But
is it not evident that these and all such legends are but variations of
those already analyzed?
In thus removing one by one the wrappings of symbolism, and displaying
at the centre and summit of these various creeds, He who is throned in
the sky, who comes with the dawn, who manifests himself in the light and
the storm, and whose ministers are the four winds, I set up no new god.
The ancient Israelites prayed to him who was seated above the firmament,
who commanded the morning and caused the day-spring to know its place,
who answered out of the whirlwind, and whose envoys were the four winds,
the four cherubim described with such wealth of imagery in the
introduction to the book of Ezekiel. The Mahometan adores "the clement
and merciful Lord of the Daybreak," whose star is in the east, who rides
on the storm, and whose breath is the wind. The primitive man in the New
World also associated these physical phenomena as products of an
invisible power, conceived under human form, called by name, worshipped
as one, and of whom all related the same myth differing but in
unimportant passages.
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