18 IN THE ACADIAN LAND. 



and wrought out by prayer and penance a royal 

 road for suffering man, and more than three 

 hundred million people call him the " Blessed 

 One " after the lapse of all these centuries. 

 The Bible has frequent allusions to sacred trees 

 and groves. It has a tree of knowledge of 

 good and evil, on which grew the fateful " fruit 

 of finest colors, mixed ruddy and gold." It 

 was Abraham who " planted a grove in Beer- 

 sheba and called there on the name of the Lord." 

 Josephus, the Jewish historian, tells us that the 

 burning bush in which Moses saw Jehovah's 

 presence was a sacred tree before that event. 

 It was a natural stick that Moses had in his 

 hand, and was afterwards used for miraculous 

 purposes as a magic rod. Hezekiah cut down 

 the sacred groves, and his great-great-grandson 

 cut down another growth in his effort to root out 

 the foreign worship that clung to the forests. 



The Greeks had sacred groves, and many of 

 their gods had trees sacred to them in popular 

 estimation. Thus the oak fell to Zeus, the 

 greatest of all, to Apollo the laurel, to Athene 

 the olive, etc. The ancient Germans worshipped 

 in groves. The Celtic draids of France and 

 England, Ireland and Scotland had their reli- 

 gious sanctuaries in the deep forests. The Norse- 

 men, of Norway and Sweden, told wondrous 



