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this constellation, accordingly, we find their god R^, the phy- 

 sical sun enthroned upon the heavens. 



Thus seated on the Lions' backs he was the emblem of 

 power and majesty, as he was of goodness, mildness, and be- 

 nignity, when in the vernal equinox. Nothing could be 

 more natural, even in patriarchal times, than to assume such 

 emblems for the attributes of God. We feel their beauty 

 without seeing in them any thing idolatrous in the lines of 

 nature's poet, Thomson — " Forth in the pleasing spring," &c. 

 Would that these attributes had been confined to One, Would 

 that the simple, genial influences of nature had been the only 

 visible representations of the Divine attributes, and that man 

 had, by constantly uniting these, been taught to feel that the 

 Lord our God was One Lord, so that in the place of that in- 

 finitely divided homage which they paid to idols, they might 

 have loved the Lord their God with all their hearts, with all 

 their souls, and with all their strength. I believe it was for 

 the purpose of showing that all these attributes belonged to 

 Him alone ; that God represented the cherubim to his prophet 

 in his vision, with the faces of a bull, a lion, an eagle, and a 

 man. But soon, as we shall see, this beautiful simplicity was 

 broken through. My object at present is to convince you that 

 these emblems were in the first instance purely astronomical, 

 and the vestiges which connect the Lion with the summer 

 solstice pervade all these emblems, even when not astronomi- 

 cally intended. 



In the representation of the thrones of the kings we find, 

 as in that of Rameses from Medeenet Haboo, that lions are 

 universally chosen as their support ; yet upon these very lions 

 sit the hawk, or eagle, the well-known representative of the 

 sun in his soaring and all-seeing, pervading, influence, and 

 thence taken as the emblem of the spiritual and omniscient 

 Deity. And it is very singular, and that which marks most 

 clearly the astronomical origin of these emblems, that we find 

 the lion chosen for a purpose in which we never would suspect 



