"Doomed to deck the bed they once enjoyed."
* In the highest apartment of the Temple of Belas, in
Babylon, a woman was kept for the private devotion of the
priest whose turn it was to make astronomical observations.
This was done under the pretence that the lady was visited
once a year by the god Bel. History dees not inform us in
regard to Bel's progeny, by these housekeepers.
By such artful intrigues, the Hindu virgin, Rohini, conceived and brought forth a "son of God," one of the Brahmin trinity. A Chinese virgin, impregnated by a ray of the Sun, became the mother of the god Foê, who always acted as the mediator between his followers and another god of still greater power. Mademoiselle Creusa, in all her virgin purity, was safely delivered of another "son of God" as was also the virgin mother of Somonocodom, who, according to the scriptures of the Talapoins of Siam, was the god expected to save the universe. Jupiter himself was fabled to have given birth to children from all parts of his body, from forehead to leg: thus Minerva sprang from his head.* The followers of Plato, two hundred and fifty years after his death, and one hundred before the Christian era, raised the story that he was born of a virgin:—Aristo, his father, was on his marriage, warned in a dream by Apollo, not to have any commerce with his wife, because she was with child by him (Apollo); Aristo obeyed; and Plato was born as another "son of God" It was no doubt owing to the holy paternity of some priest, that Sylva Rhea, under cover of a love affair with the god Mars, had the honor to lay the foundation of the Roman religion, by producing another "son of God."
* The severe study, or brain-labor necessary in acquiring
sound knowledge, is here prettily allegorized in the birth,
of Minerva, who was the personification of wisdom.
The writers of the most ancient chronicles of Alexandria, after attesting the universal prevalence of our gospel religion in Egypt for ages before the date of its alleged origin, in the reign of Tiberius, testify as follows:—
"To this day, Egypt has consecrated the pregnancy of a virgin, and the nativity of her son, whom they annually present in a cradle, to the adoration of the people; and when king Ptolemy, three hundred and fifty years before our Christian era, demanded of the priests the significancy of this religions ceremony, they told him it was a mystery."*
All the above conceptions and incarnations are merely the poetical and allegorical fictions of Paganism. We have already seen that the first fabricators and compilers of our religion were men of the greatest honesty and veraciousness of character: and as they had just received the divine light of "the only true revelation," we are "bound to believe" that their story of a miraculous conception is the only true one, confirmed as it is by ghosts, dreams, angels, and shadows. It is true that it cannot boast of such remote antiquity as the foregoing prodigies; but it is ancient enough to constitute truth in the orthodox eye of Faith; and we must not give way to the impiety of supposing that it is an imitatio of any one of the heathen fables enumerated;** or the "blasphemy" of surmising that God's sending "his message to a carpenter's wife," is a varied version of Jupiter's loving message to Alcmena, by Mercury.
* According to Macrobius, this was the solar god Bacchus,
who appears at the winter solstice, as an infant. Plutarch
says that at the winter solstice, Isis (Nature) brought
forth a son, a weak and feeble infant. On the inscription at
Sais, Isis says, "The fruit which I have produced, was, and
will become a Sun."
** The whole story about the conception and birth, was told
in precisely the same manner as it is now, in India, Persia,
Egypt, and Greece, for more than 1,600 years before its
alleged occurrence in Palestine.
Neither must we entertain the shocking idea that the conception of Mary was occasioned by any carnal agency; or that either the shadow or substance of any priest was at all concerned in the holy mystery. Yet heresy will tell untoward tales; for her pregnancy has been accounted for in the most natural way imaginable, thus:—"According to the apocryphal gospel of the nativity of Mary which Father Jerome Xavier entirely adopts, Mary, when a child, was consecrated to the Lord (that is, to the priests), by the usual vow; and was brought up in the temple, which she did not leave until she was sixteen years of age. This created a suspicion that her pregnancy was the effect of some intrigue with the priests, who made her believe, or say, that it was the Holy Ghost who had begotten a child upon her."*—(Codex. Apox. N. T.) Some profane persons have said that the high priest was himself the chief actor in this sacerdotal amour; for he anxiously, pitched upon old Joseph to be the husband of Mary. St. Epiphanjus assures us in his book "Adv. Heresies," that Joseph was very old at the time of his marriage with the virgin; and adds that he was the father of six children by his first wife. Moreover, the gospel ascribed to St. James the younger affirms that the good old man espoused Mary with much reluctance, owing to the disparity of their ages; but the high priest prevailed on him at last; and it further informs us of the very ill-humor of Joseph, when he found that his wife had been with child before their marriage, and the reproaches with which he loaded her, on account of her lewdness, unworthy, as he thought, of a virgin reared under the eyes of priests. Mary excused herself with tears and protestations, and swore by the living God that she did not know who begot the child. In her distress, the best excuse would have been her adventure with the archangel Gabriel; but it appears she forgot that. [It is indeed passing strange that Mary, according to Matthew, is wholly ignorant of her justification, according, to Luke.]
The fathers of our Church have disputed and quarreled in the most obscene terms, about this mystic impregnation by the Holy Ghost. St. Ambrose says:—"Non enim, secreta reseravit, sed immaculatum semen inviolabili utero spiritus sanctus infudit!"**
* The followers of Loatze say, that his mother became
pregnant of him, by a junction of heaven and earth. This is
a sublime and bold conception; and far excels the puerile
prating about ghosts, angels, dreams, and shadows.
** Of the miraculous impregnation, St. Ambrose says, "Maria
per aurem impregnata est."