58 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS 



his wife, and the change into the trees may be but another version 

 of the change Lot's wife underwent. 



A mythological connection has been traced by a French writer, 

 M. Huot, in. his Demonstration Evangeltque, between Bacchus and 

 Moses. Both, he says, were born in Egypt ; both were cast into the 

 river ; both were educated in Arabia, or resided a considerable time 

 there ; both were exiled ; Bacchus was ever accompained by a dog, 

 and the companion of Moses was Caleb, the Hebrew word for dog ; 

 therefore, says Dr. Huot, the identity is sufficiently proved. 



Many other coinciding characters could be adduced if it were 

 necessary to show the connecting links of mythology with Scriptural 

 traditions. 



It is interesting to trace in the various forms of religion, or 

 modes of worship, the connecting link which pervades all, from the 

 rudest form up to enlightened Christianity. The rites of sacrifice, 

 purification and a future life pervade all. The Red Indian believes 

 in his Happy Hunting-grounds ; the South Sea Islander in his 

 shadowy Island of Bolotu ; for the Greeks of old were the Elysian 

 Fields and Hades ; and to the Christian of to-day, the heights of 

 Heaven and the depths of Hell hold forth an expectation of a life to 

 come. A child naturally wonders why the Israelites formed and 

 worshipped a golden calf, when they thought Moses had forsaken 

 them, but it was simply the remembrance of the god form they had 

 seen worshipped in Egypt that suggested it to them. The rites 

 attendant on the Obi worship of the Negroes of the present day, and 

 those attendant on the worship of Astarte and Mylitta, and the later 

 Eleusinian mysteries, are closely allied. Success would never attend 

 a new religion about to be thrust upon the world, without adapting 

 it to the forms of something preceding it, and thus we find each 

 successive form of worship gradually adopting certain practices of 

 the one it was intended to supplant, but showing by these the 

 connecting link pervading all. 



Sabaism, or the adoration of the sun, moon and stars, branching 

 off into fire worship, is easily accounted for as a degraded form of 

 that homage to visible Divinity, with which men worshipped the 

 glorious god of day, and bowed down before the heavenly host. It 

 was alluded to by Moses when he said : " Take heed to yourselves, 

 for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spake 

 unto you in Horeb, out of the midst of the fire * * * lest thou 



