flesh;" Golon, the king of Sicily, after his victory over the Carthaginians at Ilimera (13. C. 180), made the abolition of child-sacrifices in honour of Moloch a condition of peace; a cortain Iphicrates dovised another attempt at their extinction; but they survived the destruction of Carthago itself; till at last, in the second contury after Christ, the proconsul Tiberius, to put an end to the abomination, ordered the priests who performed the rite to be crucified on the trees of their temples. When, in B. C. 116, two Gauls had been sacrificed in one of the streets of Rome, the practice was forbidden, "except when human offerings were ordered by the Sibylline books." The first interdiction for Italy was proclaimed by the senate in B. C. 96, especially in connection with the art of magic. But that law was by no means decisive or effectual. Men were sacrificed by the most prominent, and often the most educated individuals, as by Caesar, at a sedition of his soldiers, by Augustus after the victory over Mark Antony and at the surrender of Perusia, by Vatinius whom Cicero accused of offering the entrails of boys to the gods of the lower world, by Nero at the appoarance of a comet, and frequently at his magical incantations, by Commodus (A. C. 180) who at tho mystorios of Mithra offered human victims, by Didius Julianus (A. C. 192) and Heliogabalus (A. C. 217) who found satisfaction in sacrificing children to the Sun in connection with magic artifices, by the emperor Valorian (A. C. 253) who on the advice of an Egyptian magician sacrificed boys and disemboweled newborn babes, and by Maxentius (A. C. 306), who cut open pregnant females and examined the bowels of children to invoke the demons or to avert impending war: abominations indulged in at the same period by others also. Indeed, the Fathers of the Church are almost unanimous in testifying to the existence of the horrid practice in their own time. Therefore, the prohibition had to be repeated again and again; it was rigorously enjoined by the emperor Claudius, and renewed by Hadrian for the whole extent of the empire. Still the effect of these edicts was long imperfect and fluctuating. The Gauls sacrificed men publicly at every important crisis in the time of Caesar and Cicero. Some transalpine tribes killed human victims at least up to the time of the elder Pliny. On an elevation in Arcadia, Zeus Lycaous continued to be honoured with sacrilicos of boys in the time of Pausanias, in the second century of the present era. The old Prussians and Goths adhered to the custom for centuries after their open adoption of Christianity. And in India, the burning of the widows was maintained up to the establishment of the British rule. In 1829, Lord William Bentinck abolished it as far as his authority extended, that is among the 37 millions British subjects out of 77 millions souls forming the population. Instancos, however, are recorded at Oodyporo so lato as August 30, 1838, and at Kolah in October 29, 1840. But in 1844, a religious change was wrought. It began in the stronghold of the rite, among the Rajpoots in Rajpootana living in the north-western frontier, a brave race of warriors and hunters, and almost revered by the other tribes. Lieutenant Colonel Ludlow, then the English representative at Jypore, happily availed himself of the movement to carry out his long cherished and philanthropic designs. He forcibly pointed out what indeed had long been known, that the rite of sultee was not only unsanctioned but inferentially forbidden by the earliest and most authoritative Hindoo scriptures; that the laws of Manu clearly involve its non-existence; that an obscuro passage in Rig-Veda, long the only support of its advocates, has been clearly proved to have no roference to it whatever; and that, in fact, it was an unauthorised innovation and horosy of no earlier date than B. C. 300. Ludlow succoeded first in Jypore (Aug. 1846), next among most of the romaining Rajpoot statos, and then in some other free principalities of India occupying about two thirds of the whole territory. Among the Dahomans also the rite is beginning to lose ground; it is by the chiefs upheld from motives of expediency rather than of religion; king Gelele released, at Captain Burton's intercossion, nearly half of the intended victims; this prince, having to porform "a disagreablo duty" over his ancestral graves, takes care that the executions aro performed without cruelty; in 1863 and 1864, he allowed no victim to be put to death