II.

EARLIEST TEMPLE ALTAR.

1. FROM HOUSE TO TEMPLE.

A temple is only a more prominent house. As a house was the dwelling of the earlier priest of his household, who was in covenant for himself and his family with the guardian deity of that household; so, afterwards, a temple was a dwelling for the deity guarding an aggregation of families, and for the priests who stood between him and the community.

This is no new or strange truth; it is obvious. “In the Vedas, Yama, as the first man, is the first priest too; he brought worship here below as well as life, and ‘first he stretched out the thread of sacrifice.’”[261] The fire-altar of the home was first the center of worship in the family in India;[262] as later the fire-altar was the center of the worship of the community.

The same cuneiform characters in old Babylonian stand for great house, for palace, and for temple;[263] as similarly, in ancient Egypt, the same hieroglyph represented house or temple,–a simple quadrangular enclosure, with its one doorway.[264]

The oldest form of an Egyptian temple known to us through the inscriptions of the Ancient Empire indicates that the prehistoric houses of worship in that land were mere hovels of wood and lattice-work, over the doors of which was a barbaric ornamentation of bent pieces of wood.[265] The private house became the public temple.

“The design of the Greek temple in its highest perfection was ... a gradual development of the dwelling-house.”[266] Palace and temple were, indeed, often identical in ancient Greece.[267]

Strictly speaking, there were no temples in ancient Persia, any more than in early India. But the fire-altars that were first on the home hearth, or threshold, were made more and more prominent on their uplifted stepped bases, until they towered loftily in the sight of their worshipers.[268]

It is the same Hebrew word, _ohel_, that stands for the “tent” of Abraham, and for the “Tent” or Tabernacle of the congregation of Israel.[269]

In China “temple architecture differs little from that of the houses.”[270] The house of a god is as the house of a man, only grander and more richly ornamented. And Japanese antiquaries say that the architecture of Shinto temples is on the model of the primeval Japanese hut. The temples of Ise, the most sacred of the Shinto sanctuaries, are said to represent this primitive architecture in its purest form.[271]

The father of the family was the primitive priest in the Samoan Islands, and his house was the first place of worship. Then “the great house of the village,” or the place of popular assembling, was used as a temple; and afterwards there were special temple structures with attendant priests.[272]

The transition from house to temple seems to have been a gradual one in the primitive world. The fire-altar of the family came to be the fire-altar of the community of families. The house of a king became both palace and temple, and so again the house of a priest; for the offices of king and of priest were in early times claimed by the same person.[273]

2. SACREDNESS OF THE DOOR.

In all stages of the transition from house to temple, the sacredness of the threshold, of the door, of the entrance-way, of the gate, was recognized in architecture and in ceremonial. Often the door, or the gate, stood for the temple, and frequently the threshold was an altar, or an altar was at the threshold.

There are, indeed, reasons for supposing that the very earliest form of a primitive temple, or sanctuary, or place of worship, was a rude doorway, as covering or as localizing the threshold altar. This would seem to be indicated by prehistoric remains in different parts of the world, as well as in the later development of the idea in the earlier historic ages. The only exception to this was where, as in India or Persia, the fire-altar on an uplifted threshold stood alone as a place of worship.

Two upright stone posts, with or without an overlaying stone across them, and with or without an altar stone between or before them, are among the most ancient remains of primitive man’s handiwork; and a similar design is to be recognized, all the way along in the course of history, down to the elaborate doorway standing by itself as a memorial of the revered dead,[274] or to the monumental triumphal arch as an accompaniment of the highest civilization. And the very name of door, or gate, attaches persistently to the loftiest temple and to the most exalted personage. As the earliest altar was the threshold, the earliest temple was a doorway above the altar at the threshold.

When the first dwellers on the plains of Chaldea, after the Deluge, gathered themselves for the building of a common structure reaching God-ward,[275] they, in their phraseology, called that structure Bab-el, or Bâb-ilu, or Bâbi-ilu, the Door of God.[276] Ancient Egyptians called the sovereign head of their national family “_Per-ao_” (Pharaoh), the exalted House, or Gate, or Door;[277] as to-day the Sultan, who is spiritual father of the faithful Muhammadans, and autocrat of his realm, is widely known as the “Sublime Porte,” or the Exalted Door.[278] The modern Babists, in Persia and beyond, look up to their spiritual head as the “Bab,” or the “Door.”[279] “Throughout the East this word [‘Bab’] signifies the court of a prince [as a ruler by divine right].... The threshold of the gate is used in the same sense, and frequently it is qualified by some epithet of nobility, loftiness, or goodness.”[280]

Jesus Christ did not hesitate to say of himself as the Way to God: “I am the Door: by me if any man enter in he shall be saved.”[281]

In China, Japan, Korea, Siam, and India, a gate, or doorway, usually stands before Confucian and Booddhist and Shinto temples, but apart from the temple, and always recognized as of peculiar sacredness. These doorways, in many places, are painted blood-color.[282] They stand “at the entrance of temple grounds, in front of shrines and sacred trees, and in every place associated with the native _kami_”–or gods.[283] Yet, again, in all these countries, the temple gateway is a main feature, or a prominent one, in the chief sanctuaries.[284]

Swinging doors, or gates, are represented, in the religious symbolism of ancient Babylonia, as opening to permit the god Shamash, or the sun, to start out on his daily circuit of the heavens.[285] A door, or a doorway, appears as a shrine for a god in various cylinders from this region; and the god is shown standing within it, just beyond the threshold.[286] Indeed, the doorway shrine is a common form on the Babylonian and the Assyrian monuments, as a standing-place for the gods, and for the kings as representative of the gods.[287] Illustrations of this are found on the Balawat gates,[288] and the sculptures on the rocks at Nahr-el-Kelb[289]–which is itself a gateway of the nations, between the mountains and the sea, on the route between Egypt and Canaan, and both the East and the West.

In ancient Egypt the doorway shrine of the gods was prominent, as in Babylonia.[290] Moreover, a false door was represented in the earlier mastabahs, or tombs, of the Old Empire of Egypt. This representation of a door was toward the west, in which direction Osiris, the god of the under-world, was supposed to enter his realm as the sun went down. On or around this false door were memorial inscriptions, and prayers for the dead; and before it was a table, or altar, for offerings to the _ka_, or soul, of the dead.[291] Gradually this false door came to be recognized as the monumental slab, tablet, or stele, on which were inscribed the memorials of the deceased. As a doorway or a niche, square-topped, or arched, it was the shrine of the one worshiped; and as a panel, or independent stele, it was the place of record of the object of reverence.

