March 1, 1886.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE 



137 



^ ILLUSTRATED >1AGAZINE ^ j 

 ENCE,UTERATURE,&AEW 



T 



LONDON: MARCH 1, 1886. 



SUN WORSHIP, 



Bv RlCHAED A. Proltor. 



EFORE entering on the discussion of a 

 portion of the matter belonging to my 

 subject, " The Unknowable or the Re- 

 ligion of Science." I may explain why for 

 the present I drop that heading. / There 

 is a prevalent idea — which is as much as 

 saying there is a foolish idea — that when 

 a student of science speaks about religion 

 lie speaks as an opponent. And although my series of 

 papers on the Religion of Science have heretofore not 

 even touched on prevalent religious ideas, the use of a 

 heading in which the word religion occurs is regarded by 

 many, which again is as much as to say that it is foolishly" 

 regarded, a.s indicating that before I have done I shall 

 make some desperate attack on ideas which many re- 

 gard as especially sacred. Now, as I said at the outset, 

 I have no such intention. I propose only to show how 

 to the student of the universe thoughts essentially reli- 

 gious present themselves, how on the one hand, a power 

 outside ourselves making for righteousness becomes more 

 and more clearly apparent to him the more he studies 

 the past of his race, and how on the other hand recog- 

 nising the Unknowable as Infinite the nature of the 

 Unknown Reality existing in and through all things 

 he has that which all true re- 

 Infinite mystery, by which mere 

 by the emotions, becomes religion. 

 The student of science does not complain when the 

 advocates of contending religions describe the features of 

 their several systems of theology. He is not angry when 

 he sees the many (therefore the unwise) denying the 

 Infinite by limiting It within Pei-sonality, or blaspheming 

 the Unknowable by pretending to know that It is moved 

 by mean and paltry passions such as affect themselves. 

 If science, thus recognising prevalent Infidelity,* is silent 

 .so far as rebuke is concerned, she may yet be permitted to 

 express her own faith — her belief in an Infinite Power 

 outside ourselves making for righteousness, her recog- 

 nition of the prevalence of law throughout all space and 

 during all time. 



Although j)robably sun-worship long preceded the full 

 development of agriculture, it was certainly among agri- 

 cultural races that sun-worship first reached its full de- 

 velopment. Men who lived by hunting and fishing, and 

 those still more who trusted to pastoral labours for the 

 means of sustaining life, must have been moved by the 



as Inconceivable, 

 ligion postulates, 

 morality, moved 



* The student o£ science who recognises the Power outside our- 

 selves as Unknowable, who admits that he " cannot by searching 

 find out God ' is absurdly called an atheist —probably of tenest by 

 people who do not know what the word means : if he cared to 

 descend to calling names, he might much more truthfully apply to 

 those who thus name him, the counter-title — cacotheists. 



glory of the sun, by the impressive beauty of the pheno- 

 mena attending dawn and sunset, and even by the 

 evidence of waxing and waning might presented by the 

 sun throughout the year. In our dull humid climes we 

 can hardly understand the effect which solar phenomena 

 would have on races living nearly all the time in the open 

 air, and witnessing day after day and year after year the 

 ever-changing glories of the orb which is lord alike of the 

 day and of the year. The phenomena of dawn and sun- 

 set in particular are impressive in tropical and subtropical 

 regions to a degree which in our gloomier latitudes we 

 can hardly even imagine. The very animals respond to 

 the touch of the sun's first rays with such a cuncour.se of 

 vocal recognition that by comparison the song of the lark 

 in our own lands seems a tame and feeble tribute to the 

 rising ruler of the day. One might even imagine that 

 some animals, as our near relatives the Gibbons, were 

 moved by a feeling of actual adoration, so earnestly do 

 they welcome, both by voice and by gesture, the rays of 

 the returning snn. Beautiful as are the lines in which 

 our poet laureate describes the dawn of day in England, 

 they would seem utterly tame and unmeaning to one 

 accustomed to the magnificent dawn — the veritable day- 

 spring — of less humid regions. He tells us how 



sucked from out the distant gloom 



A breeze began to tremble o'er 



The large leaves of the sycamare, 

 And fluctuate all the stUl perfume. 



.\nd gathering freshlier overhead, 



Rocked the fuU-foliaged elms, and swung 

 The heavy-folded rose, and flang 



The lily to and fro, and said, 



The dawn, the dawn ! and died away. 

 And east and west, without a breath, 

 Jlixed their dim lights like life and death — 



To broaden into boundless day. 



A most perfect and realistic descrijjtion, truly, of the 

 dawn as best known here ; but not one word of the 

 glorious colours which flood the skies before the day- 

 spring of tropical and subtropical regions. A Syrian or 

 Egyptian would hardly know that the dawn was meant, 

 in a passage which spoke only of still perfume, freshness, 

 full-foliaged trees, the heavy folded rose, and dim lights 

 mixing like life and death. There is no dimness, no 

 suggestion of death, in the dawn as again and again I 

 have witnessed it in the Carolinas, Louisiana, and Texas, 

 or on the other side of the equator in Austrr.lasia. In the 

 tropics the display is even grander, but the changes 

 develope so swiftly that almost ere one has had time to 

 feel their full grandeur, the monarch of day is rising in 

 full glory. In the actual dayspring, again — in sunrise 

 itself —there is something strongly, one might almost say 

 imperatively, suggestive of might and purpose. The sun 

 seems to rise like a living thing, aye like a sovereign 

 monarch. He seems to survey his own realm as his 

 glowing orb rises. And if this is so to the modern 

 student of astronomy, how much more impressive must 

 the scene have been to those who as yet had no know- 

 ledge by which the thought could be corrected, that the 

 sun has consciousness and will as well as mere materir.l 

 might. 



The first recognition of the sun as a power, not only 

 influencing the fortunes of men but bearing sway over 

 the earth in his daily rule, may well be assigned to 

 pastoral or even to earlier races, though the reco_^mtion 

 of the sun as God of the Tear belonged probably to agri- 

 cultural races, and the worship of the sun as a mighty 

 monarch to the development of civilisation. We cannot 

 from any study of the actual methods of worship, deter- 



