44, REV. J. LESLIE PORTER, D.D. 
primitive origin of the design to Assyria. The very word Cadmus, as is well 
known, has been referred to the East. It appears to me—in fact, I feel sure 
—that the great obstacle in the investigation of these ancient questions lies 
in the circumstance that we have to take the names from the Roman and 
Greek authorities, who were not content with the names as they found them, 
but who greatly complicated them by reducing them to forms appropriate 
to their own languages ; so that, before we can really understand an Eastern 
or Oriental name found in Greek or Roman forms, we must first reduce 
it to its original form. There is little doubt that Cadmus really means 
Kedem—that is, the East. I may observe here that Dr. Porter differs 
from Mr. Ferguson with regard to the position of the great pillars, 
Jachin and Boaz, in King Solomon’s Temple. Dr. Porter thinks they stood 
outside the porch, independently, whereas Mr. Fergusson nfade them the 
outer pillars of the porch itself. Another remark I should like to make is 
with reference to the great Brazen Sea or cistern, which was ten cubits in 
diameter, or not less than 17 ft. The Cup is a prominent feature in the 
religious mysteries of Assyria and of the East generally, and the nearer you 
approach Assyria the nearer do you approach the dominating religious influ- 
ence which that country exercised over surrounding peoples, This cistern was 
of large dimensions ; but there was another cistern of perhaps greater dimen- 
sions—the cistern of Semiramis—referred to by Pliny ; and these cisterns are 
associated with the greatest mysteries of the religious systems of the East.* 
I believe they were connected with the mystery of regeneration—the 
mystery of baptism—the mystery of the new birth—the washing away of sin— 
and that this was the meaning of the great cistern which occupied so promi- 
nent a place in the temples of the Jews and in those of Babylonia. The 
allusion in the paper to “a purely spiritual faith” on the part of the Jews 
is, I think, scarcely supported by what the Bible tells us about that people. 
We are there told that the Jews were offered a purely spiritual faith, but they 
resolutely objected to it. I must not attempt to give you my interpretation 
of the passages in the Bible which I believe to reveal the origin of religion, 
nor must I attempt to take you through that book and show you how com- 
pletely it unfolds very important steps in the degradations that have taken 
place in the history of religion from the time when Noah was in direct com- 
munion with God ; when Abraham, going out of the land degraded by the 
religion set up by Nimrod, established no temple and no system of ministry 
in the land whither he went, but was brought again, like Noah, into direct 
communication with the representatives of the Almighty at the door of his 
tent. With the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob this condition of 
* The use of the Laver in the Mosaic ritual is described in Exodus xxx. 
18-21; xl. 30, 31. The figurative meaning of a cup in the Bible is denoted 
by Cruden in the complete editions of his Concordance. The symbolical 
significance of the Cup in the Chaldean, Greek, and Roman mysteries is 
elucidated by Hislop in his Zo Babylons, 5th edition, pp. 77, 78, also 
pp. 7-10. 
