The "Elysian plain" is far away in the West, where the sun goes down beyond the bonds of the earth, when Eos gladdens the close of day as she sheds her violet tints over the sky. The "Abodes of the Blessed" are golden islands sailing in a sea of blue,—the burnished clouds floating in the pure ether. Grief and sorrow cannot approach them; plague and sickness cannot touch them. The blissful company gathered together in that far Western land inherits a tearless eternity.
Of the other details in the picture the greater number would be suggested directly by these images drawn from the phenomena of sunset and twilight. What spot or stain can be seen on the deep blue ocean in which the "Islands of the Blessed" repose forever? What unseemly forms can mar the beauty of that golden home, lighted by the radiance of a Sun which can never set? Who then but the pure in heart, the truthful and the generous, can be suffered to tread the violet fields? And how shall they be tested save by judges who can weigh the thoughts and the interests of the heart? Thus every soul, as it drew near that joyous land, was brought before the august tribunal of Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Aiakos; and they whose faith was in truth a quickening power, might draw from the ordeals those golden lessons which Plato has put into the mouth of Socrates, and some unknown persons into the mouths of Buddha and Jesus. The belief of earlier ages pictured to itself the meetings in that blissful land, the forgiveness of old wrongs, and the reconciliation of deadly feuds,[560:1] just as the belief of the present day pictures these things to itself.
The story of a War in Heaven, which was known to all nations of antiquity, is allegorical, and refers to the battle between light and darkness, sunshine and storm cloud.[560:2]
As examples of the prevalence of the legend relating to the struggle between the co-ordinate powers of good and evil, light and darkness, the Sun and the clouds, we have that of Phoibos and Python, Indra and Vritra, Sigurd and Fafuir, Achilleus and Paris, Oidipous and the Sphinx, Ormuzd and Ahriman, and from the character of the struggle between Indra and Vritra, and again between Ormuzd and Ahriman, we infer that a myth, purely physical, in the land of the Five Streams, assumed a moral and spiritual meaning in Persia, and the fight between the co-ordinate powers of good and evil, gave birth to the dualism which from that time to the present has exercised so mighty an influence through the East and West.
The Apocalypse exhibits Satan with the physical attributes of Ahriman; he is called the "dragon," the "old serpent," who fights against God and his angels. The Vedic myth, transformed and exaggerated in the Iranian books, finds its way through this channel into Christianity. The idea thus introduced was that of the struggle between Satan and Michael, which ended in the overthrow of the former, and the casting forth of all his hosts out of heaven, but it coincides too nearly with a myth spread in countries held by all the Aryan nations to avoid further modification. Local tradition substituted St. George or St. Theodore for Jupiter, Apollo, Hercules, or Perseus. It is under this disguise that the Vedic myth has come down to our own times, and has still its festivals and its monuments. Art has consecrated it in a thousand ways. St. Michael, lance in hand, treading on the dragon, is an image as familiar now as, thirty centuries ago, that of Indra treading under foot the demon Vritra could possibly have been to the Hindoo.[561:1]
The very ancient doctrine of a Trinity, three gods in one, can be explained, rationally, by allegory only. We have seen that the Sun, in early times, was believed to be the Creator, and became the first object of adoration. After some time it would be observed that this powerful and beneficent agent, the solar fire, was the most potent Destroyer, and hence would arise the first idea of a Creator and Destroyer united in the same person. But much time would not elapse before it must have been observed, that the destruction caused by this powerful being was destruction only in appearance, that destruction was only reproduction in another form—regeneration; that if he appeared sometimes to destroy, he constantly repaired the injury which he seemed to occasion—and that, without his light and heat, everything would dwindle away into a cold, inert, unprolific mass. Thus, at once, in the same being, became concentrated, the creating, the preserving, and the destroying powers—the latter of the three being at the same time both the Destroyer and Regenerator. Hence, by a very natural and obvious train of reasoning, arose the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer—in India Brahmā, Vishnu, and Siva; in Persia Oromasdes, Mithra, and Arimanius; in Egypt Osiris, Horus, and Typhon: in each case Three Persons and one God. And thus undoubtedly arose the Trimurti, or the celebrated Trinity.
Traces of a similar refinement may be found in the Greek mythology, in the Orphic Phanes, Ericapeus and Metis, who were all identified with the Sun, and yet embraced in the first person, Phanes, or Protogones, the Creator and Generator.[562:1] The invocation to the Sun, in the Mysteries, according to Macrobius, was as follows: "O all-ruling Sun! Spirit of the world! Power of the world! Light of the world!"[562:2]
We have seen in [Chap. XXXV], that the Peruvian Triad was represented by three statues, called, respectively, "Apuinti, Churiinti, and Intihoaoque," which is, "Lord and Father Sun; Son Sun; and Air or Spirit, Brother Sun."[562:3]
Mr. Faber, in his "Origin of Pagan Idolatry," says: