Imagery and figurative language borrowed from the consideration of the aspect and functions of the great orb of day have found their way into and beautified the religious thought of every modern Christian community. The words of the poet Thomson: "Prime cheerer light! Of all material beings first and best! Efflux divine! Nature's resplendent robe! Without whose vesting beauty all were wrapt In unessential gloom; and thou, O Sun! Soul of surrounding worlds! in whom best seen Shines out thy Maker!" find briefer expression in the simple speech of the dying Turner: "The sun is God." _Father-Earth_. Though, in nearly every portion of the globe the apotheosis of earth is as a woman, we find in America some evidences of a cult of the terrestrial Father-God. Concerning the cave-worship of the Mexican aborigines, Dr. Brinton says (413. 38, 50): "The intimate meaning of this cave-cult was the worship of the Earth. The Cave-God, the Heart of the Hills, really typified the Earth, the Soil, from whose dark recesses flow the limpid streams and spring the tender shoots of the food-plants as well as the great trees. To the native Mexican the Earth was the provider of food and drink, the common Father of All; so that, to this day, when he would take a solemn oath, he stoops to the earth, touches it with his hand, and repeats the solemn formula: '_Cuix amo nechitla in toteotzin?_ Does not our Great God see me?'" _Father-Wind_. Dr. Berendt, when travelling through the forests of Yucatan, heard his Maya Indian guide exclaim in awe-struck tones, as the roar of a tornado made itself heard in the distance: _He catal nohoch yikal nohoch tat_, "Here comes the mighty wind of the Great Father." As Dr. Brinton points out, this belief has analogues all over the world, in the notion of the wind-bird, the master of breath, and the spirit, who is father of all the race, for we learn also that "the whistling of the wind is called, or attributed to, _tat acmo_, words which mean 'Father Strong-Bird'" (411. 175). The cartography of the Middle Ages and the epochs of the great maritime discoveries has made us familiar with the wind-children, offspring of the wind-father, from whose mouths came the breezes and the storms, and old Boreas, of whom the sailors sing, has traces of the fatherhood about him. More than one people has believed that God, the Father, is Spirit, breath, wind. _Other Father-Gods_. The ancient Romans applied the term _Pater_ to many of their gods beside the great Jove. Vulcan was called _Lemnus Pater_, the "Lemnian Father"; Bacchus, _Pater Lenæus_; Janus, the "early god of business," is termed by Horace, _Matutinus Pater,_ "Early-morning Father"; Mars is _Mars Pater,_ etc. The Guarayo Indians, of South America, prayed for rain and bountiful harvests to "Tamoï, the grandfather, the old god in heaven, who was their first ancestor and had taught them agriculture" (100. 288).