“Even at the beginning of the Middle Empire the door form disappeared completely, and the whole space of the stone was taken up with the representation of the deceased sitting before a table of offerings, receiving gifts from his relatives and servants. Soon afterwards it became the custom to round off the stone at the top, and when, under the New Empire, pictures of a purely religious character took the place of the former representations, no one looking at the tomb stele could have guessed that it originated from the false door.”[292]

A “false door” was, in ancient Egypt, a valued gift from a sovereign to an honored subject. Doors of this kind were sometimes richly carved and painted, and were deemed of priceless value by the recipient.[293]

In Phenicia,[294] Carthage,[295] Cyprus,[296] Sardinia,[297] Sicily,[298] and in Abyssinia,[299] a like prominence was given to the door as a door, in temple and in tomb, and as a niche for the figure of a deity or for the representation of one who had crossed the threshold of the new life. And the door-form is a sacred memorial of the dead in primitive lands in various parts of the world, from the rudest trilithon to the more finished structures of a high civilization.[300]

In primitive New Zealand the gateway, or doorway, of a village, a cemetery, or a public building, is both a sacred image and a sacred passage-way. It is in the form of a superhuman personage, and it has its guardians on either hand.[301]

A doorway with an altar between its posts was a symbol of religious worship in ancient Mexico, as in the far East.[302]

It would seem that the “mihrab,” or prayer niche, pointing toward Meccah, in Muhammadan lands, and the Chinese honorary portals and ancestral tablets,[303] as well as the niches for images of saints in churches or at wayside shrines, or for heroes in public halls, in Christian lands, are a survival of the primitive doorway in a tomb.

And wherever the door is prominent as a door, the threshold is recognized and honored as the floor of the door, and as the primitive altar above which the door is erected. To pass through the door is to cross over the threshold of the door.

3. TEMPLE THRESHOLDS IN ASIA.

In all the modern excavations in the region of Babylonia and Assyria, including Tello, Nippur, Sippara, Borsippa, Khorsabad, and Nineveh, it has been found that the threshold, or foundation-stone, of the temple doorway is marked with inscriptions that show its peculiar sanctity; while underneath it, or near it, are frequently buried images and symbols and other treasures in evidence of its altar-like sacredness. On this point evidence has been furnished by Botta,[304] Bonomi,[305] Layard,[306] George Smith,[307] Lenormant,[308] and yet more fully by Dr. Hilprecht, in his later and current researches.

Bonomi suggests that the word “teraphim,” as an image of a household divinity, has its connection with the threshold or the boundary limit; and that the phrase “thy going out, and thy coming in,” which is common in Egyptian, Babylonian, and Hebrew[309] literature, has reference to the threshold and its protecting deities.[310] The outgoing and the incoming are clearly across the threshold and through the door.

The inscriptions of Nebuchadrezzar II., concerning his building of the walls of Babylon, comprise various references to the foundations, to the thresholds, and to their guardians. He says: “On the thresholds of the gates I set up mighty bulls of bronze, and mighty snakes standing upright.”[311] Again of the gates of Imgur-Bêl and Nimitti-Bel, of these walls of Babylon, he says: “Their foundations I laid at the surface (down at) the water, with pitch and bricks. With blue enameled tiles which were adorned with bulls and large snakes, I built their interior cleverly. Strong cedars I laid over them as their covering (or roof). Doors of cedarwood with a covering of copper, a threshold (_askuppu_) and hinges of bronze, I set up in their gates. Strong bulls of bronze, and powerful snakes standing upright, I set upon (or at) their threshold (_sippu_). Those gates I filled with splendor for the astonishment of all mankind.”[312]

In a similar manner Nebuchadrezzar describes his work at the gates of “the royal castle of all mankind,” at Babylon,[313] and of his palace.[314] In connection with the shrine or chapel of Nebo (Ezida), within the walls of the temple of Merodach, in Babylon, he says: “Its threshold (_sippu_), its lock and its key, I plated with gold, and made the temple shine daylike.”[315] When he built Ezida (the “eternal house”), the temple of Borsippa, Nebuchadrezzar says: “The bulls and the doors of the gate of the sanctuary, the threshold (_sippu_), the lock, the hinge, I plated with _zarîru_”[316] (an unknown metal, a kind of bronze).

References to the foundations, to the thresholds, to the gates and doorways, and to bulls and upright serpents, as the guardians of the threshold of the temples and palaces of Babylonia and Assyria, are numerous on unearthed cylinders and tablets, and always in such a way as to indicate their peculiar sacredness. In the recent unearthing, at Nippur, of a small building or shrine, between two great temples, an altar was found in the eastern doorway.

It is to be borne in mind that many early temples in Babylonia, as in Mesopotamia, in Egypt, in Mexico, Central America, and Peru, and in the South Sea Islands, were in the form of a stepped pyramid, or a staged tower, with either inclined planes or stairways from each lower stage to the next higher, and with an altar, or a sanctuary or shrine, at the summit.[317] Herodotus, describing one of these temples in Babylon, says that the altars, larger and smaller, were outside the temple.[318]

Light is thrown on the dream of Jacob at Bethel by the shape of the ancient temple in the East. In his vision it was probably not a ladder, but a conventional stepped-temple structure, with its stairways rising heavenward, and its sanctuary, that Jacob saw.[319] The angel ministers were passing up and down the steps, in the service of the Most High God, who himself appeared above the structure. When Jacob waked he said: “Surely the Lord is in this place [or sanctuary]; and I knew it not.... How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven;” and he took the stone which had been his pillow at the threshold of that sanctuary, and set it up for an altar pillar.[320]

In the literature and legends of Babylonia, as of other portions of the ancient world, there is prominent the idea that an entrance into the life beyond this, as in the entrance into this life, the crossing of a threshold from the one world to the other, from the earlier state and the passing of a door, or gate, marks the change to the later, from the sacred to the more sacred. This is peculiarly illustrated in the famous legend of Ishtar’s descent into the under-world in order to bring back to earth her lover Dumuzi.

