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Typhon described in a manner that clearly identifies him with the destroying comet. (See page 140, ante.)

The entire religion of the Egyptians was based upon a solar-myth, and referred to the great catastrophe in the history of the earth when the sun was for a time obscured in dense clouds.

Speaking of the legend of “the dying sun-god,” Rev. O. D. Miller says: 

“The wide prevalence of this legend, and its extreme antiquity, are facts familiar to all Orientalists.  There was the Egyptian Osiris, the Syrian Adonis, the Hebrew Tamheur, the Assyrian Du-Zu, all regarded as solar deities, vet as having lived a mortal life, suffered a violent death, being subsequently raised from, the dead. . . .  How was it possible to conceive the solar orb as dying and rising from the dead, if it had not already been taken for a mortal being, as a type of mortal man? . . .  We repeat the proposition:  it was impossible to conceive the sun as dying and descending into hades until it had been assumed as a type and representative of man. . . .  The reign of Osiris in Egypt, his war with Typhon, his death and resurrection, were events appertaining to the divine dynasties.  We can only say, then, that the origin of these symbolical ideas was extremely ancient, without attempting to fix its chronology.”

But when, we realize the fact that these ancient religions were built upon the memory of an event which had really happened—­an event of awful significance to the human race—­the difficulty which perplexed Mr. Miller and other scholars disappears.  The sun had, apparently, been slain by an evil thing; for a long period it returned not, it was dead; at length, amid the rejoicings of the world, it arose from the dead, and came in glory to rule mankind.

And these events, as I have shown, are perpetuated in the sun-worship which still exists in the world in many

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forms.  Even the Christian peasant of Europe still lifts his hat to the rising sun.

The religion of the Hindoos was also based on the same great cosmical event.

Indra was the great god, the sun.  He has a long and dreadful contest with Vritra, “the throttling snake.”  Indra is “the cloud-compeller”; he “shatters the cloud with his bolt and releases the imprisoned waters";[1] that is to say, he slays the snake Vritra, the comet, and thereafter the rain pours down and extinguishes the flames which consume the world.

“He goes in search of the cattle, the clouds, which the evil powers have driven away."[2]

That is to say, as the great heat disappears, the moisture condenses and the clouds form.  Doubtless mankind remembered vividly that awful period when no cloud appeared in the blazing heavens to intercept the terrible heat.

“He who fixed firm the moving earth; who tranquillized the incensed mountains; who spread the spacious firmament; who consolidated the heavens—­he, men, is Indra.