which should guide your actions? You cloud our doctrines with mysteries—you, who were designed to strengthen religion by your virtues. Would you leave the Christian religion a mass of sophistry? Did Christ come for this? Cease to dispute, humble yourselves, edify one another, clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and pacify the quarrels of families, instead of giving scandal to the whole empire by your dissensions."

But Osius addressed an obstinate audience. The Council of Nice was assembled and the Roman Empire was torn by a spiritual civil war. This war brought on others and mutual persecution has continued from age to age, unto this day.

The melancholy part of the affair was that as soon as the council was ended the persecution began; but Constantine, when he opened it, did not yet know how he should act, nor upon whom the persecution should fall. He was not a Christian, though he was at the head of the Christians. Baptism alone then constituted Christianity, and he had not been baptized; he had even rebuilt the Temple of Concord at Rome. It was, doubtless, perfectly indifferent to him whether Alexander of Alexandria, or Eusebius of Nicomedia, and the priest Arius, were right or wrong; it is quite evident, from the letter given above, that he had a profound contempt for the dispute.

But there happened that which always happens and always will happen in every court. The enemies of those who were afterwards named Arians accused Eusebius of Nicomedia of having formerly taken part with Licinius against the emperor. "I have proofs of it," said Constantine in his letter to the Church of Nicomedia, "from the priests and deacons in his train whom I have taken," etc.

Thus, from the time of the first great council, intrigue, cabal, and persecution were established, together with the tenets of the Church, without the power to derogate from their sanctity. Constantine gave the chapels of those who did not believe in the consubstantiality to those who did believe in it; confiscated the property of the dissenters to his own profit, and used his despotic power to exile Arius and his partisans, who were not then the strongest. It has even been said that of his own private authority he condemned to death whosoever should not burn the writings of Arius; but this is not true. Constantine, prodigal as he was of human blood, did not carry his cruelty to so mad and absurd an excess as to order his executioners to assassinate the man who should keep an heretical book, while he suffered the heresiarch to live.

At court everything soon changes. Several non-consubstantial bishops, with some of the eunuchs and the women, spoke in favor of Arius, and obtained the reversal of the lettre de cachet. The same thing has repeatedly happened in our modern courts on similar occasions.

The celebrated Eusebius, bishop of Cæsarea, known by his writings, which evince no great discernment, strongly accused Eustatius, bishop of Antioch, of being a Sabellian; and Eustatius accused Eusebius of being an Arian. A council was assembled at Antioch; Eusebius gained his cause; Eustatius was displaced; and the See of Antioch was offered to Eusebius, who would not accept it; the two parties armed against each other, and this was the prelude to controversial warfare. Constantine, who had banished Arius for not believing in the consubstantial Son, now banished Eustatius for believing in Him; nor are such revolutions uncommon.

St. Athanasius was then bishop of Alexandria. He would not admit Arius, whom the emperor had sent thither, into the town, saying that "Arius was excommunicated; that an excommunicated man ought no longer to have either home or country; that he could neither eat nor sleep anywhere; and that it was better to obey God than man." A new council was forthwith held at Tyre, and new lettres de cachet were issued. Athanasius was removed by the Tyrian fathers and banished to Trèves. Thus Arius, and Athanasius, his greatest enemy, were condemned in turn by a man who was not yet a Christian.

The two factions alike employed artifice, fraud, and calumny, according to the old and eternal usage. Constantine left them to dispute and cabal, for he had other occupations. It was at that time that this good prince assassinated his son, his wife, and his nephew, the young Licinius, the hope of the empire, who was not yet twelve years old.

Under Constantine, Arius' party was constantly victorious. The opposite party has unblushingly written that one day St. Macarius, one of the most ardent followers of Athanasius, knowing that Arius was on the way to the cathedral of Constantinople, followed by several of his brethren, prayed so ardently to God to confound this heresiarch that God could not resist the prayer; and immediately all Arius' bowels passed through his fundament—which is impossible. But at length Arius died.

Constantine followed him a year afterwards, and it is said he died of leprosy. Julian, in his "Cæsars," says that baptism, which this emperor received a few hours before his death, cured no one of this distemper.

As his children reigned after him the flattery of the Roman people, who had long been slaves, was carried to such an excess that those of the old religion made him a god, and those of the new made him a saint. His feast was long kept, together with that of his mother.

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After his death, the troubles caused by the single word "consubstantial" agitated the empire with renewed violence. Constantius, son and successor to Constantine, imitated all his father's cruelties, and, like him, held councils—which councils anathematized one another. Athanasius went over all Europe and Asia to support his party, but the Eusebians overwhelmed him. Banishment, imprisonment, tumult, murder, and assassination signalized the close of the reign of Constantius. Julian, the Church's mortal enemy, did his utmost to restore peace to the Church, but was unsuccessful. Jovian, and after him Valentinian, gave entire liberty of conscience, but the two parties accepted it only as the liberty to exercise their hatred and their fury.

Theodosius declared for the Council of Nice, but the Empress Justina, who reigned in Italy, Illyria, and Africa, as guardian of the young Valentinian, proscribed the great Council of Nice; and soon after the Goths, Vandals, and Burgundians, who spread themselves over so many provinces, finding Arianism established in them, embraced it in order to govern the conquered nations by the religion of those nations.

But the Nicæan faith having been received by the Gauls, their conqueror, Clovis, followed that communion for the very same reason that the other barbarians had professed the faith of Arius.

In Italy, the great Theodoric kept peace between the two parties, and at last the Nicæan formula prevailed in the east and in the west. Arianism reappeared about the middle of the sixteenth century, favored by the religious disputes which then divided Europe; and it reappeared, armed with new strength and a still greater incredulity. Forty gentlemen of Vicenza formed an academy, in which such tenets only were established as appeared necessary to make men Christians. Jesus was acknowledged as the Word, as Saviour, and as Judge; but His divinity, His consubstantiality, and even the Trinity, were denied.

Of these dogmatizers, the principal were Lælius Socinus, Ochin, Pazuta, and Gentilis, who were joined by Servetus. The unfortunate dispute of the latter with Calvin is well known; they carried on for some time an interchange of abuse by letter. Servetus was so imprudent as to pass through Geneva, on his way to Germany. Calvin was cowardly enough to have him arrested, and barbarous enough to have him condemned to be roasted by a slow fire—the same punishment which Calvin himself had narrowly escaped in France. Nearly all the theologians of that time were by turns persecuting and persecuted, executioners and victims.

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The same Calvin solicited the death of Gentilis at Geneva. He found five advocates to subscribe that Gentilis deserved to perish in the flames. Such horrors were worthy of that abominable age. Gentilis was put in prison, and was on the point of being burned like Servetus, but he was better advised than the Spaniard; he retracted, bestowed the most ridiculous praises on Calvin, and was saved. But he had afterwards the ill fortune, through not having made terms with a bailiff of the canton of Berne, to be arrested as an Arian. There were witnesses who deposed that he had said that the words trinity, essence, hypostasis were not to be found in the Scriptures, and on this deposition the judges, who were as ignorant of the meaning of hypostasis as himself, condemned him, without at all arguing the question, to lose his head.

Faustus Socinus, nephew to Lælius Socinus, and his companions were more fortunate in Germany. They penetrated into Silesia and Poland, founded churches there, wrote, preached, and were successful, but at length, their religion being divested of almost every mystery, and a philosophical and peaceful, rather than a militant sect, they were abandoned; and the Jesuits, who had more influence, persecuted and dispersed them.