The Hades of the Babylonians was surrounded by seven high walls, and was approached through seven gates, each of which was guarded by a pitiless warder. Two deities ruled within it–Nergal, “the lord of the great city,” and Beltis-Allat, “the lady of the great land,”–whither everything which had breathed in this world descended after death. Allat was the actual sovereign of the country; and even the gods themselves could enter her realm only on the condition of submitting to death, like mortals, and of humbly avowing themselves her slaves.[321] “The _threshold_ of Allat’s palace stood upon a spring, which had the property of restoring to life all who bathed in it or drank of its waters.” Yet it was needful that another life should be given for one who would be reborn into this life, after crossing the threshold of the regions beyond.[322]

In the descent of the goddess Ishtar into Allat’s realm, in pursuit of her lover Dumuzi, Ishtar was gradually stripped of her garments and adornings at the successive gates, until she appeared naked, as at birth, at the final threshold of the new state.[323] But she was held captive by Allat until Ea, chief among the gods, exerted himself in her behalf, and sent his messenger to secure for both Ishtar and Dumuzi the waters of life which were underneath the threshold of Allat’s realm,–which must be broken in order to their outflowing.[324]

There would seem to be a reference to this primitive idea of the waters of life flowing from under the threshold of the temple, in the vision of the prophet Ezekiel, writing in Babylonia, concerning restored Jerusalem and its holy temple. “Behold, waters issued out from under the threshold of the house eastward, for the forefront of the house was toward the east: and the waters came down from under, from the right side of the house, on the south of the altar.” (Evidently the altar in this temple was near the threshold.) These flowing waters from under the threshold were life-giving. “Upon the bank of the river,” as it swelled in its progress, “were very many trees on the one side and on the other;” and it was said of this stream: “It shall come to pass, that every living creature which swarmeth, in every place whither the rivers come, shall live; and there shall be a very great multitude of fish: for these waters are come thither, ... and every thing shall live whithersoever the river cometh.”[325] In a curse pronounced against Assyria by the prophet Zephaniah, it was declared that “drought shall be in the thresholds,”[326] instead of life-giving waters.

So, again, the waters of the life-giving Jordan flow out from the threshold of the grotto of Pan, a god of life.[327] And both at the beginning of the Old Testament, and at the close of the New, the waters of life start from the sanctuary of the Author of life.[328]

This Dumuzi of Babylonia has linkings with Tammuz of Syria, with Osiris of Egypt, and with Adonis of Greece, and there are correspondences in all these legends in the references to the door and the threshold of the under-world and the life beyond. Thus, for instance, the Lord’s prophet counts as most heinous of all idolatries the transfer of the weeping worship of Tammuz from the door in the hole of the temple wall to the door of the temple sanctuary.[329]

At the right hand of the entrance of the larger temple unearthed at Nineveh by Layard, a sculptured image of the Assyrian king, with his arm uplifted, was on a doorway stele just outside. And an altar for offerings was in front of that image. Altars

were found similarly situated, just outside the doorway, in a smaller temple in the same region.[330]

An exceptional reverence is shown to the doorway and threshold of their sanctuary, or temple, by the sect of the Yezidis, in the neighborhood of ancient Nineveh, at the present time. Describing an evening service which he attended, Layard says: “When the prayers were ended, those who marched in procession kissed, as they passed by, the right side of the doorway leading into the temple, where a serpent is figured on the wall.” Again, “Soon after sunrise, on the following morning, the sheikhs and cawals offered up a short prayer in the court of the temple.... Some prayed in the sanctuary, frequently kissing the threshold and holy places within the building.”[331]

When the sacred ark of the Hebrews was captured by the Philistines, and brought into the house of the god Dagon, the record is: “When they of Ashdod arose early on the morrow, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord. And they took Dagon, and set him in his place again. And when they arose early on the morrow morning, behold, Dagon was fallen upon his face to the ground before the ark of the Lord; and the head of Dagon and both the palms of his hands lay cut off upon the threshold.” It is added, in our present Bible text: “Therefore neither the priests of Dagon, nor any that come into Dagon’s house, tread on the threshold of Dagon in Ashdod, unto this day.”[332]

It would seem, from the words “unto this day,” that this added statement was a gloss by a later writer or copyist. The original force of the wonder was in Dagon’s being overthrown at his very shrine, falling maimed on the threshold altar of his temple. But the suggestion of the gloss is that the unwillingness of the Philistines to tread on the threshold of the temple (which appears to have been of primitive origin) did not exist among the worshipers of Dagon prior to this incident. The Septuagint adds,[333] concerning the later practice of the Philistines at the threshold, “because leaping they leap over it.”

Leaping over the threshold is at times spoken of in the Bible as if it had a taint of idolatry. Thus Zephaniah, foretelling, in the name of the Lord, the divine judgments on idolaters, says: “In that day I will punish all those that leap over the threshold.”[334] This is explained in the Targum as “those that walk in the customs of the Philistines.” Yet the Bible sometimes refers to the temple threshold as a fitting place of worship, and its recognition as a holy altar as commendable.

Ezekiel prophesies that the restored Prince of Israel “shall worship at the threshold of the gate”[335] of the Lord’s house; and he sees, in vision, “the glory of the Lord ... over the threshold of the house.”[336] Again the Lord complains of the profanation of his temple by idolaters “in their setting of their threshold by my threshold, and their door-post beside my door-post, and there was but the wall between me and them.”[337]

That it was the threshold or doorway of the tabernacle which was counted sacred, is evident from the wording of the Levitical laws concerning the offering of blood in sacrifices. “This is the thing which the Lord hath commanded, saying, What man soever there be of the house of Israel, that killeth an ox, or lamb, or goat, in the camp, or that killeth it without the camp, and hath not brought it _unto the door of the tent of meeting_, to offer it as an oblation unto the Lord before the tabernacle of the Lord: blood shall be imputed unto that man; he hath shed blood; and that man shall be cut off from among his people: to the end that the children of Israel may bring their sacrifices, which they sacrifice in the open field, even that they may bring them unto the Lord, _unto the door of the tent of meeting_, unto the priest, and sacrifice them for sacrifices of peace offerings unto the Lord. And the priest shall sprinkle the blood _upon the altar of the Lord at the door of the tent of meeting_, and burn the fat for a sweet savour unto the Lord.... Whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among them, that offereth a burnt offering or sacrifice, and bringeth it not _unto the door of the tent of meeting_, to sacrifice it unto the Lord; even that man shall be cut off from his people.”[338]

