150 Druidism in connection with Wiltshire. 
on Sundays. Invoking was the ordinary method of devotion on 
Sabbath days; sacrificing was extraordinary.” 
It was the custom of Abraham wherever he took up his abode, 
to build one of these temples, as he did afterwards in the plains of 
Mamre by Hebron,! and at Beersheba where he planted a grove, and 
invoked in the name of Jehovah. This appears to have been the 
practice of all his successors, of which numerous intimations have 
been given in Scripture. Isaac builded an altar in Beersheba and 
invoked in the name of the Lord Jehovah, who personally appeared 
to him.? Jacob set up the anointed pillar at Bethel,? and in 
Shechem he erected an altar.4| At Bethel he erected another pillar 
where Jehovah personally appeared to him and blessed him; this 
he anointed, and poured on it a drink offering or libation.? In 
Exodus it is related that Moses arose early in the morning, and 
builded an altar under the hill, and twelve pillars. “These” says 
Dr. Stukeley, “we have no reason to doubt were set in a circle, as 
the like was done after the Israelites were settled in Canaan, till 
the temple of Solomon was built: for Samuel when he dwelt at 
Ramah, built there an altar to Jehovah, in order to celebrate the 
public offices of religion.® 
These open circles or temples were commonly erected on plains 
and rising grounds, conspicuous and commodious for multitudes or 
a whole neighbourhood to assemble in. Public worship is commonly 
described in Scripture with reference to such places of assemblage, 
as by the prophet Isaiah, “In that day shall there be an altar to 
the Lord in the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the 
border thereof to the Lord.’” 
The Druidical religion subsisted from a very early period in Gaul 
and Britain, and Dr. Stukeley conceives that as the Druids were so 
eminently distinguished for their use of groves, this probably in- 
timates a more particular relation to Abraham, and that they 
derived this custom more immediately from him. The name Druid, 
is derived from a Greek word signifying oak, and denotes a priest 
of the groves which were formed commonly of oaks, where their 
1Gen. xiii. 18. ?xxvi. 25. ‘xxviii, 18. ‘xxxiii, 20. 5 xxxy. 14,15. 
61 Sam. vii. 17. 7 Isaiah xix. 19, 