publicly during day-time; and sometimes he exposes the men without slaying them. "If I were to give up this custom at once", said he, "my head would be taken off to-morrow; by and by, little by little, much may be dono." Thus, then, the slaughter of men to secure the favour of the gods originated indeed in a religious sontiment common to all nations and apparently inherent in the human mind; it was rosorted to on occasions of exceptional solemnity when the sacrifice of animals socmed inadequate to express the full depth of religious emotion; it was long regarded as a form of divine worship so praiseworthy and exalted that its neglect was deplored as a symptom of degeneracy and of doclining oarnostness; it proved compatible with a very considerable degree of civilisation and mental culture; and as it accustomed mon to feel supremo satisfaction in seeing their follow-beings nay thoir own children massacred, pierced by the sword, burnt to death, hurled from rocks or lofty torraces, drowned in rivers, seas or cess-pools, exposed to starvation or other wise cruelly exterminated, it is one of the awful warnings held out by history to prove how narrow-minded enthusiasm, even if exercised for spiritual ends, may lead to the most revolting and most degrading enormities a warning equalled if not surpassed, in the Christian times, by the burning of witches and the horrors of the inquisition. We might now enter upon the question how far human sacrifices were practised among the Hebrews; but in order to prepare the way still more completely for the unbiassed treatment of that enquiry, we deem it expedient to premise a sketch of XXII. THE VARIOUS FORMS OF IDOLATRY ADOPTED BY THE HEBREWS. A COMPREHENSIVE summary of the variety and extent of heathen worship among the Israelitos, as mirrored forth in the works of their historians and prophets, suggests the most momentous and most significant conclusions with regard to the religious development of the chosen nation. Can a stronger proof of the confusion which long prevailed in the notions of the Deity be conceived than the fact that men who meant to serve Jehovah in earnestness and piety, represented and worshipped Him by images? Even the history of Jeroboam is instructive in this respect. This king, anxious to provent his newly-acquired subjects from visiting the capital of the sister kingdom, not from worshipping its God, placed two golden calves, the familiar symbols of the Egyptian Apis and Mnevis, in Bethel and Dan, towns probably consecrated by national sanctuaries from romote timos,' and proclaimed to the people, "Behold these are thy gods, o Israel, that brought thee out of the land of Egypt."? It is not surprising to find that the author of the Books of Kings, living at a time when the worship of Jehovah began to take root in consequence of the promulgation and diffusion of the Pentateuch, severely reprimanded this act of Jeroboam, and described it as the cause and origin of grievous sin, which was sure to be followed by fearful visitations, and which in his zeal ho goes so far as unjustly to characterise as rejection of Jehovah and adoption of strango gods. It is even less surprising to notice that the compiler of the Books of Chronicles, writing at a still lator period and with a strongly marked Levitical bias, did not scruple to call those images "no-gods", and strongly to denounce them as foul paganism." But an impartial examination of the facts warrants no such conclusion. The arrangement of Jeroboam had a 1 See Comm. on Genes. p. 213. 3 2 1 Ki.XII. 28; comp. 2 Ki. XVII. 16. XIV.9; comp. Jer. XLVIII. 13. 7 2 Chr. XIII. 8-10. 8 10 political rather than a religious object; it was not designed to weaken. the people's attachment to the common God of the Hebrows, but to strengthen their fidelity to the new dynasty. The phrase so frequently repeated by the later historian, "the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin", does not refer to the worship of heathen gods, but merely to the consecration of the two golden statues. This may not only be reasonably inferred from several passages,' but is distinctly stated in that narrative which, after declaring that Jehu killed the worshippers of Baal, burnt his images, and destroyed his temple, continues, "However, as regards the sins of Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, who caused Israel to sin, Jehu did not depart from them, namely, the golden calves that were in Bethel and in Dan."' Jeroboam transgressed therefore not the