It was _at the doorway_ of the tent of meeting that Aaron and his sons were consecrated to the holy priesthood;[339] and it was there that the bullock was sacrificed, and its blood was poured out as an offering at the base of the altar.[340] It was _at the doorway_ of that tent, above the threshold, that the pillar of cloud descended in token of the Lord’s presence, when Moses met the Lord there in loving communion, while the people stood watching from the doorways of their own tents.[341] The altar of burnt offering, at the base or foundation of which the blood of the offerings was outpoured, was itself at the doorway of the tent of meeting, and he who offered a sacrifice to the Lord offered it at that threshold.[342]

A post of honor in the temple was as a guardian of the threshold, as was also the place of a keeper of the gate. In the assignment of the priests and Levites to service, by Jehoiada the priest, in the days of Athaliah, a third part of them were in attendance at the “threshold,” and a third part “at the gate of the foundation.”[343] Later, in the days of Josiah and Hilkiah, the guardians of the threshold had the care of the money collected for the repairs of the Lord’s house.[344] And a keeper of the threshold, or of the door, of the house of God, was always mentioned with honor.[345] When the Psalmist contrasts the house of God with the tents of wickedness, he speaks of the honor of a post at the temple threshold, not of the humble place of a temple janitor, when he says:

“For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand [elsewhere]. I had rather stand at the threshold of the house of my God, Than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.”[346]

In the Temple at Jerusalem, the altar of burnt offering was before the threshold of the Holy Place; and those who came with sacrifices must stop at that threshold, and proffer the blood of their offering to the priests, who then reverently poured it out at the altar-threshold’s base.[347]

When offerings were accepted for the repairs of the temple, in the days of Jehoash, king of Judah, it is said that “Jehoiada the priest took a chest, and bored a hole in the lid of it, and set it beside the altar, on the right side as one cometh into the house of the Lord. And the priests that kept [or guarded] the threshold put therein all the money that was brought into the house of the Lord.”[348] This would seem to decide the position of the altar as at the threshold, where “one cometh into the house of the Lord.”

An altar stood at the doorway, or before the door, of temples of later date in Phenicia and Phrygia, as shown on contemporary medals and coins.[349] And so in temples in other lands.

Among the early Christian remains unearthed in Asia Minor are indications of the former position of an altar on the threshold of a sanctuary. At the site of ancient Aphrodisias, “some of the sarcophagi of the Byzantine age are richly wrought, and although many are of Christian date, they appear to have retained the pagan devices.” At the end of one of these sarcophagi “appears an altar burning in front of a door,” standing indeed on the very threshold.[350]

An oath of peculiar sacredness among Hindoos is at the threshold of a temple, as at its primal altar. “Is a man accused of a great crime? He goes to the temple [threshold], makes his prostrations; he pauses, then steps over it, declaring at the same time that he is not guilty of the crime laid to his charge. It is therefore very common to ask a person who denies anything that he is suspected to have done, ‘Will you step over the threshold of the temple?’”[351]

Among the stories told in India of judgments at the temple threshold, is one of a thieving goldsmith, who had secreted himself in a pagoda of Vishnoo, in order to take from the sacred image one of its jewel eyes. Having obtained the precious stone, he waited for the opening of the pagoda doors in the morning, in order to escape with his booty. But as he attempted to cross the threshold, when the door was opened, he was stricken with death by Vishnoo “at the very threshold.”[352] Justice was administered at the very seat of justice.

Bloody sacrifices are still known at the temple thresholds in India, notwithstanding the prejudice of Hindoos against the shedding of blood. Within recent times an English gentleman, in an official position in India, discovered a decapitated child at the very door of a celebrated pagoda; and an investigation showed that a father had there sacrificed his son to avert an impending evil.[353]

When a famous idol was destroyed in the temple of Somnauth, during the Muhammadan conquest of India, pieces of the shattered image were sent by the conquerors to the mosks of Meccah, Medina, and Ghuznee, to be thrown down at the thresholds of their gates, there to be trodden under foot by devout and zealous Mussulmans.[354] The accursed idol fragments might be trampled on at the threshold, even while the threshold itself was counted sacred.

In Muhammadan mosks generally the threshold is counted sacred. Across the threshold proper, at the beginning of the sacred portion of the interior, “is a low barrier, a few inches high.”[355] Before this barrier the worshiper stops, removes his shoes, and steps over it, with the right foot first. In some smaller mosks a rod above the outer door-sill stands for this barrier.

Describing his visit to one of the mosks in Persia, Morier says: “Here we remarked the veneration of the Persians for the threshold of a holy place.... Before they ventured to cross it, they knelt down and kissed it, whilst they were very careful not to touch it with their feet.”[356]

On the tomb of the kings of Persia, at Com, the inscription appears: “Happy and glorious the believing one who in reverence bows his head upon the threshold of this gate, in imitation of the sun and moon.[357] All that _he_ will ask with faith in this gate, shall be as the arrow that reaches the mark.”[358] And on the tomb of Alee, son-in-law of Muhammad and one of his successors, there stands the declaration: “The angel messenger of the truth, Gabriel, kisses every day the threshold of thy gate; for that is the only way by which one can come to the throne of Muhammad.”[359]

Even among Christians in this primitive region, this reverence for the threshold as the earliest altar of the temple and the church manifests itself in various ways. Dr. Grant, an American missionary, tells of seeing the Nestorian Christians kissing the threshold of the church on entering the sanctuary for the Lord’s Day service.[360]

At Baveddeen, near Bokhara, is the tomb of Baha-ed-deen Nakishbend, the national saint of Turkestan, which is a place of pilgrimage second only to the tomb of Muhammad. “In the front of the tomb,” as a threshold, “is the famous _senghi murad_,” the “stone of desire,” “which has been tolerably ground away, and made smooth, by the numerous foreheads of pious pilgrims that have been rubbed upon it.”[361]

A peculiar sacrifice in Tibet is the disemboweling of a devotee in the presence of a great multitude, as an act of worship. An altar on which this act is performed is erected for the occasion “in front of the temple gate.”[362]

In the more sacred shrines of Japan and Korea, Shinto or Booddhist temples, pilgrim worshipers are permitted to go no farther than the threshold of the inner sanctuary. There they may deposit their offerings and may prostrate themselves in prayer, but they cannot pass beyond.

