462 OPINIONS OF THE ANCIENTS. 



prizing, that in the absence of revelation, all the 

 religious and philosophical systems of mankind 

 should have been founded on the sensible ope- 

 rations of the material universe. 



The truth is> that all the names of the Supreme 

 Being in the ancient Hebrew, as in every other 

 written language, seem to have been originally 

 derived from the operations of the sun, light, or 

 fire, as we learn from the researches of Bryant, 

 Parkhurst, and other learned etymologists. 



Innumerable passages might be quoted from 

 both the Old and New Testaments, in which 

 the Creator of all things is represented by the 

 brightness of the sun, and under the similitude 

 of light or fire, as in the burning bush, the 

 lightnings of Sinai, the pillar of fire, the vision 

 of Ezekiel, who beheld brightness and flashes 

 of lightning ; that of Daniel, to whom the throne 

 of God appeared like a fiery flame ; the repre- 

 sentation of angels as fiery spirits or seraphs ; 

 and the cloven tongues of fire that appeared on 

 the day of Pentecost. There are also many 



of Philosophy, vol. i. p. 64.) We also learn from Macrobius, 

 that in Egypt, as in several other oriental countries, the sun was 

 worshipped under the symbol of a bull, which, like the ram, the 

 serpent, and many other animals dedicated to the sun, were re- 

 garded as sacred by the vulgar. And so deeply rooted was this 

 superstition among the Israelites, that they made them a golden 

 calf in the wilderness. We further read in the books of the 

 Kings, Chronicles, and Prophets, that under the titles of Baal, 

 Moloch, and Chemosh, the Chaldean and Phoenician worship of 

 the sun was almost constantly practised by the Jews in groves 

 and high places. 