The remains of this sect in Poland, Germany, and Holland keep quiet and concealed; but in England the sect has reappeared with greater strength and éclat. The great Newton and Locke embraced it. Samuel Clarke, the celebrated rector of St. James, and author of an excellent book on the existence of God, openly declared himself an Arian, and his disciples are very numerous. He would never attend his parish church on the day when the Athanasian Creed was recited. In the course of this work will be seen the subtleties which all these obstinate persons, who were not so much Christians as philosophers, opposed to the purity of the Catholic faith.

Although among the theologians of London there was a large flock of Arians, the public mind there has been more occupied by the great mathematical truths discovered by Newton, and the metaphysical wisdom of Locke. Disputes on consubstantiality appear very dull to philosophers. The same thing happened to Newton in England as to Corneille in France, whose "Pertharite," "Théodore," and "Recueil de Vers" were forgotten, while "Cinna" was alone thought of. Newton was looked upon as God's interpreter, in the calculation of fluxions, the laws of gravitation, and the nature of light. On his death, his pall was borne by the peers and the chancellor of the realm, and his remains were laid near the tombs of the kings—than whom he is more revered. Servetus, who is said to have discovered the circulation of the blood, was roasted by a slow fire, in a little town of the Allobroges, ruled by a theologian of Picardy.

The Gnostics and their Books by James De Quincey Donehoo M.A. 1903

The Gnostics and their Books by James De Quincey Donehoo M.A. 1903

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Gnosticism is certainly the most extensive and protean collection of religious beliefs and speculations, which has ever been commonly designated by a single name. An exact definition of it is, therefore, impossible; but it may be described as the sum total of numerous attempts made, during the first three Christian centuries particularly, to combine two or more existing religions into one system. Such composite religions, which were characteristic of those centuries, usually had a tendency towards allegorizing and mysticism, pretended to possess important secrets known only to the initiated, and were predominantly dualistic; but they did not necessarily have an evident Christian element. For I take the cults of Serapis and Mithras to be properly called Gnostic in the wider sense, although they were exclusively heathen in origin. Gnosticism, however, generally contained a Christian element; and the idea of redemption was the one which above all it took from this source.

The numerous Christian Gnostic systems which arose have been classified in a number of different ways; but it would go altogether beyond the possible limits of this Introduction, even to attempt to sketch these divisions. The whole subject of Gnosticism yet remains one of the most obscure in the domain of Church history, although its importance cannot be overrated. There is no exhaustive treatment of the subject in English. The bibliographical index in the appendix to King's book is the best of which I know, and will afford ample references for those who wish to carry the study of this subject further. Suffice it to say here, that the various Gnostic systems represent greater or lesser admixtures of Christian and Jewish elements with the religions of Persia, Syria, and old Egypt, with Buddhism, with the classical religions, and with, perhaps, other sources to this day unidentified. The number and complexity of the elements thus introduced under the name of Christianity, and cropping out unexpectedly in apocryphal literature, is quite startling. And the fact that this admixture has taken place is the key to the numerous coincidences between certain forms of Christianity and alien religions, which often surprise the student. Gnosticism, in its earlier course and in its later Manichaean forms, has made of Christ's religion atheism, pantheism, dualism, monotheism, idolatry, and practically every form of doctrine which the history of comparative religion discloses. Illustrations of this will be found plentifully in the notes on the succeeding text.

But the characteristic of Christian Gnosticism which has the principal interest in this connection, is its marvellous fecundity in the production of pseudepigraphic books. The many titles and fragments of these that remain, together with the numerous references in the writings of the fathers of the Church to the multitude of Gnostic books, justify us in forming the conclusion that the literary activity of these sectaries was an unique phenomenon. However repellent it may be to modern ideas of honesty, that books should be composed in the names of dead celebrities, with the intent to impose upon the public as to their authorship, most of the ancient world apparently did not share in this feeling. Not alone do the Jewish pseudepigrapha illustrate this fact, but Greek and Roman instances of it are many. The Gnostics, however, seem to have carried this bad fashion to the greatest conceivable height. We know that they forged a perfect swarm of writings professing to be the works of Christ, of His Apostles, and of all the other principal characters of the New Testament, as well as of the Old. In accordance with traces found in the writings of the Church fathers, we are enabled to infer, for instance, that the Gnostics had their so-called Gospels or other books attributed to Adam, Seth, Cain, and Melchizedek amongst others. Every Gnostic vagary seems to have felt at liberty to support itself by any figment which imagination could contrive. The modern student stands amazed at such titles as, the "Gospel of Judas Iscariot," and the "Gospel of Eve", and wonders whether any religious enthusiasts could have taken such documents seriously, or, more wonderful still, could have expected the outside world to receive them. The existence of these books is certainly a crowning illustration of the lengths to which credulity may extend.

It is evident that Gnostic literature was produced in great enough abundance and variety of forms to account directly or derivatively for all the vagaries of Christian apocrypha and legend in later ages. But there are other sources whence at least some of this latter came; and there were forces that had powerful influence in the way of adapting Gnostic figments to Catholic use. It may, indeed, in the first place be conceded, that a small amount of authentic tradition regarding the Founder of Christianity and His words is probably to be found...The sources that are most likely to contain this are the more widely-quoted Agrapha...and perhaps a few legends; such as, that regarding the Cave of the Nativity.

But I think that outside of Gnosticism proper, the most powerful influence in producing Christian apocrypha or legend was what Cowper calls the "haggadistic" one. The Jews were accustomed to write "haggadoth" or stories, confessedly fictitious, but containing a didactic as well as amusing element, concerning scriptural characters, incidents, or texts. Now it is plain that some of the apocryphal stories are only Christian haggadoth. Even though they be of Gnostic origin, it is conceivable that their first inspiration was the same motive as that which impelled the composition of a modern "Ben Hur," or "Prince of the House of David," only the desire to furnish amusement conjoined with religious instruction. Since there are certain gaps in the life of Christ about which the canonical scriptures give little information; the Infancy, the period spent in Egypt, the Childhood at Nazareth, the early Manhood, and the Forty Days after the Resurrection, Christian imagination would dwell on these, and fill them in with fictitious events. Some of these compositions may have been Gnostic with strong theological bias, others Catholic, without thought of adding to received tradition; but elements from both one and the other class may finally have been taken literally by certain Christians.

The attempt to explain mysterious texts of scripture, and to show how Old Testament prophecies had been fulfilled, was especially an inspiration of these haggadoth, both Gnostic and Catholic.

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Oriental Religions and the Christian Holidays by Sir James George Frazer 1890

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Oriental Religions and the Christian Holidays by Sir James George Frazer 1890

THE WORSHIP of the Great Mother of the Gods and her lover or son was very popular under the Roman Empire. Inscriptions prove that the two received divine honours, separately or conjointly, not only in Italy, and especially at Rome, but also in the provinces, particularly in Africa, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, and Bulgaria. Their worship survived the establishment of Christianity by Constantine; for Symmachus records the recurrence of the festival of the Great Mother, and in the days of Augustine her effeminate priests still paraded the streets and squares of Carthage with whitened faces, scented hair, and mincing gait, while, like the mendicant friars of the Middle Ages, they begged alms from the passers-by. In Greece, on the other hand, the bloody orgies of the Asiatic goddess and her consort appear to have found little favour. The barbarous and cruel character of the worship, with its frantic excesses, was doubtless repugnant to the good taste and humanity of the Greeks, who seem to have preferred the kindred but gentler rites of Adonis. Yet the same features which shocked and repelled the Greeks may have positively attracted the less refined Romans and barbarians of the West. The ecstatic frenzies, which were mistaken for divine inspiration, the mangling of the body, the theory of a new birth and the remission of sins through the shedding of blood, have all their origin in savagery, and they naturally appealed to peoples in whom the savage instincts were still strong. Their true character was indeed often disguised under a decent veil of allegorical or philosophical interpretation, which probably sufficed to impose upon the rapt and enthusiastic worshippers, reconciling even the more cultivated of them to things which otherwise must have filled them with horror and disgust.