At Kitzuki, “the most ancient shrine of Japan,” multitudes of pilgrims gather for worship. They are coming and going ceaselessly, but all pause before the threshold of the inner sanctuary. “None enter there: all stand before the dragon-swarming doorway, and cast their offerings into the money-chest placed before the threshold; many making contributions of small coin, the very poorest throwing only a handful of rice into the box. Then they clap their hands, and bow their heads before the threshold, and reverently gaze through the hall of prayer at the loftier edifice, the holy of holies beyond it. Each pilgrim remains but a little while, and claps his hands but four times; yet so many are coming and going that the sound of the clapping is like the sound of a cataract.”[363] The same is true of “the great Shrines of Isé, chief Mecca of the Shintō faith,”[364] of those of famous Nikkō, and of other centers of worship.[365]

4. TEMPLE THRESHOLDS IN AFRICA.

The oldest temple discovered in Egypt is little more than a doorway with an altar at its threshold, and with a stele on either side of the altar. This temple is near the base of the stepped pyramid of Meydoom, dating back probably to the beginning of the fourth dynasty.[366]

Later, in Egypt, as in early Babylonia, the doorway, above the threshold, had peculiar sacredness, in the temples and in the approaches to the under-world. The pylon, or propylon, of an Egyptian temple, was a monumental gateway before the temple, and exalted honor attached to it. It frequently gave its name to the entire temple.[367] The side towers of this gateway are said to have represented Isis and Nephthys, and the door itself between these towers stood for Osiris, the judge of the living and the dead.[368]

There was indeed a temple in Thebes which bore the name of “Silver Threshold.” This temple “is mentioned in the time of the twenty-first dynasty; and it cannot have been earlier than the eighteenth dynasty, when silver was growing cheaper in Egypt.”[369] But the prominence of the “threshold” in the designation of the “temple” is aside from the question of the time of the use of silver.

“The winged sun disk was placed above all the doors into the temples, that the image of Horus might drive away all unclean spirits from the sacred building.”[370] These overshadowing wings marked the special sacredness of the doors beneath them.

When an Egyptian priest opened the door of the shrine–the holy of holies of the temple–he must prostrate himself at the threshold in reverent worship. “According to the Theban rite, ... as soon as he saw the image of the god he had to ‘kiss the ground, throw himself on his face, throw himself entirely on his face, kiss the ground with his face turned downward, offer incense,’ and then greet the god with a short petition.”[371] This priestly worship was at the threshold of the shrine.

The Egyptian idea of the future life, and of the world beyond this, had marked correspondences with the Babylonian. Osiris presided over the under-world, as, indeed, he was the chief object of worship in this.[372] He had been slain in a conflict with evil, and in his new life he was the friend and helper of those who struggled against evil.[373] He was in a peculiar sense the door of the life beyond this, “Osiris, opening the ways of the two worlds;”[374] and those who passed that door safely were identified with himself in the under-world.[375]

A closed door toward the west, in a tomb, represented the deceased on his way to Osiris.[376] And as shown in the “Book of the Dead” the approach to Osiris was by a series of doors, which could be passed only by one who showed his identification with Osiris, and his worthiness as such.[377] At the entrance to the Hall of the Two Truths, or of the Two-fold Maāt,[378] as the place of final judgment, the deceased was challenged by the threshold of the door, by the two side-posts, by the lock, by the key, and by the door itself; and he could not pass these unless he proved his oneness with Osiris by his knowledge of their names severally.[379]

A saint’s tomb, called a _wely_, is a common place of worship in Egypt. Sometimes a mosk is built over it, and sometimes it serves as a substitute for a mosk, where no mosk is near. “At least one such building forms a conspicuous object close by, or within, almost every Arab village;” and these tombs are frequently visited by those who would make supplication for themselves, or intercession for others, or who would do a worthy act, and merit a correspondent blessing. “Many a visitor, on entering the tomb, kisses the threshold, or touches it with his right hand, which he then kisses.”[380] Similar customs prevail in Arabia and Syria.

At Carthage, which was a Phenician colony but which impressed its character on northern Africa, the chief temple gave prominence to the threshold, rising in steps as an altar before a statue of the Queen of Heaven. Virgil, describing the arrival of Æneas at the court of Queen Dido, says:

“There stood a grove within the city’s midst, Delicious for its shade; where when they came First to this place, by waves and tempest tossed, The Carthaginians from the earth dug up An omen royal Juno had foretold That they should find, a noble horse’s head; Thus intimating that this race would shine, Famous in war, and furnished with supplies For ages. Here the great Sidonian queen A temple built to Juno, rich in gifts, And in the presence of the goddess blessed. A brazen threshold rose above the steps,[381] With brazen posts connecting, and the hinge Creaked upon brazen doors.”[382]

The churches of Abyssinia always stand on a hill, and in a grove–like the temple at Carthage. “When you go to the church you put off your shoes before your first entering the outer precinct.... At entry, you kiss the threshold and two door-posts, go in and say what prayer you please; that finished you come out again, and your duty is over.”[383]

The yard of an Abyssinian church has been compared to “the _lucus_ or sacred grove of the pagan temple.” “The church itself is square, and built of stone with beams stuck in to support them. At the porch, the wooden lintels, which the pious kiss with intense earnestness,–in fact, kissing the walls and lintels of a church is a great feature in Abyssinian devotion, so much so that, instead of speaking of ‘going to church,’ they say ‘kissing the church,’–are carved with quaint and elaborate devices.”[384]

At Yeha, near Aksum, are the remains of a ruined temple, within the area of which a church was at one time built. “In front of the vestibule stood two rude monoliths, at the base of one of which is an altar with a circular disk on it, presumably, from the analogy of those at Aksum, for receiving the blood of slaughtered victims.” Obviously, the altar of this temple was at its threshold.

Marriages are said to be celebrated in Abyssinia at the church door–the wedding covenant being thus made before the threshold altar.[385]

And so in the earlier temples of Egypt, of Carthage, and of Abyssinia, and in Christian and Muhammadan places of worship, the doorway is held sacred, and, most of all, the threshold, or “floor of the door.”

5. TEMPLE THRESHOLDS IN EUROPE.

Traces of the primitive sacredness of the doorway and the threshold, in places of worship, are to be found in Europe, ancient and modern, as in Asia and Africa.

