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eral expectation of the advent of some illustrious personage, about the time of Christ, who was to be a new Benefactor to the world.* It is only independent traditions, which have come down from remote antiquity within the bosom of the nations themselves, that can avail anything for proving their common origin. And of these, without going to the extent of the writer just quoted, there are not a few of great interest and importance, which I will men

tion.

1. The existence of one supreme and eternal God, the First Cause of all things. -"Those men," says Jablonski, "who were most distinguished for wisdom among the Egyptians, acknowledged God to be a certain unbegotten Eternal Spirit, prior to all things which exist; who created, preserves, contains, pervades, and vivifies everything; who is the spirit of the universe, but the guardian and protector of men." Many of the Greek poets and philosophers held the same truth. In one of the Orphic Fragments preserved by Proclus, we find it expressly declared that "there is one Power, one Deity, the great Governor of all things." The verses which were sung in the Eleusinian mysteries contained

* Hesiod, Works and Days, 109; Ovid, Met. i. 89; Virgil, Ecl. iv., etc.

† Brande's Encyclopædia, art. Monotheism.

the following passage: "Pursue thy path rightly, and contemplate the King of the world. He is one and of himself alone, and to that One all things have owed their being. He encompasses them. No mortal hath beheld him; but he sees everything."* Says Professor Wilson, "The Vedas are authority for the existence of one Divine Being, supreme over the universe, and existing before all worlds. In the beginning this all [the universe] was in darkness. He, the Supreme, was alone, without a second. He reflected, I am one; I will become many. Will was conceived in the divine mind, and creation ensued." In the Vishnu Purana it is said, "That which is imperceptible, undecaying, inconceivable, unborn, inexhaustible, indescribable; which has neither form, nor hands, nor feet; which is almighty, omnipresent, eternal; the cause of all things, and without cause; permeating all, itself unpenetrated, and from which all things proceed; - that is Brahma."†

2. The Creation of the World and of Man. "The Greeks, in their legends, represented Prometheus as playing the part of a demiurgus, or secondary creator, who molded from clay the first individuals of our species, and gave them life by means of the fire which he stole from heaven. In the cosmogony of

* Brande's Encyclopædia, art. Monotheism.

† Wilson's Translation, p. 642.

Peru the first man created by the divine power was called Alpa Camasca, ' animated earth.' Among the tribes of North America, the Mandans believed that the Great Spirit formed two figures of clay, which he dried and animated by the breath of his mouth; the one received the name of the 'first man,' the other that of 'companion.' The great god of Tahiti, Toroa, made man of red earth, and the Dyacks of Borneo, stubbornly opposed to all Mosiem influences, repeated from generation to generation that man had been formed from the earth.” *

The following view of the Hindu cosmogony I take from the Laws of Manu, written probably in the seventh or eighth century before Christ. is regarded by the Hindus as a revelation from Brahma.

It

"This universe existed only in darkness, imperceptible, undefinable, undiscoverable by reason, undiscovered, as if it were wholly immersed in sleep. Then the self-existing power, himself undiscovered, but making this world discernible with five elements and other principles, appeared with undiminished glory, dispelling the gloom. He whom the mind alone can perceive, whose essence eludes the external organs, who has no visible parts, who exists from eternity; even He, the soul of all beings, whom

* Anc. Hist. of the East, pp. 9, 10.

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no being can comprehend, shone forth in person. He having willed to produce various beings from his own substance, first, with a thought, created the waters, and placed in them a productive seed. The seed became an egg, bright as gold, blazing like the luminary, with a thousand beams; and in that egg he was born himself in the form of Brahma,* the great forefather of all spirits. The waters are called Nara because they were the offspring of Nara, the Supreme Spirit, and as in them his first ayana (progress) in the character of Brahmā took place, he is thence Narayana (he whose place of moving was the waters). From that which is, the cause, not the object, of sense, existing everywhere in substance, not existing to our perception, without beginning or end, was produced the divine male, famed in all the worlds as Brahmā. In that egg the great power sat inactive a whole year of the Creator, at the close of which, by his thought alone, he caused the egg to divide itself, and from its two divisions he framed the heaven above and the earth beneath; in the midst he placed the subtile ether, the eight regions, and the permanent receptacle of

*The word Brahma - the final a short as in America - is a neuter noun, denoting the abstract Supreme Spirit. The masculine Brahmā - the final vowel having the long Italian sound of ah- denotes the active Creator.

Peru the first man created by the divine power was called Alpa Camasca, ' animated earth.' Among the tribes of North America, the Mandans believed that the Great Spirit formed two figures of clay, which he dried and animated by the breath of his mouth; the one received the name of the 'first man,' the other that of 'companion.' The great god of Tahiti, Toroa, made man of red earth, and the Dyacks of Borneo, stubbornly opposed to all Moslem influences, repeated from generation to generation that man had been formed from the earth.” *

The following view of the Hindu cosmogony I take from the Laws of Manu, written probably in the seventh or eighth century before Christ. is regarded by the Hindus as a revelation from Brahma.

It

"This universe existed only in darkness, imperceptible, undefinable, undiscoverable by reason, undiscovered, as if it were wholly immersed in sleep. Then the self-existing power, himself undiscovered, but making this world discernible with five elements and other principles, appeared with undiminished glory, dispelling the gloom. He whom the mind alone can perceive, whose essence eludes the external organs, who has no visible parts, who exists from eternity; even He, the soul of all beings, whom

* Anc. Hist. of the East, pp. 9, 10.

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