The religion of the Great Mother, with its curious blending of crude savagery with spiritual aspirations, was only one of a multitude of similar Oriental faiths which in the later days of paganism spread over the Roman Empire, and by saturating the European peoples with alien ideals of life gradually undermined the whole fabric of ancient civilisation. Greek and Roman society was built on the conception of the subordination of the individual to the community, of the citizen to the state; it set the safety of the commonwealth, as the supreme aim of conduct, above the safety of the individual whether in this world or in the world to come. Trained from infancy in this unselfish ideal, the citizens devoted their lives to the public service and were ready to lay them down for the common good; or if they shrank from the supreme sacrifice, it never occurred to them that they acted otherwise than basely in preferring their personal existence to the interests of their country. All this was changed by the spread of Oriental religions which inculcated the communion of the soul with God and its eternal salvation as the only objects worth living for, objects in comparison with which the prosperity and even the existence of the state sank into insignificance. The inevitable result of this selfish and immoral doctrine was to withdraw the devotee more and more from the public service, to concentrate his thoughts on his own spiritual emotions, and to breed in him a contempt for the present life which he regarded merely as a probation for a better and an eternal. The saint and the recluse, disdainful of earth and rapt in ecstatic contemplation of heaven, became in popular opinion the highest ideal of humanity, displacing the old ideal of the patriot and hero who, forgetful of self, lives and is ready to die for the good of his country. The earthly city seemed poor and contemptible to men whose eyes beheld the City of God coming in the clouds of heaven. Thus the centre of gravity, so to say, was shifted from the present to a future life, and however much the other world may have gained, there can be little doubt that this one lost heavily by the change. A general disintegration of the body politic set in. The ties of the state and the family were loosened: the structure of society tended to resolve itself into its individual elements and thereby to relapse into barbarism; for civilisation is only possible through the active co-operation of the citizens and their willingness to subordinate their private interests to the common good. Men refused to defend their country and even to continue their kind. In their anxiety to save their own souls and the souls of others, they were content to leave the material world, which they identified with the principle of evil, to perish around them. This obsession lasted for a thousand years. The revival of Roman law, of the Aristotelian philosophy, of ancient art and literature at the close of the Middle Ages, marked the return of Europe to native ideals of life and conduct, to saner, manlier views of the world. The long halt in the march of civilisation was over. The tide of Oriental invasion had turned at last. It is ebbing still.

Among the gods of eastern origin who in the decline of the ancient world competed against each other for the allegiance of the West was the old Persian deity Mithra. The immense popularity of his worship is attested by the monuments illustrative of it which have been found scattered in profusion all over the Roman Empire. In respect both of doctrines and of rites the cult of Mithra appears to have presented many points of resemblance not only to the religion of the Mother of the Gods but also to Christianity. The similarity struck the Christian doctors themselves and was explained by them as a work of the devil, who sought to seduce the souls of men from the true faith by a false and insidious imitation of it. So to the Spanish conquerors of Mexico and Peru many of the native heathen rites appeared to be diabolical counterfeits of the Christian sacraments. With more probability the modern student of comparative religion traces such resemblances to the similar and independent workings of the mind of man in his sincere, if crude, attempts to fathom the secret of the universe, and to adjust his little life to its awful mysteries. However that may be, there can be no doubt that the Mithraic religion proved a formidable rival to Christianity, combining as it did a solemn ritual with aspirations after moral purity and a hope of immortality. Indeed the issue of the conflict between the two faiths appears for a time to have hung in the balance. An instructive relic of the long struggle is preserved in our festival of Christmas, which the Church seems to have borrowed directly from its heathen rival. In the Julian calendar the twenty-fifth of December was reckoned the winter solstice, and it was regarded as the Nativity of the Sun, because the day begins to lengthen and the power of the sun to increase from that turning-point of the year. The ritual of the nativity, as it appears to have been celebrated in Syria and Egypt, was remarkable. The celebrants retired into certain inner shrines, from which at midnight they issued with a loud cry, “The Virgin has brought forth! The light is waxing!” The Egyptians even represented the new-born sun by the image of an infant which on his birthday, the winter solstice, they brought forth and exhibited to his worshippers. No doubt the Virgin who thus conceived and bore a son on the twenty-fifth of December was the great Oriental goddess whom the Semites called the Heavenly Virgin or simply the Heavenly Goddess; in Semitic lands she was a form of Astarte. Now Mithra was regularly identified by his worshippers with the Sun, the Unconquered Sun, as they called him; hence his nativity also fell on the twenty-fifth of December. The Gospels say nothing as to the day of Christ’s birth, and accordingly the early Church did not celebrate it. In time, however, the Christians of Egypt came to regard the sixth of January as the date of the Nativity, and the custom of commemorating the birth of the Saviour on that day gradually spread until by the fourth century it was universally established in the East. But at the end of the third or the beginning of the fourth century the Western Church, which had never recognised the sixth of January as the day of the Nativity, adopted the twenty-fifth of December as the true date, and in time its decision was accepted also by the Eastern Church. At Antioch the change was not introduced till about the year 375 A.D.

What considerations led the ecclesiastical authorities to institute the festival of Christmas? The motives for the innovation are stated with great frankness by a Syrian writer, himself a Christian. “The reason,” he tells us, “why the fathers transferred the celebration of the sixth of January to the twenty-fifth of December was this. It was a custom of the heathen to celebrate on the same twenty-fifth of December the birthday of the Sun, at which they kindled lights in token of festivity. In these solemnities and festivities the Christians also took part. Accordingly when the doctors of the Church perceived that the Christians had a leaning to this festival, they took counsel and resolved that the true Nativity should be solemnised on that day and the festival of the Epiphany on the sixth of January. Accordingly, along with this custom, the practice has prevailed of kindling fires till the sixth.” The heathen origin of Christmas is plainly hinted at, if not tacitly admitted, by Augustine when he exhorts his Christian brethren not to celebrate that solemn day like the heathen on account of the sun, but on account of him who made the sun. In like manner Leo the Great rebuked the pestilent belief that Christmas was solemnised because of the birth of the new sun, as it was called, and not because of the nativity of Christ.