The term “threshold” occurs in such prominence in connection with temples, in the earliest Greek literature, as to show that its primitive meaning included the idea of altar, or of sanctuary foundation. Thus the House of Zeus on Olympus is repeatedly spoken of as the “House of the Bronze Threshold.”[386] In these references, “the nature of the occurrences, the uniformity of the phrase, the position of the words in the verse, all point to this as an old hieratic phrase, and the meaning evidently is, ‘the house that is stablished forever.’”[387]

This term “bronze threshold” occurs more than once in reference to the temple-palace of Alcinoüs.[388] Tartarus is described as having gates of iron and a “bronze threshold.”[389] Night and day meet as they cross the “great threshold of bronze;” and Atlas upholds heaven at the threshold of the under-world.[390]

The treasures of Delphi are described as “within the stone threshold of the archer god, Phoebus Apollo, in Rocky Pytho.”[391] And he who seeks counsel at that oracle is spoken of as one who crosses “the stone threshold.”[392]

In Sophocles’ “Oedipus at Colonus” the Athenian warns the stranger Oedipus that he is on holy ground, in the realm of Poseidon, and that the spot where he now treads is “called the brazen threshold of the land, the stay of Athens.”[393] In other words, the bronze threshold is an archaic synonym for the enduring border, or outer limit, of spiritual domain.

This prominence given to the threshold in earlier Greek literature is not, it is true, continued in later writings; yet there are traces of it still in occasional poetic references to the “threshold of life,” and the “threshold of the year,” and the “threshold of old age.” When Homer refers “to houses, to rooms in houses, or to courtyards, the ‘threshold’ is constantly spoken of: a man steps over a threshold, stands at a threshold, sits at a threshold, etc. And so important is the threshold that its material is almost regularly mentioned; it is ash, oak, stone, bronze, etc. In later times all these locutions disappear; men go through doorways, enter, stand in porches, etc., instead.”[394] Yet it is the archaic use that points to the primitive prominence of the threshold.

In historic times, however, as in earlier, the altar of sacrifice was to be found, in Grecian and Roman temples, near the threshold of the door. While there were smaller altars, for the offering of incense and bloodless sacrifices, in the interior of temples, the larger and more important altars, for the offering of animal sacrifices, whether of beasts or of men, were before the temple, in front of the threshold,–_bomoi pronaoi_.[395]

A ruined temple of Artemis Propylæa, at Eleusis, shows the main altar immediately before the threshold, between the antæ. The altar of the temple of Apollo at Delphi was in a like position; as shown in the fact that “when Neoptolemus is attacked by Orestes in the vestibule of the temple at Delphi, he seizes the arms which were suspended by means of nails or pins from one of the antæ, takes his station upon the altar, and addresses the people in his own defense.”[396]

When the “priest of Jupiter, whose temple was before the city” of Lystra, would have given divine honors to Paul and Barnabas, he brought the garlanded oxen “unto the gates,” to sacrifice them there. At the gate of the city, within which the supposed gods were to be found, seemed the proper place of sacrifice.[397]

There are references in classic story, as in Babylonian legends, in Phenician and Syrian beliefs, and in the Hebrew prophetic visions, to life-giving waters flowing out from under the threshold of the sanctuary. In the garden of the palace-temple of Alcinoüs “are two springs, the one ripples through the whole garden, the other opposite it gushes under the threshold of the courtyard to the lofty house, and from it the citizens draw their water.”[398] On “the apple-growing shores of the Hesperides,” where Atlas upholds “the holy threshold of heaven,” according to the poets, “springs of ambrosia pour from the chamber of Zeus, from his bedside,” and give a rich blessing to the life-giving earth.[399] And of Delphi it is said: “Going toward the temple we come upon the spring Cassotis: there is a low wall about it, and you ascend to the spring through the walls. The water of this Cassotis they say sinks underground, and in the shrine of the god [Apollo] makes the woman prophetic [is inspiration to her.]”[400]

In the early churches of Europe, the threshold marked a sacred boundary of the edifice, to cross which indicated a certain covenant right to participate in the privileges of the house of God. As the structure of the churches changed, in the progress of the centuries, the threshold of the sanctuary came to be in a different portion of the building, or series of buildings; but its sacredness remained, wherever it was supposed to be. The term “altar” also changed, from the border line of the place of worship, to the holy table within the sanctuary.

Speaking of the growth of the early church buildings, Bingham says: “In the strictest sense, including only the buildings within the walls, they were commonly divided into three parts: (1.) The _narthex_ or ante-temple, where the penitents and catechumens stood. (2.) The _naos_ or temple, where the communicants had their respective places. And (3.) the _bēma_ or sanctuary, where the clergy stood to officiate at the altar. But in a larger sense there was another ante-temple or _narthex_ without the walls, under which was comprised the propylæa, or _vestibulum_, the outward porch; then the _atrium_ or area, the court leading from that to the temple, surrounded with porticos or cloisters.... There were also several _exedræ_, such as the baptistery, the _diaconicum_, the _pastophoria_, and other adjacent buildings, which were reckoned to be either without or within the church, according as it was taken in a stricter or a larger acceptation.”[401]

In the early churches, the place of baptism was outside of the church proper, or the _naos_, it is said. “There is nothing more certain than that for many ages the baptistery was a distinct place from the body of the church, and reckoned among the _exedræ_, or places adjoining to the church.”[402] “The first ages all agreed in this, that, whether they had baptisteries or not, the place of baptism was always without the church.”[403] Even in mediæval times, in the churches of England, baptisms were on the outer side of the threshold of the church proper, “the child being held without the doors of the church”[404] until baptized. In many churches of Europe at the present time the baptismal font is at or near the door of the church.

In 1661, a formal reply of the Church of England bishops to a request of the Presbyterians that the font might be placed before the congregation, that all might see it, was: “The font usually stands, as it did in primitive times, at or near the church door, to signify that baptism was the entrance into the church mystical.”[405]

Marriages, like baptisms, were at the church porch or outside of the threshold. “The old missals direct the placing of the man and the woman at the church door during the service, and that at the end of it they shall proceed within up to the altar.”[406] The idea would seem to be that a holy covenant like marriage, which is the foundation of a new family, must be solemnized at the primitive family altar,–the threshold.

