AcGVST 2, 1886.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



299 



" You Pagans have your Mercury, whom you worship under 

 the title of the Word, and as a messenger from God." * 



But there were many other virgin-born divinities and 

 heroes in the Greek and Roman Pantheon. Apollo, who 

 was unmistakably a sim-god, was the son of Zeus and a 

 mortal mother, Latona. " At his birth there was joy," we 

 are told, " among the immortal gods on OhTupus, and the 

 earth rejoicing laughed beneath the smile of heaven." 

 Bacelius, another sun-god (for as there ai-e many summei-s 

 so were there many sun-gods), was of similar origin. He 

 himself proclaims in the Bacch of Euripides, " I (am) 

 Bacchus, son of Zeus (whom Semele, daughter of Kadmus, 

 brought forth), having taken a mortal form instead of a 

 god's." So with ^-Eolus, Prometheus, and a host of others, 

 as Justin Martyr ironically said, " a parcel of sons " were 

 assigned by the writere most in vogue among the Greeks and 

 Romans to Zeus or Jupiter, chief of the pagan gods. 



In Mexico, Quetz;\lcoatl was a virgin-bom god, as were 

 Zama of Yucatan, Bochica among the Columbians, ilanco 

 Cajiac in Peru, and a host of others. 



Passing from the conception to the birth of the ancient 

 sun-god, we recognise other attributes which were natiirally 

 posse.ssed by such a deity, regirded as representing the 

 supreme God of Sabaoth or Ruler of the Heavenly Host. 



(To he continued.) 



ETNA'S ERUPTIONS. 



iHERE is a marked contrast between the 

 circumstances of the eruptions of Etna 

 which have taken place this year and in 

 the summer of 1879, and those of the great 

 eruption of 1868. For before the two last 

 eruptions, the great South European vol- 

 canic system had shown but few signs of 

 disturbance, and those only slight. But when in Xovember 

 1868 Etna burst into eruption, the volcanic system of 

 Southern Europe had been disturbed during thirteen months 

 by subterranean movements. Scarcely a single portion of 

 the wide area included imder that name had been free from 

 occasional shocks of earthquake. There had been shocks at 

 Constantinople, at Bucharest, at Malta, and at Gibraltar. 

 Mount Vesuvius, the most active though not in all respects 

 the most important of the outlets by which that system 

 finds relief, had been in a state of activity during the whole 

 of the preceding year, and three several times in actual 

 eruption. But it had seemed as though Vesuvius — owing 



* It is somewhat singular that such an Apology as Justin Marlyrs 

 should have been addressed to Hadrian, who had expressed a few 

 years before his belief that the Christians are worshippers of the 

 sun-god Serapis. "Egypt," he says in a letter to Serrianns, a.d. 

 134, "which you commended to me, my dearest Serrianns, I have 

 found to be wholly fickle and inconstant, and continually wafted 

 about by every breath of fame. The worshippers of Serapis (liere) 

 are called Christians, and those who are devoted to the god Serapis 

 (I find) call themselves Bishops of Christ.' It adds to the interest 

 and oddness of this passage that it was written about four years 

 after the probable date of the Gospel according to Mark, twenty 

 years or so after the probable date of the Gosi)el according to Luke, 

 and probably about thirty years after the time when the Gospel 

 according to Matthew was written. (The Gospel according to John 

 was certainly not then in existence, for Justin Martyr makes no 

 mention of it in enforcing the very views which are supported by it 

 alone among the Gospels; while Polycarp, a.d. 168, cites the 

 authority of John in direct contradiction of the views expressed in 

 the Gospel said to be " according to John," but really the most 

 intensely anti-Johannine of all the books of the New Testament. 

 For the fourth Gospel is in the main Pauline, and one has but to 

 turn to the veritably Johannine Apocalypse to find how intensely 

 anti-Pauline John was.) 



perhaps to changes which had taken place in its subterranean 

 ducts and conduits — had been unable to give complete relief 

 to the forces then at work beneath the southern parts of 

 Europe. Whenever Vesuvius had been quiescent for a 

 while during 1868, earthquakes occurring at far-distant 

 places not only showed the connection which exists between 

 the action of Vesuvius and the condition of regions far 

 remote from Vesuvius, but that the great T^eapolitan outlet 

 was not able to relieve as usual the remote jjarts of that 

 wide volcanic region. Even in England and Ireland there 

 were earthquakes, at times corresponding significantly with 

 the temporary quiescence of Vesuvius. In fact, scarcely 

 ten days had passed after the occurrence of an earthquake 

 which alarmed the inhabitants of Western Europe, before a 

 great eruption of Vesuvius began. A vast cone was thrown 

 up, from which the imprisoned fires burst foith in rivers of 

 molten lava ; and round the base of this cone other smaller 

 ones formed themselves which added their efl^orts to that of 

 the central crater, and wrought more mischief than in any 

 eruption of Vesuvius since that of 1797. 



But, enormous as was the quantity of lava which those 

 cones poured forth, it would seem that Vesuvius was still 

 unal>le to give perfect relief to the imprisoned gases and 

 fluids which had long disturbed the South of Europe. All 

 that Vesuvius could do had been done ; the smaller cones 

 had discharged the lava which communicated directly with 

 them, and had then sunk to rest ; the great cone alone con- 

 tinued — but with diminished energy — to pour forth masses 

 of burning rock and streams of liquid lava. That the im- 

 prisoned subterranean fires had not fully found relief was 

 shown by the occurrence of an earthquake at Bucharest, 

 late on the evening of November 27, which was onlj- a day 

 after the partial cessation of the eruption of Vesuvius. Prob- 

 ably the masses of liquid fire which had been flowing 

 towards Vesuvius had colled ed beneath the whole of that 

 wide district which underlies Etna, Stromboli, and the 

 Neapolitan vents. Be this as it may, it is certain that but 

 a few hours after the occurrence of the earthquake in Walla- 

 chia. Mount Etna began to show signs of activity, and by 

 the evening of November 28, 1868, was in violent eruption. 



When we consider these circumstances in connection with 

 the recognised fact that Etna is an outlet of the same 

 volcanic system, we can hardly be surprised that the 

 inefiectual efforts of Vesuvius should have been followed 

 by an eruption of the great Sicilian volcano. We can 

 imagine that the lakes of fire which underlie the Neapolitan 

 vent should have been inundated, so to speak, by the 

 continual inrush of fresh matter, and that thus an overflow 

 should have taken place into the vast caverns beneath the 

 dome of Etna which had been partially cleared when the 

 Sicilian mounfciin was in eruption in 1865. During a whole 

 year some such process had probably been going on, tuitil at 

 length the forces which had been silently gathering them- 

 selves were able to overcome the resistance of the matter 

 which stopped up the outlets of Etna, and the mountain 

 was forced into violent and remarkably sudden action. 



Unlike Vesuvius, Etna has always, within historic times, 

 been recognised as an active volcano. Diodorus Siculus 

 speaks of an eruption which took place before the Trojan 

 war, and was so terrible in character as to drive away the 

 Sicani who had peopled a neighbouring district. We learn 

 also from Thucydides that in the sixth year of the Pelopon- 

 nesian war a lava stream destroyed the suburbs ?f Catania. 

 This eruption, says the historian, was the third which had 

 taken place since the island had been colonised by the 

 Greeks. Classical readers wiU scarcely need to be reminded 

 of Pindar's gi-aphic description of the eruption which took 

 place fifty years before the one referred to by Thucydides. 

 Although the poet only alludes to the mountain in passing, 



