ISRAELITE AND INDIAN. 75 



for bearers. It became the standard of their warring and wan- 

 dering life. 



In addition to what has been called the ark or tribal fetich, the 

 mystery-bag that each Indian had is to be compared with the Is- 

 raelite teraph, which was a family or tutelary fetich independent 

 of the national worship, and later was the subject of frequent 

 denunciation. It was probably made of carved wood, and was 

 often carried on the person, but was generally held as a house- 

 hold god or domestic oracle. The teraphim markedly resembled 

 the Roman penates. 



This comparison is explanatory of the statement that neither 

 the Israelites nor the Indians worshiped idols. Its truth depends 

 upon what is considered to be an idol. If the definition is limited 

 to the human form the assertion is true, because their religion 

 was not anthropomorphic ; but fetiches were certainly the objects 

 of worship, the recrudescent forms of which, appearing even in 

 civilization, have been amulets, lucky-stones, pieces of wood and 

 charms. 



Sabbath. It is not possible, in discussing the Israelites, to neg- 

 lect the institution of the Sabbath. The four quarters of the 

 moon made an obvious division of the month, and wherever the 

 new moon and full moon are made religious occasions there comes 

 a cycle of fourteen or fifteen days, of which the week of seven or 

 eight days forms half. It is significant that in the older parts of 

 the Hebrew Scriptures the new moon and the Sabbath are almost 

 invariably mentioned together. Among the Israelites, and per- 

 haps among the Canaanites, joy on the new moon became the type 

 of religious festivity in general. There is an indication that in 

 old times the feast of the new moon lasted two days, so that an 

 approximation to regular recurrence of the subdivisions constitut- 

 ing the week was gained. The Babylonians and Assyrians had 

 an institution dividing the month into four parts, by which, on 

 the days assigned, labor was forbidden ; but originally the Israel- 

 ites' abstinence from labor was only incidental to their not work- 

 ing at the same time that they were feasting. "While they were 

 nomads, with only intermittent work, they had no occasion for a 

 fixed day of rest. 



The new moons were at least as important as the Sabbath until 

 the seventh century before Christ. When the local sacrifices were 

 abolished and the rites and feasts were limited to the central altar, 

 which practically could be visited only at rare intervals, the gen- 

 eral festival of the new moon ceased. The Sabbath did not, but 

 became an institution of law divorced from ritual. The connec- 

 tion between the week of seven days and the work of creation is 

 now recognized as secondary. The original sketch of the deca- 

 logue probably did not contain any allusion to the creation, and it 



