XXVI.) that it was not God the Father, who was supposed by the ancients
to have been the _Creator_ of the world, but God the Son, the Redeemer
and Saviour of Mankind. Now, this Redeemer and Saviour was, as we have
seen, the Sun, and Prof. Max Müller tells us that in the _Vedic_
mythology, the Sun is not the bright Deva only, "who performs his daily
task in the sky, but he is supposed to perform much greater work. He is
looked upon, in fact, as the _Ruler_, as the _Establisher_, as the
_Creator of the world_."[496:6]
Having been invoked as the "Life-bringer," the Sun is also called--in
the Rig-Veda--"the Breath or Life of all that move and rest;" and lastly
he becomes "_The Maker of all things_," by whom all the worlds have been
brought together.[497:1]
There is a prayer in the _Vedas_, called _Gayatree_, which consists of
three measured lines, and is considered the holiest and most efficacious
of all their religious forms. Sir William Jones translates it thus:
"Let us adore the supremacy of that spiritual Sun, the
godhead, who illuminates all, who re-creates all, from whom
all proceed, to whom all must return; whom we invoke to direct
our undertakings aright in our progress toward his holy seat."
With Seneca (a Roman philosopher, born at Cordova, Spain, 61 B. C.)
then, we can say:
"You may call the Creator of all things by different names
(Bacchus, Hercules, Mercury, etc.), but they are only
different names of the same divine being, the _Sun_."