VTTT THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 333 



bandage was made of a certain kind of sennet, which was tied 

 on in a peculiar way. When this was done it was taken 

 possession of by the Atua, whose spirit entered it. The priest 

 then cither held it in the hand and vibrated it in the air, 

 whilst the powerful karakia was repeated, or he tied a piece of 

 string (formed of the centre of a flax leaf) round the neck of the 

 image and stuck it in the ground. He sat at a little distance 

 from it, leaning against a tuahu, a short stone pillar stuck in 

 the ground in a slanting position and, holding the string in his 

 hand, he gave the god a jerk to arrest his attention, lest he 

 should lie otherwise engaged, like Baal of old, either hunting, 

 fishing, or sleeping, and therefore must be awaked. . . . 

 The god is supposed to make use of the priest's tongue in 

 giving a reply. Image-worship appears to have been confined 

 to one part of the island. The Atua was supposed only to 

 en tor the image for the occasion. The natives declare they did 

 not worship the image itself, but only the Atua it represented, 

 and that the image was merely used as a way of approaching 

 him. 1 



This is the excuse for image-worship which the 

 more intelligent idolaters make all the world over ; 

 but it is more interesting to observe that, in the 

 present case, we seem to have the equivalents of 

 divination by teraphim, with the aid of something 

 like an ephod (which, however, is used to sanctify 

 the image and not the priest) mixed up together. 

 Many Hebrew archaeologists have supposed that the 

 term " ephod " is sometimes used for an image 

 (particularly in the case of Gideon's ephod), and 

 the story of Micah, in the book of Judges, shows 

 that images were, at any rate, employed in close 

 association with the ephod. If the pulling of the 



1 Te Ika a Maui : New Zealand and Us Inhabitants, p. 72. 



