CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



absorbed the devotion of the Peruvians. There 

 was little in nature that they did not contrive to 

 make a deity of. The Moon, as the spouse of the 

 Sun, the planet Venus as his page, the Pleiades 

 and the remarkable constellation of the Southern 

 Cross, were minor deities. The rainbow anc 

 lightning were also worshipped as servants of the 

 Sun ; and fire, air, earth, and water were no 

 without adoration. Then there were deities 

 raised from the ranks of heroic men. Some o: 

 these were worshipped by the whole nation 

 others, the Huacas, were local divinities, anc 

 enjoyed provincial honours. These local deities 

 were commemorated by statues. Then there 

 were deities like the Lares and Penates of the 

 Romans. The mummies of their forefathers, and 

 a great stone which was always placed in a corner 

 of a field near each country house or cottage, may 

 be counted amongst the domestic divinities of the 

 Peruvians. . . . The Peruvians believed in the 

 immortality of the soul, in a resurrection, and in 

 a system of rewards and punishments after death.' 



MALIGNANT DEITIES OR SPIRITS HUMAN 

 SACRIFICE. 



Speaking of the belief in malignant spirits, and 

 the cruel rites with which they are sought to be 

 propitiated, Helps remarks with equal truth and 

 beauty : 'When we behold successful iniquity and 

 the singular infelicity which often besets the most 

 innocent of men ; nay, further, when we see the 

 spitefulness of nature for so it seems unless pro- 

 foundly understood. . . . we cannot wonder at 

 the belief in evil deities of great power and supre- 

 macy. And then what more natural than to 

 clothe such deities with the worst attributes of bad 

 men, and to suppose that they must be approached 

 with servility, and appeased by suffering? Then 

 further, what more natural than to offer to such 

 gods the best upon earth namely, our fellow- 

 men?' 



Even the best of heathen gods were conceived 

 to have a spice of envy in their nature, and to be 

 not always just in their anger ; others, again, 

 were essentially malignant, and the propitiation 

 of these has always been an important part of 

 polytheistic worship. Assuming, in fact, that the 

 more benevolent powers are disposed of them- 

 selves to do him good, the pagan naturally 

 bestows his chief solicitude on how to buy off the 

 malignity of the others. Even under Christianity, 

 the devil himself has had a kind of worship paid 

 him on this principle. The practice, not uncommon 

 at one time in Scotland, of leaving a portion of 

 land in a parish unoccupied and untilled, under the 

 name of the Good-man's Acre, was clearly meant 

 as a kind of 'black-mail' to the arch-enemy. 



The practice of sacrificing human beings, which 

 undoubtedly prevailed in the earlier stages of all 

 religions, was dictated by this feeling as to the 

 malignant and sanguinary disposition of the 

 unseen powers ; and from that strongly con- 

 servative tendency inherent in man with regard 

 to all sacred subjects, the practice was continued 

 long after civilisation had given rise to more 

 elevated and generous conceptions. As the 

 humaner feelings became more and more re- 

 volted by it, an animal was substituted for the 

 human victim, or the actual sacrifice was con- 

 verted into a symbolical one. In the descriptions 



given of the Celtic festival of Beltane, we recog- 

 nise distinctly a symbolical human sacrifice. The 

 lot is cast by drawing pieces of cake, and the 

 person who draws the blackened piece is con- 

 sidered devoted to Beal (the sun or fire-god), and 

 must leap three times over the flames. There was- 

 undoubtedly a time when he was bound on the- 

 pile and burned. 



The only record we have of this horrid rite 

 being practised, in its rampant unmitigated form,, 

 in a community at all civilised, is in the case- 

 of the Mexicans when discovered by Cortes- 

 Numerous victims were daily slain, and their 

 hearts offered to the terrible deities worshipped' 

 by this otherwise refined people. When Cortes 

 and his attendant Spaniards were conducted by 

 Montezuma into the great temple of Mexico, they 

 found the god of war, Huitzilopochtle, repre- 

 sented by a hideous image with broad face, wide- 

 mouth, and terrible eyes, and hung over with) 

 ornaments of gold and precious stones, and with 

 the hearts of men wrought in gold. Close by 

 were brasiers with incense, and on the brasiers 

 were the real hearts of men who had that day 

 been sacrificed. Tezcatlipuck, another god, had 

 a countenance like that of a bear, with mirrors 

 for eyes. Five human hearts, that day sacrificed, 

 were burning before this idol. Everywhere the 

 walls and altars were covered with blood, and 

 the smell was that of a slaughter-house. 



ANIMAL WORSHIP FETICHISM. 



That animals should be held sacred and re- 

 ceive worship need excite no surprise when we 

 bear in mind the origin of polytheistic worship 

 generally. They are manifestations of power ; 

 mysterious, too, because actuated by impulses- 

 differing from those of man ; and often, by their 

 greater acuteness of sense and more unerring; 

 instincts, seeming to possess supernatural know- 

 ledge. Besides this general ground, various 

 animals have been associated with the gods as 

 emblems and in other ways. But a more import- 

 ant source of the superstitious regard bestowed 

 on animals, is the belief that gods, and spirits in 

 general, often take the form of animals, either 

 :emporarily or as a permanent abode. The 

 doctrine of the transmigration of souls is not con- 

 ined to India. Kindred notions, though not per- 

 laps reduced to system and formally enunciated,, 

 are all but universal ; they seem as indigenous in 

 :he heart of Africa as on the banks of the Ganges. 

 It was as a manifestation of the soul of Osiris 

 originally, like all the other Egyptian deities, a 

 sun-god that the sacred bull Apis, was wor- 

 shipped in ancient Egypt. When the Spaniards 

 irst visited the coasts of South America, they 

 bund a ludicrous kind of animal-worship prac- 

 ised by the natives on the coast of Cuma 

 'Venezuela). ' They held the toad to be, as th 

 said, " the lord of the waters," and therefore th 

 vere very compassionate with it, and dreaded 

 any accident to kill a toad ; though, as has bee 

 "ound the case with other idolaters, they we 

 ready, in times of difficulty, to compel a favour- 

 able hearing from their pretended deities, for 

 hey were known to keep these toads with care 

 under an earthen vessel, and to whip them with 

 ittle switches when there was a scarcity of pro- 

 isions and a want of rain.' Helps. 





