The prevalence of these solar and astronomical myths among a number of different nations separated by wide intervals of space and time is very remarkable. Egyptians, Indians, Babylonians, Chinese, Mexicans, and Peruvians had myths which were strangely similar, indeed almost identical, based on the sun’s annual passage through the constellations of the zodiac. His apparent decline and death as he approached the winter solstice, and his return to life when he had passed it, gave rise to myths of the murder of the Sun-god by some fierce wild boar, or treacherous enemy, and of his triumphant resurrection in renewed glory. Hence, also, the passage of the winter solstice was a season of general rejoicing and festivity, traces of which survive when the sirloin and turkey smoke upon the hospitable tables of modern Christmas. One remarkable myth had a very universal acceptance, that of the birth of the infant Sun-god from a virgin mother. It appears to have originated from the period, some 6,450 years ago, when the sun, which now rises at the winter solstice in the constellation of Sagittarius, rose in that of Pisces, with the constellation of the Virgin, with upraised arms marked by five stars, setting in the north-west. Anyhow, this myth of an infant god born of a virgin mother holds a prominent place in the religions of Egypt, India, China, Chaldæa, Greece, Rome, Siam, Mexico, Peru, and other nations. The resemblances are often so close that the first Jesuit missionaries to China found that their account of the miraculous conception of Christ had been anticipated by that of Fuh-ke, born 3468 B.C.; and if an ancient priest of Thebes or Heliopolis could be restored to life and taken to the Gallery of Dresden, he would see in Raffaelle’s Madonna di San Sisto what he would consider to be an admirable representation of Horus in the arms of Isis. The planets also, still more mysterious in their movements than the sun, and therefore still more endowed with human-like faculties of life, power, and purpose, were from an early period believed to exercise an influence on human affairs. Of the universality of this belief we find traces in the names of the days of the week, which are so generally taken from the sun, moon, and five visible planets—Mercury, Mars, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn—to whom special days were dedicated. If every seventh day is a day of rest, it was originally so because it was thought unlucky to undertake any work on the Sabbath, Saturday, or day of the gloomy and malignant Saturn.