first but the second commandment; he did not repudiate Jehovah, but fashioned Him in golden images. However, the people, uneducated and eagerly bent upon foreign superstitions, could not fail ere long to regard these statues not as impersonations of Jehovah, but actually as the Egyptian Apis or Mnovis, and to worship them as such. Hence the prophets stigmatized them not unfairly as pernicious snares; they called Beth-ol, the house or town of God, tauntingly Beth-aven, the town of iniquity; 12 they castigated the practice among the worst forms of idolatry certain to provoke the wrath of God. 13 Indeed the worship of the golden calvos inovitably caused many deplorable aberrations; and in this sense Hebrew moralists wore justified in inveighing against “all the sins of Jeroboam.”1⁄4 1 But we are able to adduce even more striking instances and proofs of the proposition above set forth. The pious priest Ahimelech who, at Nob, conducted a complete and lawful service, 15 had in his possession a gold-plated image or ephod which evidently represented Jehovah. David appropriated to himself this ephod; and he solemnly consulted it, whenever in critical emergencies he wished to explore the will of God. Having retired to Keilah and being actively pursued by Saul, "he said to Abiathar the priest, Bring hither the ephod; then said David, O Lord God of Israel, Thy servant has heard for certain that Saul seeks to come to Keilah to destroy the city for my sake... Will Saul come down as Thy servant has heard? O Lord God 8 2 Ki. III. 3; XIII. 2; XV. 9, 18, 24, 28; etc. 91 Ki. XVI. 31-33; 2 Ki. III. 1-3; XIII. 6. 10 2 Ki. X. 29; comp. vers. 26—28. 13 Hos. VIII. 5, 6; X. 5; XIII. 2; Am. III. 14; IV. 4; 6; VII. 9, 13; VIII. ས. 13, 14: in which passages the allusions, 15 1 Sam. XXI. 2-10. of Israel, I beseech Thee, tell Thy servant. And the Lord said, He will como down." Whon after the pillage and destruction of the town of Ziklag by the Amalekitos, despair overpowered the people, Davidso relates the historian "strengthened himself by the Lord his God"; he ordered Abiathar to bring the ephod; and "he enquired of the Lord, saying, Shall I pursue after this troop? shall I overtake them? And He answered him, Pursue; for thou shalt surely overtake them, and certainly recover all." The author of the Books of Samuel utters no word of reproof against David's use of the ephod; but the Chronist, faithful to his desire of clearing his favourites from all deeds deemed reproachful at his time, makos no mention whatever of that figure in the narrative of the events in question. David had, besides, in his house an image of the Teraphim, obviously for his legitimate domestic worship; and the prophet Hosea enumerates the Teraphim, like "statue and ephod", and like "kings, chiefs and sacrifices", as an element of national happiness and prosperity, "whon the children of Israel again sook the Lord their God and David their king, and when they fear the Lord and His goodness in later days."" 4 Micah, living in mount Ephraim, had abstractod from his mothor and then restored to her a sum of money; when she received it, she declared, "I had wholly dedicated the silver to the Lord from my hand for my son, to make a graven image and a molten image”; and when these figures had been made and placed in the house, together with an ephod and Teraphim, and when the services of an itinerant Lovite had been secured, Micah was certain to have obtained the favour of God, and exclaimed with joyful confidence, "Now I know that the Lord will do mo good, since I have a Lovito to be my priest." These facts lead to the most remarkable conclusion that even several and different images, worshipped simultaneously, were by well-disposed people viewed as lawful embodiments of Johovah; hence a number of Danites who, in search of settled abodes, passed through mount Ephraim, wore most eager to secure both those images and the Levite, and when they had accomplished their design by cunning and violence, Micah was overwhelmed by grief and consternation. The author of the Book of Judges conveyed indeed an implied disapproval of Micah's images, "In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did 1 1 Sam. XXIII. 9-11. 2 1 Sam. XXX. 6-8; comp. 2 Sam. II. 1; V. 19, 23, 24 (XXI. 1), which passages merely state that "David enquired of the Lord”, without mentioning the ephod. 7 3 Comp. 1 Chr. XIV. 10. 4 1 Sam. XIX. 11-17. Hos. III. 4, 5; comp. Comm. on Gen. p. 370. • Judg. XVII. 3-5, 12, 13. 7 Judg. XVIII. 14—26. |