Thus it appears that the Christian Church chose to celebrate the birthday of its Founder on the twenty-fifth of December in order to transfer the devotion of the heathen from the Sun to him who was called the Sun of Righteousness. If that was so, there can be no intrinsic improbability in the conjecture that motives of the same sort may have led the ecclesiastical authorities to assimilate the Easter festival of the death and resurrection of their Lord to the festival of the death and resurrection of another Asiatic god which fell at the same season. Now the Easter rites still observed in Greece, Sicily, and Southern Italy bear in some respects a striking resemblance to the rites of Adonis, and I have suggested that the Church may have consciously adapted the new festival to its heathen predecessor for the sake of winning souls to Christ. But this adaptation probably took place in the Greek-speaking rather than in the Latin-speaking parts of the ancient world; for the worship of Adonis, while it flourished among the Greeks, appears to have made little impression on Rome and the West. Certainly it never formed part of the official Roman religion. The place which it might have taken in the affections of the vulgar was already occupied by the similar but more barbarous worship of Attis and the Great Mother. Now the death and resurrection of Attis were officially celebrated at Rome on the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth of March, the latter being regarded as the spring equinox, and therefore as the most appropriate day for the revival of a god of vegetation who had been dead or sleeping throughout the winter. But according to an ancient and widespread tradition Christ suffered on the twenty-fifth of March, and accordingly some Christians regularly celebrated the Crucifixion on that day without any regard to the state of the moon. This custom was certainly observed in Phrygia, Cappadocia, and Gaul, and there seem to be grounds for thinking that at one time it was followed also in Rome. Thus the tradition which placed the death of Christ on the twenty-fifth of March was ancient and deeply rooted. It is all the more remarkable because astronomical considerations prove that it can have had no historical foundation. The inference appears to be inevitable that the passion of Christ must have been arbitrarily referred to that date in order to harmonise with an older festival of the spring equinox. This is the view of the learned ecclesiastical historian Mgr. Duchesne, who points out that the death of the Saviour was thus made to fall upon the very day on which, according to a widespread belief, the world had been created. But the resurrection of Attis, who combined in himself the characters of the divine Father and the divine Son, was officially celebrated at Rome on the same day. When we remember that the festival of St. George in April has replaced the ancient pagan festival of the Parilia; that the festival of St. John the Baptist in June has succeeded to a heathen midsummer festival of water: that the festival of the Assumption of the Virgin in August has ousted the festival of Diana; that the feast of All Souls in November is a continuation of an old heathen feast of the dead; and that the Nativity of Christ himself was assigned to the winter solstice in December because that day was deemed the Nativity of the Sun; we can hardly be thought rash or unreasonable in conjecturing that the other cardinal festival of the Christian church—the solemnisation of Easter—may have been in like manner, and from like motives of edification, adapted to a similar celebration of the Phrygian god Attis at the vernal equinox.

At least it is a remarkable coincidence, if it is nothing more, that the Christian and the heathen festivals of the divine death and resurrection should have been solemnised at the same season and in the same places. For the places which celebrated the death of Christ at the spring equinox were Phrygia, Gaul, and apparently Rome, that is, the very regions in which the worship of Attis either originated or struck deepest root. It is difficult to regard the coincidence as purely accidental. If the vernal equinox, the season at which in the temperate regions the whole face of nature testifies to a fresh outburst of vital energy, had been viewed from of old as the time when the world was annually created afresh in the resurrection of a god, nothing could be more natural than to place the resurrection of the new deity at the same cardinal point of the year. Only it is to be observed that if the death of Christ was dated on the twenty-fifth of March, his resurrection, according to Christian tradition, must have happened on the twenty-seventh of March, which is just two days later than the vernal equinox of the Julian calendar and the resurrection of Attis. A similar displacement of two days in the adjustment of Christian to heathen celebrations occurs in the festivals of St. George and the Assumption of the Virgin. However, another Christian tradition, followed by Lactantius and perhaps by the practice of the Church in Gaul, placed the death of Christ on the twenty-third and his resurrection on the twenty-fifth of March. If that was so, his resurrection coincided exactly with the resurrection of Attis.

In point of fact it appears from the testimony of an anonymous Christian, who wrote in the fourth century of our era, that Christians and pagans alike were struck by the remarkable coincidence between the death and resurrection of their respective deities, and that the coincidence formed a theme of bitter controversy between the adherents of the rival religions, the pagans contending that the resurrection of Christ was a spurious imitation of the resurrection of Attis, and the Christians asserting with equal warmth that the resurrection of Attis was a diabolical counterfeit of the resurrection of Christ. In these unseemly bickerings the heathen took what to a superficial observer might seem strong ground by arguing that their god was the older and therefore presumably the original, not the counterfeit, since as a general rule an original is older than its copy. This feeble argument the Christians easily rebutted. They admitted, indeed, that in point of time Christ was the junior deity, but they triumphantly demonstrated his real seniority by falling back on the subtlety of Satan, who on so important an occasion had surpassed himself by inverting the usual order of nature.

Taken altogether, the coincidences of the Christian with the heathen festivals are too close and too numerous to be accidental. They mark the compromise which the Church in the hour of its triumph was compelled to make with its vanquished yet still dangerous rivals. The inflexible Protestantism of the primitive missionaries, with their fiery denunciations of heathendom, had been exchanged for the supple policy, the easy tolerance, the comprehensive charity of shrewd ecclesiastics, who clearly perceived that if Christianity was to conquer the world it could do so only by relaxing the too rigid principles of its Founder, by widening a little the narrow gate which leads to salvation. In this respect an instructive parallel might be drawn between the history of Christianity and the history of Buddhism. Both systems were in their origin essentially ethical reforms born of the generous ardour, the lofty aspirations, the tender compassion of their noble Founders, two of those beautiful spirits who appear at rare intervals on earth like beings come from a better world to support and guide our weak and erring nature. Both preached moral virtue as the means of accomplishing what they regarded as the supreme object of life, the eternal salvation of the individual soul, though by a curious antithesis the one sought that salvation in a blissful eternity, the other in a final release from suffering, in annihilation. But the austere ideals of sanctity which they inculcated were too deeply opposed not only to the frailties but to the natural instincts of humanity ever to be carried out in practice by more than a small number of disciples, who consistently renounced the ties of the family and the state in order to work out their own salvation in the still seclusion of the cloister. If such faiths were to be nominally accepted by whole nations or even by the world, it was essential that they should first be modified or transformed so as to accord in some measure with the prejudices, the passions, the superstitions of the vulgar. This process of accommodation was carried out in after ages by followers who, made of less ethereal stuff than their masters, were for that reason the better fitted to mediate between them and the common herd. Thus as time went on, the two religions, in exact proportion to their growing popularity, absorbed more and more of those baser elements which they had been instituted for the very purpose of suppressing. Such spiritual decadences are inevitable. The world cannot live at the level of its great men. Yet it would be unfair to the generality of our kind to ascribe wholly to their intellectual and moral weakness the gradual divergence of Buddhism and Christianity from their primitive patterns. For it should never be forgotten that by their glorification of poverty and celibacy both these religions struck straight at the root not merely of civil society but of human existence. The blow was parried by the wisdom or the folly of the vast majority of mankind, who refused to purchase a chance of saving their souls with the certainty of extinguishing the species.

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Missing at Sea - Naval Disasters in History by Logan Marshall 1914

Missing at Sea - Naval Disasters in History by Logan Marshall 1914

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DEADLY DANGER OF ICEBERGS—DOZENS OF SHIPS PERISH IN COLLISION—OTHER DISASTERS

THE danger of collision with icebergs has always been one of the most deadly that confront the mariner. Indeed, so well recognized is this peril of the Newfoundland Banks, where the Labrador current in the early spring and summer months floats southward its ghostly argosy of icy pinnacles detached from the polar ice caps, that the government hydrographic offices and the maritime exchanges spare no pains to collate and disseminate the latest bulletins on the subject.

THE ARIZONA

A most remarkable case of an iceberg collision is that of the Guion Liner, Arizona, in 1879. She was then the greyhound of the Atlantic, and the largest ship afloat—5750 tons except the Great Eastern. Leaving New York in November for Liverpool, with 509 souls aboard, she was coursing across the Banks, with fair weather but dark, when, near midnight, about 250 miles east of St. John's, she rammed a monster ice island at full speed eighteen knots. Terrific was the impact.

