Not only was he honoured as the great "World King," he was regarded as Lord of the invisible world, and "Judge of the dead"; and it was taught that, in the world of spirits, all must appear before his dread tribunal, to have their destiny assigned them. As the true Messiah was prophesied of under the title of the "Man whose name was the branch," he was celebrated not only as the "Branch of Cush," but as the "Branch of God," graciously given to the earth for healing all the ills that flesh is heir to. * He was worshipped in Babylon under the name of El-Bar, or "God the Son." Under this very name he is introduced by Berosus, the Chaldean historian, as the second in the list of Babylonian sovereigns. **
* This is the esoteric meaning of Virgil's "Golden Branch," and of the Mistletoe Branch of the Druids. The proof of this must be reserved to the Apocalypse of the Past. I may remark, however, in passing, on the wide extent of the worship of a sacred branch. Not only do the Negroes in Africa in the worship of the Fetiche, on certain occasions, make use of a sacred branch (HURD'S Rites and Ceremonies), but even in India there are traces of the same practice. My brother, S. Hislop, Free Church Missionary at Nagpore, informs me that the late Rajah of Nagpore used every year, on a certain day, to go in state to worship the branch of a particular species of tree, called Apta, which had been planted for the occasion, and which, after receiving divine honours, was plucked up, and its leaves distributed by the native Prince among his nobles. In the streets of the city numerous boughs of the same kind of tree were sold, and the leaves presented to friends under the name of sona, or "gold."
** BEROSUS, in BUNSEN'S Egypt. The name "El-Bar" is given above in the Hebrew form, as being more familiar to the common reader of the English Bible. The Chaldee form of the name is Ala-Bar, which in the Greek of Berosus, is Ala-Par, with the ordinary Greek termination os affixed to it. The change of Bar into Par in Greek is just on the same principle as Ab, "father," in Greek becomes Appa, and Bard, the "spotted one," becomes Pardos, &c. This name, Ala-Bar, was probably given by Berosus to Ninyas as the legitimate son and successor of Nimrod. That Ala-Par-os was really intended to designate the sovereign referred to, as "God the Son," or "the Son of God," is confirmed by another reading of the same name as given in Greek. There the name is Alasparos. Now Pyrsiporus, as applied to Bacchus, means Ignigena, or the "Seed of Fire"; and Ala-sporos, the "Seed of God," is just a similar expression formed in the same way, the name being Grecised.