For the first traces therefore of anything like what is now understood by the term religion, we must look beyond the vague superstitions of savages, at the historical records of civilised nations. As civilisation advanced population multiplied, and rude tribes of hunters were amalgamated into agricultural communities and powerful empires, in which a leisured and cultured class arose, to whom the old superstitions were no longer sufficient. They had to enlarge their ‘working hypothesis’ from the worship of stocks and stones and fear of ghosts, to take in a multitude of new facts and ideas, and specially those relating to natural phenomena which had roused their curiosity, or become important to them as matters of practical utility. The establishment of an hereditary caste of priests accelerated this evolution of religious ideas, and from time to time recorded its progress. The oldest of such records are those of Egypt and Chaldæa, where the fertility of alluvial valleys watered by great rivers had led to the earliest development of a high civilisation. The records also of the Chinese, Hindoos, Persians, and other nations take us a long way back towards the origins of religions.

In all cases we find them identical with the first origins of science, and taking the form of attempted explanations of natural phenomena, by the theory of deified objects and powers of nature. In the Vedas we see this in the simplest form, where the gods are simply personifications of the heavens, earth, sun, moon, dawn, and so forth; and where we should say the red glow of morning announces the rising of the sun, they express it that Aurora blushes at the approach of her lover the mighty Sun-god. It is very interesting to observe how the old Chaldæan legend of the creation of the world has been modified in the far later Jewish edition of it in Genesis, to adapt it to monotheistic ideas. The Chaldæan legend begins, like that of Genesis, with an ‘earth without form and void,’ and darkness on the chaotic deep. In each legend the Spirit of God, called Absu in the Chaldæan, moves on the face of the waters, and they are gathered together and separated from the land. But here a difference begins: in the original Chaldæan legend ‘the great gods were then made; the gods Lakman and Lakmana caused themselves to come forth; the gods Assur and Kesar were made; the gods Anu, Bel, and Hea were born.’

The appearance of the gods Lakman and Lakmana was the primitive mode of expressing the same idea as that which is expressed in Genesis by saying that God created the firmament separating the heaven above from the earth beneath; Assur and Kesar mean the same thing as the hosts of heaven and the earth; the god Bel is the sun, and so forth. It is evident that the first attempts to explain the phenomena of nature originated in the idea that motion and power implied life, personality, and conscious will; and therefore that the earth, sky, sun, moon, and other grand and striking phenomena, must be regarded as separate gods.

As culture advanced astronomy became more and more prominent in these early religions, and solar myths became a principal part of their mythologies, while astrology, or the influence of planets and stars on human affairs, became an important part of practical life. The Chaldæan legend referred to contains a mass of astronomical knowledge, which in the Genesis edition is reduced to ‘He made the stars also.’ It describes how the constellations were assigned their forms and names, the twelve signs of the zodiac established, the year divided into twelve months, the equinoxes determined, and the seasons set their bounds. Also how the moon was made to regulate the months by its disc, ‘horns shining forth to lighten the heavens, which on the seventh day approaches a circle.’

In the still older Egyptian pyramids we find proof of the long previous existence of great astronomical knowledge and refined methods of observation, for these buildings, which are at once the largest and the oldest in the world, are laid down so exactly in a meridian line, and with such a close approximation to the true latitude, as would have otherwise been impossible. In fact there is every reason to believe that while they were constructed as tombs for kings, they were at the same time intended for national observatories, for the arrangement of the internal passages as such is to make the Great Pyramid serve the purpose of a telescope, equatorially mounted, and showing the transits of stars and planets over the meridian, by reference to a reflected image of what was then the polar star, a knowledge of which was essential for accurate calculation of the calendar and seasons, for fixing the proper date of religious ceremonies, and very probably for astrological purposes.

The prevalence of these solar and astronomical myths among a number of different nations separated by wide intervals of space and time is very remarkable. Egyptians, Indians, Babylonians, Chinese, Mexicans, and Peruvians had myths which were strangely similar, indeed almost identical, based on the sun’s annual passage through the constellations of the zodiac. His apparent decline and death as he approached the winter solstice, and his return to life when he had passed it, gave rise to myths of the murder of the Sun-god by some fierce wild boar, or treacherous enemy, and of his triumphant resurrection in renewed glory. Hence, also, the passage of the winter solstice was a season of general rejoicing and festivity, traces of which survive when the sirloin and turkey smoke upon the hospitable tables of modern Christmas. One remarkable myth had a very universal acceptance, that of the birth of the infant Sun-god from a virgin mother. It appears to have originated from the period, some 6,450 years ago, when the sun, which now rises at the winter solstice in the constellation of Sagittarius, rose in that of Pisces, with the constellation of the Virgin, with upraised arms marked by five stars, setting in the north-west. Anyhow, this myth of an infant god born of a virgin mother holds a prominent place in the religions of Egypt, India, China, Chaldæa, Greece, Rome, Siam, Mexico, Peru, and other nations. The resemblances are often so close that the first Jesuit missionaries to China found that their account of the miraculous conception of Christ had been anticipated by that of Fuh-ke, born 3468 B.C.; and if an ancient priest of Thebes or Heliopolis could be restored to life and taken to the Gallery of Dresden, he would see in Raffaelle’s Madonna di San Sisto what he would consider to be an admirable representation of Horus in the arms of Isis.

The planets also, still more mysterious in their movements than the sun, and therefore still more endowed with human-like faculties of life, power, and purpose, were from an early period believed to exercise an influence on human affairs. Of the universality of this belief we find traces in the names of the days of the week, which are so generally taken from the sun, moon, and five visible planets—Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn—to whom special days were dedicated. If every seventh day is a day of rest, it was originally so because it was thought unlucky to undertake any work on the Sabbath, Saturday, or day of the gloomy and malignant Saturn.

As time rolled on and civilisation advanced, this simple nature-worship and deification of astronomical phenomena developed into larger and more complex conceptions. Following different lines of evolution, polytheism, pantheism and monotheism began to emerge as religious systems with definite creeds, rituals, and sacred books. These lines seem to have been determined a good deal by the genius of the race in which the religious development took place. The impressions made on the human mind by the surrounding universe are very various. Suppose ourselves looking up at the heavens on a clear starry night, what will be the impression? To one, that of awe and reverence, and he will feel crushed, as it were, into nothingness, in the presence of such a sublime manifestation of majesty and glory. Another, of more æsthetic nature, will be charmed by the beauty of the spectacle, and tempted to assign life to it, and to personify and dramatise its incidents. A third, of a scientific turn, will above all things wish to understand it.

Thus we find the impression of awe preponderating among the Semitic races generally; and as in their political relations, so in their religious conceptions, we find them prone to prostrate themselves before despotic power. With the Greeks again the æsthetic idea almost swallowed up the others, and the old astronomical myths blossomed into a perfect flower-bed of poetical and fanciful legends. The Chinese never got beyond a simple pantheism, which looked upon the universe as being alive, and saw nothing behind it; while the more metaphysical and physically feebler races of Hindoos and Buddhists refined their pantheism into a system of illusion, in which their own existence and the surrounding universe were literally

such stuff