The welcome word was passed along that the ship, though sorely stricken, would still float until she could make harbor. The vast white terror had lain across her course,

Showing the bulk and formation under water and the consequent danger to vessels even without actual contact with the visible part of the iceberg, stretching so far each way that, when described, it was too late to alter the helm. Its giant shape filled the foreground, towering high above the masts, grim and gaunt and ghastly, immovable as the adamantine buttresses of a frowning seaboard, while the liner lurched and staggered like a wounded thing in agony as her engines slowly drew her back from the rampart against which she had flung herself.

She was headed for St. John's at slow speed, so as not to strain the bulkhead too much, and arrived there thirty-six hours later. That little port—the crippled ship's hospital—has seen many a strange sight come in from the sea, but never a more astounding spectacle than that which the Arizona presented the Sunday forenoon she entered there.

"Begob, captain!" said the pilot, as he swung himself over the rail. "I've heard of carrying coals to Newcastle, but this is the first time I've seen a steamer bringing a load of ice into St. John's."

They are a grim race, these sailors, and, the danger over, the captain's reply was: "We were lucky, my man, that we didn't all go to the bottom in an ice box."

DOZENS OF SHIPS PERISH

But to the one wounded ship that survives collision with a berg, a dozen perish. Presumably, when the shock comes, it loosens their bulkheads and they fill and founder, or the crash may injure the boilers or engines, which explode and tear out the sides, and the ship goes down like a plummet. As long ago as 1841, the steamer President, with 120 people aboard, crossing from New York to Liverpool in March, vanished from human ken. In 1854, in the same month, the City of Glasgow left Liverpool for Philadelphia with 480 souls, and was never again heard of. In February, 1856, the Pacific, from Liverpool for New York, carrying 185 persons, passed away down to a sunless sea. In May, 1870, the City of Boston, from that port for Liverpool, mustering 191 souls, met a similar fate. It has always been thought that these ships were sunk by collision with icebergs or floes. As shipping traffic has expanded, the losses have been more frequent. In February, 1892, the Naronic, from Liverpool for New York; in the same month in 1896, the State of Georgia, from Aberdeen for Boston; in February, 1899, the Alleghany, from New York for Dover; and once more in February, 1902, the Huronian, from Liverpool for St. John's—all disappeared without leaving a trace. Between February and May, the Grand Banks are most infested with ice, and collision therewith is' the most likely explanation of the loss of these steamers, all well manned and in splendid trim, and meeting only the storms which scores of other ships have braved without a scathe.

TOLL OF THE SEA

Among the important marine disasters recorded since 1866 are the following:

1866, Jan. 11.—Steamer London, on her way to Melbourne, foundered in the Bay of Biscay; 220 lives lost.
1866, Oct. 3.—Steamer Evening Star, from New York to New Orleans, foundered; about 250 lives lost.
1867, Oct. 29.—Royal Mail steamers Rhone and Wye and about fifty other vessels driven ashore and wrecked at St Thomas, West Indies, by a hurricane; about 1,000 lives lost.
1873, Jan. 22.—British steamer Northfleet sunk in collision off Dungeness; 300 lives lost
1873, Nov. 23.—White Star liner Atlantic wrecked off Nova Scotia; 547 lives lost.
1873, Nov. 23.—French line Ville du Havre, from New York to Havre, in collision with ship Locharn and sunk in sixteen minutes; 110 lives lost.
1874, Dec. 24.—Emigrant vessel Cospatrick took fire and sank off Auckland; 476 lives lost.
1875, May 7.—Hamburg Mail steamer Schiller wrecked in fog on Scilly Islands; 200 lives lost.
1875, Nov. 4.—American steamer Pacific in collision thirty miles southwest of Cape Flattery; 236 lives lost.
1878, March 24.—British training ship Eurydice, a frigate, foundered near the Isle of Wight; 300 lives lost.
1878, Sept. 3.—British iron steamer Princess Alice sunk in the Thames River; 700 lives lost.
1878, Dec. 18.—French steamer Byzantin sunk in collision in the Dardanelles with the British steamer Rinaldo; 210 lives lost.
1879, Dec. 2.—Steamer Borussia sank off the coast of Spain; 174 lives lost.
1880, Jan. 31.—British trading ship Atlanta left Bermuda with 290 men and was never heard from.
1881, Aug. 30.—Steamer Teuton wrecked off the Cape of Good Hope; 200 lives lost.
1883, July 3.—Steamer Daphne turned turtle in the Clyde; 124 lives lost.
1884, Jan. 18.—American steamer City of Columbus wrecked off Gay Head Light, Massachusetts; 99 lived lost.
1884, July 23.—Spanish steamer Gijon and British steamer Lux in collision off Finisterre; 150 lives lost.
1887, Jan. 29.—Steamer Kapunda in collision with bark Ada Melore off coast of Brazil; 300 lives lost.
1887, Nov. 15.—British steamer Wah Young caught fire between Canton and Hong Kong; 400 lives lost.
1888, Sept. 13.—Italian steamship Sud America and steamer La France in collision near the Canary Islands; 89 lives lost.
1889, March 16.—United States warships Trenton, Vandalia and Nipsic and German ships Adler and Eber wrecked on Samoan Islands; 147 lives lost.
1890, Jan. 2.—Steamer Persia wrecked on Corsica; 130 lives lost.
1890, Feb. 17.—British steamer Duburg wrecked in the China Sea; 400 lives lost.
1890, March 1.—British steamship Quetta foundered in Torres Straits; 124 lives lost.
1890, Dec. 27.—British steamer Shanghai burned in China Seas; 101 lives lost.
1891, March 17.—Anchor liner Utopia in collision with British steamer Anson off Gibraltar and sunk; 574 lives lost.
1892, Jan. 13.—Steamer Namehow wrecked in China Sea; 414 lives lost.
1892, Oct. 28.—Anchor liner Romania, wrecked off Portugal; 113 lives lost.
1893, Feb. 8.—Anchor liner Trinairia, wrecked off Spain; 115 lives lost.
1894, June 25.—Steamer Norge, wrecked on Rockall Reef, in the North Atlantic; nearly 600 lives lost.
1895, Jan. 30.—German steamer Elbe sunk in collision with British steamer Crathie in North Sea; 335 lives lost.
1898, July 4.—French line steamer La Bourgogne in collision with British sailing vessel Cromartyshire; 571 lives lost.
1898, Nov. 27.—American steamer Portland, wrecked off Cape Cod, Mass.; 157 lives lost.
1901, April 1.—Turkish transport Aslam wrecked in the Red Sea; over 180 lives lost.
1902, July 21.—Steamer Primus sunk in collision with the steamer Hansa on the Lower Elbe; 112 lives lost.
1903, June 7.—French steamer Libau sunk in collision with steamer Insulerre near Marseilles; 150 lives lost.
1904, June 15. General Slocum, excursion steamboat, took fire going through Hell Gate, East River; more than 1000 lives lost.
1906, Jan. 21.—Brazilian battleship Aquidaban sunk near Rio Janeiro by an explosion of the powder magazines; 212 lives lost.
1906, Jan. 22.—American steamer Valencia lost off Cloose, Pacific Coast; 140 lives lost.
1906, Aug. 4.—Italian emigrant ship Sirio struck a rock off Cape Palos; 350 lives lost.
1906, Oct. 21.—Russian steamer Variag, on leaving Vladivostock, struck by a torpedo and sunk; 140 lives lost.
1907, Feb. 12.—American steamer Larchmond sunk in collision off Rhode Island coast; 131 lives lost.
1907, July 20.—American steamers Columbia and San Pedro collided on the Californian coast; 100 lives lost.
1907, Nov. 26.—Turkish steamer Kaptain foundered in the North Sea; 110 lives lost.
1908, March 23.—Japanese steamer Mutsu Maru sunk in collision near Hakodate; 300 lives lost.
1908, April 30.—Japanese training cruiser Matsu Shima sunk off the Pescadores owing to an explosion; 200 lives lost.
1909, Jan. 24.—Collision between the Italian steamer Florida and the White Star liner Republic, about 170 miles east of New York during a fog; a large number of lives were saved by the arrival of the steamer Baltic, which received the "C. Q. D.," or distress signal sent up by wireless by the Republic January 22. The Republic sank while being towed; 6 lives lost.
1910, Feb. 9.—French line steamer General Chanzy off Minorca; 200 lives lost.
1911, Sept. 25.—French battleship Liberte sunk by explosion in Toulon harbor; 223 lives lost.

