<pre style="font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">cannot always be traced, but the indications of their work
are in most cases sufficiently clear. The relationship, for
instance, between Baal and Baal-zebub cannot be doubted.
The one represents the Sun in his glory as quickener of
Nature and painter of its beauty, the other the insect-
breeding power of the Sun. Baal-zebub is the Fly-god.
Only at a comparatively recent period did the deity of <span style="font-size: 12px; text-align: justify;">the Philistines, whose oracle was consulted by Ahaziah </span></pre>
<pre style="font-size: 13px; line-height: normal; text-align: left;">(2 Kings i.), suffer under the reputation of being 'the
Prince of Devils/ his name being changed by a mere pun
to Beelzebul (dung-god). % It is not impossible that the
modern Egyptian mother's hesitation to disturb flies
settling on her sleeping child, and the sanctity attributed
to various insects, originated in the awe felt for him. The
title Fly-god is parallelled by the reverent epithet airojivio?,
applied to Zeus as worshipped at Elis, 1 the Myiagrus deus
of the Romans, 2 and the Myiodes mentioned by Pliny. 8
Our picture is probably from a protecting charm, and evi-
dently by the god's believers. There is a story of a peasant
woman in a French church who was found kneeling before
a marble group, and was warned by a priest that she
was worshipping the wrong figure — namely, Beelzebul?.
'Never mind/ she replied, 'it is well enough to have
• friends on both sides.' The story, though now onfy ben
trovato, would represent the actual state of mind in many
a Babylonian invoking the protection of the Fl^-god
against formidable swarms of his venomous subjects. i
Not less clear is the illustration supplied by Scandi-
navian mythology. In Saemund's Edda the evil-minded
Loki says : —
Odin ! dost thou remember
When we in early days
Blended our blood together ?
The two became detached very slowly ; for their separa-
tion implied the crumbling away of a great religion, and
its distribution into new forms ; and a religion requires,
relatively, as long to decay as it does to grow, as we who
live under a crumbling religion have good reason to know.
Protap Chunder Mozoomdar, of the Brahmo-Somaj, in
an address in London, said, 'The Indian Pantheon has <span style="font-size: 12px; text-align: justify;">many millions of deities, and no space is left for the </span></pre>
