and under every green tree'. Thus likewise we read of the high places CHAP. VII. not being taken away, and of the people still madly sacrificing upon them". Thus, when Israel served Baal and the host of heaven, they failed not to plant a consecrated grove'. Thus also they set up images and groves in every high hill and under every green tree; and there they burned incense in all the high places, as did the heathen whom the Lord carried away before them. Thus Maachah made an idol in a grove; and thus a similar grove was equally planted by Ahab and Manasseh 3. Such is positively declared, we see, to have been the mode of worship usual among the Canaanites previous to their ejection: and accordingly it is referred to as such, in the very earliest parts of the history of Israel. The heaven-conducted invaders are strictly charged to destroy their altars, to break their images, and to cut down their groves: and they are themselves forbidden to plant a grove near an altar". The reason plainly was, because the altar of Baal was built upon a craggy rock or a lofty hill, and was surrounded by a holy grove. Hence we read of Saul abiding under a grove in a high place: and hence the Magian or Druidical prophets of Baal are called prophets of the groves 10 In the account which is given of Josiah's reformation, we find a very ample statement of the several particulars of the old Canaanitish idolatry. The king, we are told, put down the priests; who burned incense, on the various high places throughout Judah, to Baal the Sun and to the Moon and to the planets and to all the host of heaven. He likewise brought out and burned the grove, for which the women wove hangings or consecrated veils. He polluted Tophet: he took away the horses and chariot of the Sun: he defiled the three principal high places, which crowned the three peaks of the mount of Olives: and he broke in pieces the images, cut down the contiguous groves, and filled their places with the bones of men ". We meet with similar references to the old superstition in the book of Isaiah. When the prophet foretells the utter abolition of idolatry in the BOOK V. great day of the Lord, he describes the vain worshippers of the hero-gods, ás entering into the rocks and as going into the craggy caverns of the earth; while the indignation of the Deity rests upon all the groves of Bashan and of Lebanon, and terribly shakes every high mountain and every lofty hill. But the clefts of the rocks and the tops of the ragged rocks, or the sacred foramina through which the aspirants were wont to pass and the high places on the summits of craggy precipices, are alike unable to protect them and their useless idols; when the Earth itself, or the universal great mother, trembles before the Most High and acknowledges a present God'. In another place, when he reproaches the.degenerate Israelites with their spi ritual adultery, he exhibits them, as inflaming themselves with idols under every green tree, and as sacrificing children in the valleys under the clefts of the rocks; as venerating the smooth stones of the consecrated river with a drink-offering and a meat-offering, and as going up to the top of a lofty mountain in order to offer sacrifice. He then proceeds to specify with much exactness the precise nature of such devotion; teaching us in fact, that it was immediately connected with the celebration of the old funereal Mysteries. These apostate worshippers in groves, in caverns, on the banks of rivers, and on the summits of hills, visit Molech with perfumed ointment; and send out wandering imitative messengers, after the manner of the frantic Bacchanals and Menades. They descend into hell, or the mimic infernal regions; they weary themselves with the length of those erratic progresses, which are copies of the mystic wanderings of the great father and the great mother. Yet, in the midst of their doleful Orgies, they do not give themselves up to despair, as if their divinity was lost never to be recovered: on the contrary, in due season, they find the life of him who is accounted their sovereign power; and, thus receiving him from the dead, they are no longer grieved, but their temporary sorrow is changed into the most tumultuous joy *. Isaiah ii. 10-21. • Isaiah lvii. 3—10. Neither Bp. Lowth nor Bp. Stock seem to me to have understood the true meaning of this very curious passage; though they both rightly observe, that it relates to the multiplied idolatrous imitations of the Israelites. The latter part of it ought, I apprehend, to be translated as follows. Also thou didst visit Molech with ointment, and This early mode of worship was by no means confined to the land of CHAP. vrt. Canaan. According to Strabo and Herodotus, the Persians always offered up their sacrifices on the top of some lofty mountain: and, according to Eubulus in Porphyry, Zoroaster first taught them to venerate the sacred grotto by dedicating to Mithras a natural cave in the lofty neighbouring region of Bokhara'. Thus also the Scythians or Goths had their holy mountain and their mysterious cavern, where the Archimage was accustomed to retire, ere he claimed, like the present Lama of Thibet, to be an incarnation of the deity whom they worshipped: and thus the Phrygians venerated the great mother in the consecrated recesses of mount Ida; while the Cretans dedicated to the great father a cave and a hill, which was distinguished by the same appellation. In a similar manner, we read, that the Thracian Orpheus went annually with his disciples to offer up, on the summit of a lofty mountain, a sacrifice to the Sun; in gratitude for his escape to that hill, while an infant, from the fury of a huge dragon3: and in Sicily we find mount Eryx, with its attached grove and sepulchral tumulus, dedicated to the rites of the navicular Venus. The same worship prevailed in Pontus and Cappadocia : for, when Mithridates made war upon the Romans, he chose one of the highest