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Facing Death By G. L. Apperson 1898

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Facing Death By G. L. Apperson 1898

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DR. JOHNSON once confessed that he never had a moment in which death was not terrible to him; and when he was told of someone who, from being gloomy from low spirits and depressed by the fear of death, had become uniformly placid and able to contemplate his dissolution without any disturbance of mind, the doctor said, emphatically: "Sir, this is only a disordered imagination taking a different turn." Yet when his own time came, Johnson faced the great change with the perfect composure and fortitude inspired by humble trust. As he had once said when Boswell foolishly teased him with questions on the subject: "It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives."

The spirit in which a man faces life will be that in which he will face death. So, when people talk about the ruling passion being strong in death, and seek to point a moral and adorn a tale by relating anecdotes of the last sayings and doings of men and women of strongly marked character, they forget that there is nothing really strange or abnormal in such instances. They are simply unusually clearly defined examples of what is a universal rule. Death has no terrors for one who has a proper sense of proportion, who has an eye for moral perspective. When one told Socrates, "The thirty tyrants have condemned thee to death," he replied, briefly and unanswerably, "And Nature them." "What fondness is it," says Montaigne, with epigrammatic force, "to cark and care so much at that instant and passage from all exemption of pain and care!"

ON THE BATTLEFIELD.
NO man can read the secret fears of those around him, but so far as observation has been recorded of those who have faced death publicly, fear has had little part in the matter. We are not now thinking of those who have looked into the eyes of Death on the battlefield. Mr. Stephen Crane, in his "Red Badge of Courage," has described graphically, and probably truthfully, the sensations and experiences of one who is thus situated for the first time in his life. In a few hours he runs through the whole gamut of the emotions, from the most craven fear to the most reckless daring. Death is faced, indeed, in many forms and in many ways on the field of battle. But to have to face the dark shadow deliberately, amid no noise or heat of conflict, but at a sudden turning, as it were, in life's high road; to stand in the sunlight, strong and sound in limb and body, with the red blood flowing in full and equal tide through every artery, and to know that in a few seconds the stream of life will be dammed, and the strength brought to naught by the overshadowing of Azrael's wing—that is what tries the courage of man or woman. "That tries not the courage," says the executioner in "Anne of Gierstein," to the soldier who speaks of his five pitched fields besides skirmishes and ambuscades innumerable—"All men will fight when pitched against each other—so will the most paltry curs—so will the dunghill fowls. But he is brave and noble who can look on a scaffold and a block, a priest to give him absolution, and the headsman, and a good sword which is to mow him down in his strength, as he would look upon things indifferent." And it is heartening to think of the mighty host of men and women, of all ages and of all nationalities and races, who have thus courageously faced death. Martyrs for their faith—and not for one faith or form of faith alone—leaders of lost causes, victims of royal or popular hatred and spite—all have gone to the stake, or to the block, or have looked down the rifle barrels, calmly and without flinching

ON THE SCAFFOLD.
WHEN Murat was shot in 1815, he asked permission from the officer in charge of the firing party to give the word of command as he had often done to men under his own orders. The officer granted the privilege, and Murat, with unfaltering courage ordering his own death, fell pierced with the Bourbon bullets. The "red fool fury of the Seine" has been responsible for many a heroic facing of death, from the days when the tumbrils made their daily ghastly promenade to the Place de la Revolution, to the reign of horror in 1871, when the Archbishop of Paris, and Generals Thomas and Lecomte died with their backs to the wall.

Men have had no monopoly of this scaffold courage. Queen Anne Boleyn, with all her frivolity and indiscretion, when she was brought to the fatal green within the Tower walls, submitted to the headsman with his great two-handed sword, without a shadow of flinching. Lady Jane Grey and Mary Queen of Scots were equally unmoved.

Many have faced death with a jest upon their lips. "How oft when men are at the point of death," says Romeo, "have they been merry!" His friend Mercutio had only a little while before exemplified the truth of the remark in his own dying words. As Sir Walter Raleigh was on his way to execution he saw an old friend in the crowd unable to approach the scaffold, "Farewell," cried Sir Walter, "I know not what shift you will make, but I am sure to have a place;" and when he mounted the scaffold he kissed the axe, and remarked that it was a "sharp medicine, but a sound cure for all diseases." In similar vein, Sir Thomas More, when brought to the place of execution, noticing that the scaffold was weak, turned to the Lieutenant of the Tower, and said, "I pray you, Mr. Lieutenant, see me up safe, and for my coming down let me shift for myself."

Nor has this somewhat lugubrious form of humour been confined to those who have died in public. When Sir Patrick Hume, of Polwarth, lay dying in 1724, a friend who was sitting beside his bed noticed him smiling, and asked what amused him. Sir Patrick, who was eighty-three years of age and extremely emaciated, replied, "I am diverted to think what a disappointment the worms will meet with when they come to me expecting a good meal, and find nothing but bones!" A very similar grim pleasantry is recorded of an old lady in Dean Ramsay's well-known book on "Scottish Life and Character." Horace Walpole said of Lord Chesterfield that his "closing lips dropped repartees that sparkled with his juvenile fire." When old and feeble Chesterfield apologised to a visitor for leaving him in order to take his daily drive, by saying, "I do not detain you, for I must go and rehearse my funeral;" and when, during his last illness, his friend Sir Thomas Robinson, a very tall man, called upon him, Chesterfield, who was as short as his friend was tall, remarked, "Ah, Sir Thomas, it will be sooner over with me than it would be with you, for I am dying by inches."

It is hardly necessary to multiply examples; and the humour of such utterances seems sometimes a trifle forced. It looks as if it might have been assumed as a cloak to cover the real emotions. But, after all, the real feelings of a human soul at the supreme crisis of existence—when death throws open the portals of life can be known to that human soul only, and to no other; and it would be as futile as it would be indecent to attempt to say whether the face with which a man meets death is his own, or merely a mask assumed for the occasion.

