pfaat "bore, Iscgcl^ti/, aoR bijrlc/. 273 



all was Cedar, there was no stone seen." Since King Solomon's 

 time, the Cedar forest of Lebanon has become terribly reduced, but 

 Dr. Hooker, in i860, counted some four hundred trees, and Mr. 

 Tristram, a more recent traveller in the Holy Land, discovered a 

 new locality in the mountains of Lebanon, where the Cedar was 

 more abundant. Twelve of the oldest of these Cedars of Lebanon 

 bear the title of " Friends of Solomon," or the " Twelve Apostles." 

 The Arabs call all the older trees, saints, and believe an evil fate 

 will overtake anyone who injures them. Every year, at the feast 

 of the Transfiguration, the Maronites, Greeks, and Armenians go 

 up to the Cedars, and celebrate mass on a rough stone altar at 



their feet. The Cedar is made the emblem of the righteous in 



the 92nd Psalm, and is likened to the countenance of the Son of 

 God in the inspired Canticles of Solomon. Ezekiel (xxxi., 3 — 9) 

 compares the mighty King of Assyria to a Cedar in Lebanon, with 

 fair branches, and says, as a proof of his greatness and power, that 

 ♦' the Cedars in the garden of God could not hide him." In the 

 Romish Church, the Cedar of Lebanon, because of its height, its 

 incorruptible substance, and the healing virtues attributed to it in 

 the East, is a symbol of the Virgin, expressing her greatness, her 



beauty, and her goodness. The Jews evidently regarded the 



Cedar as a sacred tree : hence it was used in the making of idols. 

 According to a very old tradition, the Cedar was the tree from 

 which Adam obtained the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. 

 The ancient legend relating how the Cross of Christ was formed of 

 a tree combining in itself the wood of the Cypress, Cedar, and 

 Pine, will be found under the heading Cypress. Another 

 tradition states that of the three woods of which the Cross was 

 composed, and which symbolised the three persons of the Holy 

 Trinity, the Cedar symbolised God the Father. Pythagoras re- 

 commended the Cedar, the Laurel, the Cypress, the Oak, and the 



Myrtle, as the woods most befitting to honour the Divinity. 



The Shittim wood of the Scriptures is considered by some to have 

 been a species of Cedar, of which the most precious utensils were 

 made: hence the expression Ccdro digna signified "worthy of eter- 

 nity." The Cedar is the emblem of immortality. The ancients 



called the Cedar " life from the dead," because the perfume of its 

 wood drove away the insec5ls and never-dying worms of the tombs. 

 According to Evelyn, in the temple of Apollo at Utica, there was 

 found Cedar- wood nearly two thousand years old ; " and in 

 Sagunti, of Spain, a beam, in a certaih oratoiy consecrated to 

 Diana, which had been brought from Zant two hundred )'ears 

 before the destruction of Troy. The statue of that goddess in 

 the famous Ephesian Temple was of this material also, as was 

 most of the timber-work in all their sacred edifices." In a 

 temple at Rome there was a statue of Apollo Sosianus in Cedar- 

 wood originally brought from Seleucia. Virgil states that Cedar- 

 wood was considered to be so durable, that it was employed for 



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