Describing the marriage rites of Germany in the middle ages, Baring-Gould says: “In a Ritual of Rennes, of the eleventh century, we find a rubric to this effect: ‘The priest shall go before the door of the church in surplice and stole, and ask the bridegroom and bride prudently whether they desire to be legally united; and then he shall make the parents give her away, according to the usual custom, and the bridegroom shall fix the dower, announcing before all present what (witthum) he intends to give the bride. Then the priest shall make him betroth her with a ring, and give her an honorarium of gold or silver according to his means. Then let him give the prescribed benediction. After which, entering into the church, let him begin mass; and let the bridegroom and bride hold lighted candles, and make an oblation at the offertory; and before the Pax let the priest bless them before the altar under a pall or other covering [the wedding canopy], according to custom; and lastly, let the bridegroom receive the kiss of peace from the priest, and pass it on to his bride.’”[407]

“In ancient times the people of France were married, not within the church at the altar as now, but at the outer door. This was the case in 1599, in which year Elizabeth, the daughter of Henry II., was married to Philip II. of Spain; and the Bishop of Paris performed the ceremony at the door of the cathedral of Notre Dame. Another instance of this kind occurred in 1599 in France. Henrietta Maria was married to King Charles by proxy at the door of Notre Dame, and the bride, as soon as the ceremony was over entered the church, and assisted at [attended] mass.”[408]

“The pre-Reformation rule was to begin the marriage service at the door of the church. In his ‘Wyf of Bathe,’ Chaucer [in the days of Edward III.] refers to this custom:–

‘Housbandes atte chirche dore I have had fyve.’

This old usage was abandoned by authority in the time of Edward VI. Yet there is reason for thinking that it was not entirely given up. “There is a poem of Herrick’s, written about 1640, which is entitled, ‘The Entertainment or Porch Verse at the Marriage of Mr. Hen. Northly.’”[409]

“When Edward I. married Marguerite of France, in 1299, he endowed her at the door of Canterbury Cathedral.” Selden declares that “dower could be lawfully assigned only at the door;” and Littleton affirms to the same effect.[410]

“At Witham in Essex it is, or was, the custom to perform the first part of the marriage service at the font [near the door]. When the Rev. A. Snell was appointed to the benefice in 1873, he spoke to a bridegroom about this usage, and he (the bridegroom) particularly requested that he might be married at the font, as he liked old customs.”[411]

Another survival of the primitive rite of threshold covenanting seems to be shown in certain customs observed in various parts of Europe, which look like the substitution of an altar-stone for a threshold altar, in the marriage ceremony.

“Thus in the old temple of Upsal [in Sweden], wedding couples stood upon a broad stone which was believed to cover the tomb of St. Eric.”[412] Corresponding customs in other regions would go to show that the earlier practice was to leap over the stone, as a mode of threshold covenanting, instead of standing on it. The latter was a change without a reason for it.

For instance, just outside “the ruined church, or abbey, of Lindisfarne, is the socket or foot-stone, in which was mortised a ponderous stone cross, erected by Ethelwold, and broken down by the Danes. This socket stone is now called the “petting stone,” and whenever a marriage is solemnized in the neighborhood, after the ceremony the bride is obliged to step upon it; and if she cannot stride to the end thereof, the marriage is deemed likely to prove unfortunate and fruitless.” While this would seem to point to the custom of standing upon the stone, in the modern marriage customs of the same region, a barrier is “erected at the churchyard gate, consisting of a large paving-stone which was placed on its edge and supported by two smaller stones. On either side stood a villager, who made the couple and every one else jump over it.”[413]

“In Lantevit Major Church was a stone called the ‘marriage stone,’ with many knots and flourishes, and the head of a person upon it, and this inscription:

‘_Ne Petra calcetur Qu[a]e subjacet ista tuetur_,’

Brides usually stood upon this stone at their marriages.”[414] Yet the inscription itself:

“Let not the stone be trodden upon; What it lies under, it guards,”

forbids standing upon this threshold altar; and it is probable that in earlier times it was stepped over in marriage covenant, and not upon.

At Belford, in Northumberland, it is still the custom to make the bridal pair, with their attendants, leap over a stone placed in their path outside the church porch. This stone also is called the “petting stone,” or the “louping stone.” At the neighboring village of Embleton, in the same county, two stout young lads place a wooden bench across the door of the church porch, and assist the bride and groom and their attendants to surmount the obstacle; for which assistance a gift of money is expected. In some places a stick has been held by the groomsmen at the church door for the bride to jump over. And again a stool has been placed at the churchyard gate, over which the whole bridal party must jump one by one; and this stool has been called the “parting-stool.”[415]

A “mode of marriage” current in Ireland, until recent times, was that of jumping over a form of the cross;[416] and jumping over a broomstick as a form of marriage would seem to be a survival of this custom of leaping across the threshold-stone, in token of a covenant. “Jumping the broomstick” is sometimes spoken of as an equivalent of marriage.

These various obstacles to progress, at wedding time, would seem to be as suggestions of the threshold altar, which must be passed in the marriage covenant. The church threshold, like the home threshold, is a temporary hindrance to an advance. Unless it is stepped across, the covenant is incomplete.

An illustration of the popular idea of the sacredness of the church threshold, and of the impropriety of stepping on it, in its passing, is found in a Finnish mode of judging a clergyman. “In Finland, it is regarded as unlucky if a clergyman steps on the threshold, when he comes to preach at a church.” A writer on this subject says: “A Finnish friend told me of one of his relations going to preach at a church, a few years ago,–he being a candidate for the vacant living,–and the people most anxiously watched if he stepped on the threshold as he came in. Had he done so, I fear a sermon never so eloquent would have counted but little against so dire an omen.”[417] Here is a new peril for pulpit candidates, if this primitive test becomes widely popular!

Even to the present time, it is customary, in portions of Europe, for Jews to rub their fingers on the posts of a synagogue doorway, and then kiss their fingers. Quite an indentation in the stone at the door of the synagogue in Worms is to be seen, as due to this constant sacred rubbing.[418]

6. TEMPLE THRESHOLDS IN AMERICA.

In the West, as in the East, traces of the primitive sacredness of the threshold and the doorway are to be found. The stepped pyramid, or uplifted threshold, with the sanctuary at its summit, was the earliest form of temple or place of worship in Mexico, and in Central and South America. In the later and more elaborate temples there was no altar within the building, although an image of the god was there.