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The Origin of the Christmas Tree by Carla Wenckebach 1898

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The Origin of the Christmas Tree by Carla Wenckebach 1898

IN all Christian lands, we find the charming custom of celebrating Christmas-eve by decorating a fir-tree with lights, nuts, apples, and little sugar figures, and surrounding it with gifts. In Germany, for instance, while the older people of the family are busily decking the tree, the children, in another room, are eagerly awaiting the coming celebration. Their youthful voices sound joyful and inspiring as they join in the favorite carol "Silent night! Holy night!" When at last the doors are opened, the children rush with glad shouts into the brilliantly lighted room. Before their delighted eyes stands the glittering Christmas tree. An angel hovers above it, with wings outspread as if in blessing, and among the branches rests the tiny figure of the sleeping Christ-child in the manger. Beautiful gifts are scattered among the branches, or placed on tables draped with white. The elders listen to the gleeful shouts of the children, while in their thankful hearts echoes again the song of the angels over the moonlit plains of Bethlehem, "Glory to God in the highest; on earth peace, good-will to men."

What is the origin of this custom, with all its poetical associations and almost magical charm? Why do we deck the tree with golden apples, and nuts, and little sugar figures of horses, with stags, and eagles, and boars? And what is the significance of our other Christmas usages, such as decorating our rooms with holly and mistletoe, and burning the yule log? Why do the children hang up their stockings on Christmas-eve, and why does St. Nicholas play so important a role at this time? To answer these questions, we must search deep into the annals of antiquity, into the ancient Aryan "Lichtreligion" (light-religion), into the old Teuton ceremonies, the Druidical rites and the Roman Saturnalia. In these we must seek the explanation of all the various Christmas symbols and festivities, and we can then see how they have been illumined and transformed by the light of the religion of love.

The oldest prototype of the Christmas tree is the celestial sun-tree of the Aryan races. According to the investigations of Prof. W. Schwartz, the light of the rising sun appeared to the ancient Aryans as a great pillar of fiery light, like the trunk of a gigantic tree. The ascending rays, spreading in all directions, seemed like branches and twigs, while the clouds formed the leaves, and the sun, moon, and stars were the mysterious golden fruit. The light fleecy clouds, floating about in the sky, represented doves and swans, while the dark storm-clouds were huge black eagles, and the same dark clouds when gilded by the sunlight represented a golden fleece. The golden lightning-flash seemed a mystical flower, the celestial mistletoe. The coiling flash represented fiery snakes and dragons. The zigzag flash came from the antlers of a heavenly stag or goat. The rain of the thundershower came from springs in the sun-tree, and the low mutterings of the thunder were heavenly voices, prophecies uttered by divinities in the clouds.

An old tradition of India runs thus:—"In the center of the world is the tree Udetaba, the tree of the sun, which at sunrise shoots forth from the earth, and in proportion as the sun ascends towards the zenith, grows up into the air until its topmost branches reach the sun when at noon-day he stands high in the heavens; but thereafter it gradually diminishes with the declining day, and at set of sun, sinks back into the earth." The Talmud usually speaks of the "pillars of the dawn," or it likens the light of the rising sun to a growing palm-tree.

From this phase of belief, common to the Aryan peoples, have arisen countless traditions in which we find the tree of light, the "sun-tree," ever recurring under the most varied forms. We are reminded of the fabled tree in Colchis, on which hung the Golden Fleece, ever guarded by a sleepless dragon; of the golden-fruited tree of the Hesperides, also watched over by its faithful dragon; of the sacred oak at Dodona, and the fountain near by; of the olive tree on the Acropolis at Athens, and the neighboring fountain; of the plane-tree of Delphi, hard by the fountain of Castalia; of the many mythological carvings or sculptures, which represent a tree in the coils of a dragon or a serpent; of the wonder-bearing trees in many old fairy tales. It was a universal custom of the European Aryans to burn torches and tapers about trees and fountains for purposes of divination.

The most perfectly developed descendant of the ancient sun-tree, however, is the Welt-Esche or World-ash, Yggdrasil, revered by the Scandinavians. As described in the Edda, the book containing the religious teachings and traditions of the Teutons, the world-ash Yggdrasil was a gigantic evergreen, in whose branches were contained the dwelling places of men and gods, of giants and of dwarfs. Three mighty roots supported the trunk. In one of them is the spring Hwergelmir, in whose depths are hidden the mysteries of being and non-being. In the second is the spring of Mimir, with that wise old seer dwelling beside it. In the third is the "Urdbrunnen," by which the three Fates, or Nornen, sit silent and grave. Coiled about the roots area great dragon, Nidhoggr, and many smaller serpents, which are continually gnawing at the tree. They represent the element of destruction, of evil, whereas the evergreen typifies life, immortality. Above, in the branches, the stag Eikthyner, feeds upon the leaves, as does the year upon the endless length of time, while from his antlers flow streams of water into the spring Hwergelmir, in which all terrestrial streams have their source. Four other stags consume the buds, as the four seasons consume the days and hours. A she-goat, Heidrun, also browses among the branches, and her milk is the food of the gods and heroes. Higher up in the top-most branches the sun eagle builds his eyrie and sings a song of life and death. A little squirrel, Ratatwiskr, ("whisking on the branches") whisks back and forth between the eagle, and the dragon, Nidhoggr. He carries words of contention and hatred; for between the eagle, the bird of life,and the serpent,the agent of destruction, peace and friendship can never abide. Our earth, Midgard, is near the center of the tree, while Asgard, the home of the gods, is far above, near the top. They are connected by the arch of the rainbow, the flaming bridge Bifrost, over which the gods descend to visit the abode of mortals. In this whole idea of the world-ash we recognize one of the first attempts at a systematic conception of the universe, a conception which seemed to the wise men of that time as perfect and complete as the Copernican system now seems to us. Simrock declares that in profundity of speculative insight this ancient tradition has not its equal.

At times of great festivity it was a custom of the Teutons to decorate small trees with candles and place these earthly substitutes for the heavenly tree of light in and before their houses. An Icelandic myth of the mountain-ash, sacred to Thor, runs as follows: — "This is called the sacred tree, and it is related that once, on Christmas night, all its branches were found thickly covered with glowing lights, which even the winter wind could not extinguish, blew he never so lustily." These glowing lights symbolized the lightning, which in a thunder-shower made the light-tree look as if covered with candles, and which could not be extinguished even by the stormy winds.

The chief festivals of the Teutons were those held at the summer and winter solstices, and the May festival. At the summer solstice (June 21) the "Johannisbaum" (St. John's tree) was decorated and worshipped, at the May festival the May-tree, and at the winter solstice (Dec. 21), the fir-tree. The latter festival, coming at a time when the days begin to lengthen again, was a feast of rejoicing over the renewed growth and blossoming of the light-tree in the sky. It was celebrated during the "twelve sacred nights," for the old Teutons counted by nights instead of days, as the expressions "fortnight" and "sennight" still testify, and from these "sacred nights," "geweiheten Nachten," originates the German name "Weihnachten," Christmas.

