74 CEREMONIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



later times to imply the service of different deities, is sug 

 gested by passages in Revelations, where an angel is de 

 scribed as ordering delay &quot; till we have sealed the servants 

 of our God in their foreheads/ and where &quot; an hundred and 

 forty and four thousand, having his Father s name written 

 in their foreheads,&quot; are described as standing on Mount Sion 

 while an angel proclaims that, &quot; If any man worship the 

 beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or 

 in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of 

 God.&quot; Even now &quot; this practice of marking religious to 

 kens upon the hands and arms is almost universal among the 

 Arabs, of all sects and classes.&quot; Moreover &quot; Christians in 

 some parts of the East, and European sailors, were long in 

 the habit of marking, by means of punctures and a black 

 dye, their arms and other members of the body with the sign 

 of the crucifix, or the image of the Virgin ; the Mahomme- 

 dans mark them with the name of Allah.&quot; So that among 

 advanced races, these skin-mutilations still have meanings 

 like those given to them in ancient Mexico, where, when a 

 child was dedicated to Quetzalcohuatl &quot; the priest made a 

 slight cut with a knife on its breast, as a sign that it belonged 

 to the cult and service of the god,&quot; and like those now given 

 to them in parts of Angola, where a child as soon as born is 

 tattooed on the belly, in order thereby to dedicate it to a cer 

 tain fetich. 



A significant group of evidences remains. &quot;We have 

 seen that where cropped hair implies servitude, long hair be 

 comes an honourable distinction; and that, occasionally, 

 in opposition to circumcision as associated with subjection, 

 there is absence of it along with the highest power. Here 

 we have a parallel antithesis. The great divine chief of the 

 Tongans is unlike all other men in Tonga, not only as being 

 uncircumcised, but also as being untattooed. Elsewhere 

 whole classes are thus distinguished. iSTot, however, 



that such distinctions are at all regular: we here meet with 

 anomalies. Though in some places showing social inferior- 