hills in his dominions; and, erecting upon it an immense pile, he there sacrificed to the god of didst multiply thy perfumes: and thou sentest out thy messengers to a distance, and thou didst bring thyself down into Hades. With the multitude of thy progresses thou didst weary thyself; yet thou saidst not, The matter is desperate. Thou hast found the life of thy supreme power; therefore thou art no longer grieved. I have supposed the sending messengers to a distance, and the multitude of the progresses, to relate to the mad erratic excursions of those who celebrated the Orgies of the great father: yet it is not impossible, that those expressions may allude to the laborious pilgrimages to the shrine of a favourite deity, which still prevail so notoriously throughout Hindostan. The ridiculous pilgrimages of the Romanists and the Mohammedans have both originated from the same pagan source. Strab. Geog. lib. xv. p. 732. Herod. Hist. lib. i. c. 131. Porph. de ant. nymph. p. 253, 254. • Strab. Geog. lib. vii. p. 297, 298. Demet. Mosch. Præf. in Orph. Lithic. p. 290, 292. By the dragon we are to understand Python or Typhon; and the infancy of Orpheus relates to his imitative regeneration. * Virg. Æneid. lib. v. ver. 760. 4 BOOK : armies'. Lofty mountains, each viewed as the mountain of debarkation, were equally venerated by the ancient Celts; and the most térrific rites of the Druids were celebrated in deep groves of oak. Such likewise even now is the worship of the Hindoos and Japanese and Burmans: and, when America was first discovered by the Spaniards, the priests of Mexico were wont to select, for their religious incantations, rocky caverns, lofty mountains, and the deep gloom of eternal forests'. In short, every towering hill was reckoned holy: and we are assured by Melanthes, that it was the universal practice of the ancients to offer sacrifice on the highest mountains to him who was accounted the highest god. The same remark may be made with regard to islands. Among the Hindoos, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Scythians, the Celts, and the Americans, they were alike accounted sacred and were alike used for the purposes of devotion: insomuch that the learned Bailly, struck with this universal agreement, notices indeed the circumstance, but is unable to give any satisfactory reason for it 5. Various instances of this superstition have already been adduced: hereafter, in the proper place I shall resume the subject, distinguishing between the firm island and the floating island. 1. If we inquire into the notions, which the old idolaters entertained, and which modern idolaters still entertain, respecting their consecrated mountains or high places, we shall constantly find ourselves brought to the very same point. They esteemed the summits of them the peculiar abode of the hero-gods: and they commonly described them, either as a sort of Paradise, or as the place where the Ark rested after the deluge. Sometimes they united the two ideas; and thus exhibited the holy mountain, both as an Elysium tenanted by the great father, and as the final scope of his perilous voyage from one World to another. Such legends and such opinions leave no room for doubt. The hero-gods were those mortals, who flourished in the two golden ages antediluvian and postdiluvian: and • Davies's Mythol. p. 192. Lucan. Pharsal, lib. iii. ver. 398–425. 3 Maur. Ind. Ant. vol. ii. p. 39. Kæmpfer's Japan b. v. c. 3. p. 417. Purch. Pilgrim. b. viii. c. 12. p. 803. Symes's Embass. to Ava. vol. ii. p. 81, 183, 238. Natal. Com. lib. i. c. 10. 5 Lettres sur l'Atlantide. p. 361. the mountain, which is thus shadowed out by every local consecrated hill, CHAP. VII. can only be the arkite and Paradisiacal mountain of Ararat. (1.) Among the Hindoos this holy mountain bears the name of Meru. But I have already shewn very fully from circumstantial evidence, that Meru, though geographically situated at the head of the Ganges, is the local mount of Paradise and of the Ark'. Hence it will necessarily follow, that, whatever is avowedly reckoned an imitative transcript of Meru, must also be viewed as a professed copy of Ararat. Now the Hindoos deem every holy mountain a copy of Meru: and, accordingly, they have many hills, which are all equally designated by this title. Every hill therefore, which is thus designated, is really a local transcript of the Armenian mountain: and, as the theology of the whole gentile world is fundamentally the same; each sacred peak, wherever situated, must obviously be viewed in the same light. Agreeably to this conclusion, the traditions and notions, attached to these several high places, will constantly be found to point towards Paradise and the Ark: and the reason is, that each is the local Ararat of the country where it is situated. Thus Parnassus, and Olympus, and the Singalese peak of Adam, and the Mauritanian Atlas, and the British Snowdon and Cader-Idris, not to mention almost innumerable other hills, are all equally imitative transcripts of what the Hindoos call Meru but what is really the Paradisiacal mountain of the Ark. It is to this northern mountain of Ararat, northern with respect to so large a part of civilized Asia, which was the prototype of all the consecrated hills of the Gentiles, that the two prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel allude in their predictions relative to the downfall of the kings of Babylon and Tyre. The latter expressly terms it Eden, the garden of God, and the holy mountain of God; mentioning at the same time the covering cherub, which was stationed at the gate of Paradise, and which had been emulously copied by the Tyrian prince: the former, in direct reference to the idolatrous canonization of aspiring monarchs and to the wild notion which still prevails in Hindostan relative to the possibility of a mortal's, • Vide supra book ii. c. 2. § I. 1, 5. Pag. Idol. VOL. III. Asiat. Res. vol. viii. p. 319. |