According to the theory of Professor Schwartz, which is one of the most significant and interesting yet advanced, our own Christmas tree was originally one of the earthly substitutes for the celestial sun-tree. The fir stands for the tree itself. The lights represent the lightnings flashing overhead, and the golden apples, the nuts, and the balls, symbolize the sun, moon, and stars, or the gods they represented. It is owing to the quiet influence of old traditions that the confectioners and toy manufacturers make their little sugar and paper-machee figures of stags, horses, goats, swans, squirrels and eagles, and that the animals consecrated to the gods, or offered to them in sacrifice, are still hung upon the tree. Thus we still find there the ravens and wolves of Odin, the bucks of Thor, Freya's cats, and Freyer's


golden-bristled boar, with oxen, lambs, goats, fish, etc. On a true Christmas tree all these creatures appear, peeping out here and there among the green branches of the fir, while Nidhoggr, the dragon,is represented by strings of raisins or popcorn, coiled about the tree-trunk. In token of gratitude to the sun-god (worshipped as Odin, as Baldur or as Freyer), who was the dispenser of all blessings, the benefactor of humanity, there were offered up in sacrifice during the "geweiheten Nachten," countless boars, and stags, and horses. At the same time the people tried to gladden their fellow beings, especially the poor and needy among them, by the giving of gifts. This "sacred nights" festival (Weihnachtsfest), with all its poetic charm, had taken such deep root in the hearts of the German people, that even Christianity, in spite of its intense hostility to all heathen practices and festivals, was unable to crush it out of existence. The early Christians, however, soon began to recognize that they could give to the heathen festival a Christian significance, and thus help win the hearts of the heathen to the Saviour. According to popular tradition, Christ was born the night of December 24th or the early morning of the 25th. That night could thus be truthfully called a sacred one, and the festival of the Christmas tree could easily be transferred from the 21st to that time. In the course of years the Christian interpretation of the tree and its attributes was elaborately and beautifully developed. The fir itself, with its lights and fruits, became the symbol of Christ, who was the beginning of a new life in the midst of the wintry darkness of heathendom, the tree of life, the light of the world. This conception was supported by the following verses of scripture:—

In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. Rev. 22:2.

I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life. St John 8:12.

And the city had no need of the sun, neither of to moon to shine in it; for the glory of God did lighten it, and the lamb is the light thereof.

In the early hymns Christ is spoken of as the new apple, the nut, the heavenly bread. Allusion to the stag is found in Ps. 42:1,

As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.

The dragon is mentioned in Rev. 20:2, the dove in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, and the serpent in the story of the temptation in Paradise. Oxen and lambs remind us of the sacrificial animals, and the fishes suggest Jesus' miracle of feeding the five thousand. Besides this, the fish is the oldest symbol of Christ, used by the early Christians during the persecutions. It comes from the Greek word Ichthys, fish, which is formed by the initial letters of the Greek words Jesus Christos, Theu Yios, Soter (Jesus, Messias, Son of God, Redeemer).

The roses and lilies on the Christmas tree correspond to the flowers on the world-tree. The rose is the symbol of divine love, reminding us of the rose of Sharon, while the lily calls to mind the Angel of the Annunciation and Christ's saying "Behold the lilies of the field."

At a later time other and purely Christian symbols were introduced,—the angels, the anchor, cross, and heart, the star of the east, and the golden threads, called Lametta, which represent the hair of the Christ-child. Under the branches of the tree lies the babe in a manger, watched over by his parents, and surrounded by sheep and oxen. Contrast this scene, full of holy peace, with the scene under the world-ash, where the three Nornes restlessly spin the thread of time and vainly try to solve the problems of life. There the anxious question, here the triumphant solution. There the blind powers of fate, here the living fountain of faith. There stern necessity, here yielding love.

Since Christ was worshipped as the giver of all good and perfect gifts, the custom of making presents and of bestowing benefits on the poor, already so important a part of the heathen "Weihnachtsfest," was especially suited to the Christian character of the festival. In Germany, however, the gifts are not hung upon the tree, but are laid on tables placed about it.

It is greatly to be regretted that even in Germany, where on the 24th of December the Christmas tree glows every where,in the palace of the emperor and in the humble cottage of the laborer, the origin and significance of the tree in many families is forgotten. The tree too often is overburdened with articles of vertu, or with glittering trash of all sorts, which bear no relation whatever to its poetic and religious character. The true Christmas tree is not a mere show, a shining plaything decorated for the momentary amusement of children. It is a sublime symbol of the soul-life of the Germanic people for a thousand years. Illumined by the Star of Bethlehem, it commemorates the Saviour's birth, and the opening of the gates to the heavenly Kingdom of light above. It recalls the jubilant words of prophecy,

Arise, Shine, for the light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.

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Origin of the Belief in Fairies by Thomas Keightley 1892

Origin of the Belief in Fairies by Thomas Keightley 1892

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According to a well-known law of our nature, effects suggest causes; and another law, perhaps equally general, impels us to ascribe to the actual and efficient cause the attribute of intelligence. The mind of the deepest philosopher is thus acted upon equally with that of the peasant or the savage; the only difference lies in the nature of the intelligent cause at which they respectively stop. The one pursues the chain of cause and effect, and traces out its various links till he arrives at the great intelligent cause of all, however he may designate him; the other, when unusual phenomena excite his attention, ascribes their production to the immediate agency of some of the inferior beings recognised by his legendary creed.

The action of this latter principle must forcibly strike the minds of those who disdain not to bestow a portion of their attention on the popular legends and traditions of different countries. Every extraordinary appearance is found to have its extraordinary cause assigned; a cause always connected with the history or religion, ancient or modern, of the country, and not unfrequently varying with a change of faith.

The noises and eruptions of Ætna and Stromboli were, in ancient times, ascribed to Typhon or Vulcan, and at this day the popular belief connects them with the infernal regions. The sounds resembling the clanking of chains, hammering of iron, and blowing of bellows, once to be heard in the island of Barrie, were made by the fiends whom Merlin had set to work to frame the wall of brass to surround Caermarthen. The marks which natural causes have impressed on the solid and unyielding granite rock were produced, according to the popular creed, by the contact of the hero, the saint, or the god: masses of stone, resembling domestic implements in form, were the toys, or the corresponding implements of the heroes and giants of old. Grecian imagination ascribed to the galaxy or milky way an origin in the teeming breast of the queen of heaven: marks appeared in the petals of flowers on the occasion of a youth's or a hero's untimely death: the rose derived its present hue from the blood of Venus, as she hurried barefoot through the woods and lawns; while the professors of Islâm, less fancifully, refer the origin of this flower to the moisture that exuded from the sacred person of their prophet. Under a purer form of religion, the cruciform stripes which mark the back and shoulders of the patient ass first appeared, according to the popular tradition, when the Son of God condescended to enter the Holy City, mounted on that animal; and a fish only to be found in the sea stills bears the impress of the finger and thumb of the apostle, who drew him out of the waters of Lake Tiberias to take the tribute-money that lay in his mouth. The repetition of the voice among the hills is, in Norway and Sweden, ascribed to the Dwarfs mocking the human speaker, while the more elegant fancy of Greece gave birth to Echo, a nymph who pined for love, and who still fondly repeats the accents that she hears. The magic scenery occasionally presented on the waters of the Straits of Messina is produced by the power of the Fata Morgana; the gossamers that float through the haze of an autumnal morning, are woven by the ingenious dwarfs; the verdant circlets in the mead are traced beneath the light steps of the dancing elves; and St. Cuthbert forges and fashions the beads that bear his name, and lie scattered along the shore of Lindisfarne.

In accordance with these laws, we find in most countries a popular belief in different classes of beings distinct from men, and from the higher orders of divinities. These beings are usually believed to inhabit, in the caverns of earth, or the depths of the waters, a region of their own. They generally excel mankind in power and in knowledge, and like them are subject to the inevitable laws of death, though after a more prolonged period of existence.

How these classes were first called into existence it is not easy to say; but if, as some assert, all the ancient systems of heathen religion were devised by philosophers for the instruction of rude tribes by appeals to their senses, we might suppose that the minds which peopled the skies with their thousands and tens of thousands of divinities gave birth also to the inhabitants of the field and flood, and that the numerous tales of their exploits and adventures are the production of poetic fiction or rude invention. It may further be observed, that not unfrequently a change of religious faith has invested with dark and malignant attributes beings once the objects of love, confidence, and veneration.

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