In most mythologies the sky is supposed to be a solid, shining arch or dome which covers the earth like a roof. Upon it, out of sight to mortal eyes, live the gods. It constitutes the “Hill of Heaven,” the celestial mountain upon which are the homes of the divine beings. So it is oft likened to some known terrestrial elevation, as in Greek mythology, Mt. Olympus, and in that of India, Mt. Meru. Such sacred hills are mentioned by most of the American tribes.[76] In Polynesian myth it was “the blue mountain, the land of the divine water,” a fluid of such vital virtue that were even a dead man sprinkled with it he would come to life. On the island of Mangaia a certain hill was pointed out which in old times propped up the sky.[77]
The Tehuelches of Patagonia relate that the Creator first moulded men and all animals on the “Hill of God” and then set them loose to people the earth. The natives of Southern Borneo assign to their supreme divinity Atala a home in the highest heaven, on the shore of the “celestial lake, moved by the Moon and surrounding the Sun.” Homi, the high heaven, is the deity of the Hottentots, who pours the rains, blows the wind, and sends heat and cold on earth.[78]
Thus it is that everywhere the Sky God is also the High God. This blending of the ideas of life and light with the sky led to another and obvious association which has left its mark on every religion, primitive or developed. The sky is, in direction, above us. The god of the sky is therefore the god on high. He is the one who dwells above, our lord in the heaven.
This he is in all mythologies. Among the Indians of the plains he is (or, It is) “the great medicine above,” and in the sign language, to indicate this, when the sign is made for “medicine” (mystery) the finger is pointed to the zenith.[79] The Puluga of the Andamanese “lives in the sky.” Tangaloa is addressed as “He above in the heavens”; the Finnish Ukko is also called “The Navel of the Sky,” and so on.[80]
Examples are innumerable. But what need of collecting them? Do we not ourselves constantly use the adjective the Supreme Being, for God, which means simply the highest being? And did not the founder of our religion forbid his followers to swear by the sky, giving as the reason that it was the throne of God, who sitteth upon it?[81]
This idea runs through the whole of his teachings. In the Gospel of Matthew the same term, οὐρανιος, or, ἐν τοῖς οὐρανιος as a descriptive term of divinity, is applied not less than eighty-eight times; and in the first clause of the Lord’s Prayer, it is to “Our Father in the Skies,” that the invocation is addressed.
Strange that this very word οἰρανὀς, in Sanscrit Uaruna, is that which, in the primitive religion of the Aryan peoples, was applied to the most exalted of their gods, to him “whose realm is above us,” “the very strong,” “the shining one,” “the king of sky and earth,” “creator of all, the earth-enveloping sky.”[82]
What more striking evidence do we wish of the indissoluble unity of religious thought, no matter what its stage of development, in all centuries and all races?
In the Polynesian mythology, Tangaloa, the bright daylight, has as his brother, Rongo, the god of darkness and night. Tangaloa is fair-haired and light in hue, Rongo is black in hair and skin. Tangaloa is beneficent, the dispenser of good, and inventor of the arts of peace; Rongo is the fomenter of strife, the god of war and author of bloodshed. In accordance with these, all the gods were classed in two orders, “dwellers in day,” and “dwellers in night.”[83]
The contrast which is here presented prevails throughout early cults. The night, when man, deprived of light and sight, becomes the prey of stealthy beasts, was everywhere considered the time when the unseen powers of destruction are let loose and the malevolent agencies of the spirit-world run riot.