190 CHARACTER, MANNERS, AND CUSTOMS 



divination, as did the Chaldeans ; for we learn from 

 Ezekiel (chap. xxi. 21), that the king of Babylon, in 

 marchino^ against Jerusalem, "stood at the parting 

 of the way to use divination, making his arrows 

 bright" (or, as Jerome explains it, mixing and sha- 

 king them together), that he might know which city- 

 first to attack. 



The pagan Arabs were grossly idolatrous. Though 

 assuming^ a variety of forms, the essential basis of 

 their religion was Sabaisni, or star-worship, — the 

 primitive superstition of most oriental nations. 

 The number and beauty of the heavenly luminaries, 

 — the silent regularity of their motions, — the sun 

 rejoicing to run his rp^ce, — and the moon walking in 

 brightness. — were all calculated to impress the \n\- 

 gar°mind with the idea of a superintending and eter- 

 nal power. From viewing them as the visible types 

 of a divinity, man, in the ^simple infancy of his rea- 

 son, believed them to be endowed with instincts like 

 his own ; animated with his understanding, and sub- 

 ject to his passions. 



But when to this childish error was added the 

 general persuasion of their real or imaginary influ- 

 ence over the productions of the earth and the for- 

 tunes of its inhabitants, the transition from curiosity 

 to adoration was natural and easy. When the hus- 

 bandman observed the growth of seeds and plants to 

 maintain a constant and invariable sympathy with 

 the phenomena of the heavens, and vegetation flou- 

 rishing and disappearing with the rising and setting 

 of certain planets, or the same group of stars ; and 

 when the shepherd remarked the increase of his 

 flocks, and the genial moisture that enriched his 

 pastures, harmonizing with the periodical return of 

 the celestial bodies,— they learned, as it were me- 

 chanically, to associate in their minds the operations 

 of the one with the constant recurrence of the 

 other ; and even applied to the heavenly hosts the 

 very names of the terrestrial objects to which they 



