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By the Rev. J. L. Ross, 181 
Lord” in Gilgal:! David on his restoration to the kingdom was 
received by the people at Gilgal :? and lastly, we find that a college 
of priests and prophets existed at Gilgal, which seems to have been 
the customary residence of the prophet Elijah.* 
“When we recollect therefore,” to cite again the editor of Cal- 
met, “that the Druidical circles of stones were temples; that the 
greatest Druidical circle of stones in our island, was the place of 
assembly for the whole people, as it were; that here were solemn 
compacts made, solemn treaties ratified, and national faith pledged, 
to say nothing of the administration of public worship, &c., the 
conformity to certain ideas which prevailed among the Hebrews in 
their early commonwealth, is striking ; and those ideas their great- 
est prophets and magistrates were so far from reproving, that they 
rather countenanced and supported them. ‘The lesser erections of 
stones, their masses, their forms, their application, which appear 
most clearly in the earliest Scripture ages, support the acknowledge- 
ment of a similitude no less striking between the remote islanders 
of the West, and the patriarchs of Palestine in the Hast. The sons 
of Japhet, unquestionably, derived many of their institutions from 
the same sources as the more favoured sons of Shem; and those 
resemblances confirm the proposition that ‘God has made of one 
blood all nations of men.’?” And in conclusion he remarks, ‘““We 
need say no more in support of our proposition, that the religion 
which caused these circles of stones to be constructed, in so many 
and so distant places, was once very general among mankind. We 
have traced them in India, in Persia, in Western Asia, in Greece, 
in Northern Europe, in the British Isles: farther proof is unneces- 
sary; the evidence is sufficient, and the inference is most just, that 
their origin may safely be placed in those remote ages when the 
patriarchal religion maintained itself in much of its primitive sim- 
plicity, and while the different tribes of men retained the rudiments, 
if not the vigour, of those principles which had been communicated 
from their highly venerated, and not very distant, primeval 
ancestors.’”4 
'1 Sam. xv. 33, 22Sam. xix. 13, 40. 32 Kings ii. 1. 
*Calmet’s Dictionary of the Bible, vol. iv. pp. 507, 510. 
