LIGHT, THE ORIGIN OF HEALTH. 135 
LIGHT, THE ORIGIN OF HEALTH. 
By Harry Bensarietp, M.B., Hobart, Tasmania. 
Lieut, as sunhght, is now acknowledged to be the greatest 
force in the Universe, and it is not complimentary to our 
great nineteenth century idea to recognise the fact that 
10,000 years ago, or probably longer, our early ancestors 
recognised this fact more fully than we do now. Primeval 
man crept out of his primitive abodes, where he had huddled 
im fear through the darkness of the night, to watch the dawn 
spread over the heavens and, as he did so, he sang— 
“ Shine for us with your best rays, thou bright Dawn, 
Thou who lengthenest our life; thou the love of all, 
Who givest us food; who givest us health, 
Thou daughter of the sky, thou high-born Dawn 
Give us riches high and wide, protect us always with 
your blessing.” 
And, as he sang, the great fiery orb of day arose, and he 
fell on has face and worshipped it. As he began to build 
houses to live in, he must needs build temples and dedicate 
them to his God, the Sun. The great temple in Heliopolis 
dedicated to Ba, with its obelisk representing the Sun, is 
one of these. In this temple, the prayer of the sick man 
went up to the Sun, as God of the temple, as follows: — 
“Let me not enter into the house of clay; have mercy. 
almighty, have mercy. If I go along trembling like a 
cloud driven by the wind, have mercy, almighty, have 
mercy.’ And if we turn to our Bibles, with minds divested 
of all old theological crusts, we shall be astonished to learn 
from it that they who wrote it certainly placed light next 
to God, if they did not look upon it sometimes as God. 
“And God said let there be light—This was the true 
light which lighteth every man coming into the world. He 
was in the world, and the world was made by him.” 
‘Catching the spirit of this, painters, from those who 
decorated the Catacombs downwards, have pictured the 
Deity as embodied light, with a halo of light-rays all 
around him, emanating from His person. By the way, it 
is very significant that our word “ Deity’’ means Sun-god. 
The eld Aryan word to shine was “dyu,” from which he 
called his God the Sun dyaus, which in Latin became 
“Deus,” and in English “Deity.” Then, when he began 
to look upon the Sun as a Father; he called it “ Dyaus- 
pitar or Heaven Father, which in English became 
“Our Father which art in heaven.”’ 
