OF THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 75 



invasion, we may, by comparing the same with those of other 

 nations, glean some Hght at the identity of those earhest races. 



We will take first in order, as the most vital of customs, the 

 rites of religion. "The Aztecs," we are told by Prescott, " inherited 

 from their Toltec predecessors the belief in a supreme Creator and 

 Lord of the universe. They addressed him in their prayers as " the 

 God by whom we live," " omnipresent, that knoweth all thoughts, 

 and giveth all gifts," " without whom man is nothing," " invi^^ible, 

 incorporeal, one God, of perfect perfection and purity," "under 

 whose wings we find repose and a sure defense." " These sublime 

 attributes," continues Prescott, "inferno inadequate conception of 

 the true God. But the idea of unity — of a being with whom 

 volition is action, who has no need of inferior ministers to execute 

 his purpose — was too simple or too vast for their understandings, 

 and they sought relief as usual in the plurality of deities; who pre- 

 sided over the elements, the changes of the seasons, and the various 

 occupations of man." At first the ceremonies of the Aztecs were of 

 a light and cheerful order, consisting of national songs and dances, 

 in which both sexes joined. Processions of women and children 

 crowned with garlands, and bearing offerings of fruits, the ripened 

 maize, or sweet incense of copal and other odoriferous gums, while 

 the altars of the deity were stained with no blood save that of 

 animals. Human sacrifices among the Aztecs were not adopted 

 until early in the 14th century, about two hundred years before the 

 invasion of the Spaniards. Turning to the history of the Egyptians, 

 we find that their earliest worship was of but one God, infaUible and 

 eternal, without beginning, without end. They believed a heaven 

 awaited the good, and a hell the wicked ; there was a judgement day 

 when the hearts of all men were weighed. At first their sacrifices 

 were of fruits and flowers, and sweet incense smoked on their altars ; 

 later on they personified God in the sun, whom they addressed as 

 " Ra ;" still later the purity and virtue of their primitive faith became 

 buried under the conception of polytheism. 



The Aztecs embalmed their dead by taking out the bowels and 

 replacing them with aromatic herbs and substances, after which they, 

 in many instances, wrapped the body in a covering of cloths. 

 Turning to Rollin's History of Egypt, we are told that the Egyptians 

 embalmed their dead by cutting a hole in the side with an Ethiopian 

 stone that was as sharp as a razor; the body was then taken and 