The altar, or stone of sacrifice, was without, before the door of the sanctuary.[419] When a sacrifice was offered on the altar, the blood of that sacrifice was smeared on the doors of the temple of the god.[420] Human sacrifices were included in these offerings, in earlier times.[421] Even when larger temples were erected, and altars were enclosed within them, human victims were brought to the temple entrance into the hands of the priests; and from the threshold they were borne by the priests themselves, to be laid on the altar.[422]

Among the Pipiles, a Maya people, in Central America, there were “two principal and very solemn sacrifices; one at the commencement of summer, and the other at the beginning of winter.” Little boys, from six to twelve years old, were the victims of sacrifice. At the sound of trumpets and drums, which assembled the people, four priests came out of the temple with braziers of coals on which incense was burning, and after various ceremonies and religious exercises they proceeded to the house of the high-priest, near the temple, and took from it the boy victim of the sacrifice. He was then conducted four times round the court of the temple, with dancing and singing.

When this ceremony was finished, the high-priest came out of his house with the second priest and his major-domo, and they proceeded to the temple steps, accompanied by the principal men of the locality, who, however, stopped at the threshold of the temple. Then and there the four priests “seized the victim by his extremities, and the major-domo coming out, with little bells on his wrists and ankles, opened the left breast of the boy, tore out his heart, and handed it to the high-priest, who put it into a little embroidered purse, which he closed.”

The blood of the victim was received by the priests in a vessel made of a gourd, and was by them sprinkled in the direction of the four cardinal points. Then the heart, in its purse, was put back into the body of the victim, and the body itself was interred inside of the temple. This sacrifice, at the threshold altar, was performed at the threshold, or the beginning, of each of the two chief seasons of the year.[423]

In the temples of Central America, generally, the doorway was hardly less prominent than in the temples of Egypt. There were massive decorations on and above the lintels; the door jams were richly sculptured; and there were male and female figures, or figures of animals, as guardians on either side of the entrance. In some instances a winged globe was above the door; and the uplifted hand was found over the doorway or at the sides.[424]

Among the Natchez Indians, along the lower Mississippi, there was an annual “Harvest Festival,” or “Festival of New Fire,” which was celebrated with great ceremony. An altar was in front of the temple, just before the door. On this occasion the priest of the sun stood on the threshold of the temple in the early morning, watching for the first rays of the rising sun. The chiefs, and braves old and young, stood near the altar. The women with infants in their arms stood in a semicircle facing the priest. When he gave the signal of his recognition of the sun, by rubbing two pieces of wood to start a new fire for the altar, they faced about to the east and held up their infants to the sun. Other exercises of worship followed. The priest’s place in this ceremony was on the threshold, before the altar of that temple.[425]

In America, as in the other continents, there are survivals of the primal sacredness of the threshold of a place of public worship, in the formal ceremonies attending the laying of the corner-stone, or threshold-stone, of a new church building of any denomination; and in the use of holy water at the doorway on entering Roman Catholic churches. More or less importance is attached in Protestant Episcopal churches to the location of the baptismal font near the door, and to the beginning of the marriage service before the bridal party approaches the threshold of the sanctuary proper.

If indeed, there be found no trace of the fountain of life flowing from under the threshold sanctuary of the gods worshiped by the aborigines of America, such a fountain was searched for in this land by Ponce de Leon and his followers.

7. TEMPLE THRESHOLDS IN ISLANDS OF THE SEA.

There is a certain resemblance in the plan of some of the temples of the South Sea Islands to those of Central America. A stepped pyramid in a large court was the central shrine; “in front of which the images were kept, and the altars fixed.”[426] In both cases the altars were outside of the shrine,–at its threshold, as it were. A method of sacrificing was by bleeding a pig to death before the altar, “washing the carcass with the blood, and then placing it in a crouching position on the altar.”[427] An uplifted hand was one of the symbols on these stepped pyramid shrines.[428] The temple foundation, or the threshold of the sacred building, was formerly laid in human blood.[429]

A recognition of the threshold, in a sacred service, and in a form of covenanting, is found in the ceremonies of circumcision as observed in Madagascar. This rite is not at infancy, as among the Jews, but is at the threshold of young manhood. Its period is fixed by the king, who, on “an application from the parents or the friends of any number of children in a given province, appoints a time, and orders the observance of the rite.” He is the “high-priest on this occasion.” The rite marks the transition of the boy from his dependence on his parents to his personal service of the king, as a member of the community.

Holy water is brought from a distance to the house of the master of ceremonies, as the sanctuary for the occasion. A sheep is killed immediately before this house, and the boys are caused to step across its blood. This sacrifice is called “fahazza,” or “causing fruitfulness,” and it is supposed to be the means of causing fruitfulness in all the women who obtain a share of it.

A tree is planted at the northeast corner of the house, and a lamp is fixed on it. Honey and water are poured upon the tree, and the boys partake of this mixture. The next day the persons present walk three times round the house, with various ceremonies, and then stop at the doorway. The rite of circumcision is performed on each boy as he sits on a drum at “the threshold of the door,” held firmly by several men. The knife with which it is performed is previously dipped in the blood of a young bullock, an ear of which is slit by the operator. A covenant of fealty to the king is entered into by the youth on this occasion. Sacrifices and feasting follow this ceremony.[430]

One of the ancient gods of Maui, an island of Hawaii, was Keoroeva. “In all the temples dedicated to its worship, the image was placed within the inner apartment, on the left-hand side of the door; and immediately before it stood the altar, on which the offerings of every kind were usually placed.”[431] The altar was at the doorway, in this case, as so generally elsewhere. Tiha was a female idol, as Keoroeva was a male, and much “the same homage and offerings” were given to her as to him.[432]

In Kohala, one of the large divisions of Hawaii, stood a prominent temple called Bukohōla, built by King Kamehameha, at the time of his conquest of the Sandwich Islands. “At the south end of this great edifice was a kind of inner court, which might be called the _sanctum sanctorum_ of the temple, where the principal idol used to stand, surrounded by a number of images of inferior deities.” “On the outside, near the entrance to the inner court [at the threshold of the _sanctum sanctorum_] was the place of the _rere_ [or _lélé_] (altar), on which human and other sacrifices were offered.”[433]

Human victims were ordinarily slain in sacrifice outside of the sanctuary proper, and then their bodies, carefully preserved whole, were taken within to be presented to the idol.[434]

There were Hawaiian cities of refuge, or _puhonuas_, as sanctuaries for guilty fugitives. A thief, or a murderer, might be pursued to the very gateway of one of those cities, but as soon as he crossed the threshold of that gate, even though the gate were open, and no barrier hindered pursuit, he was safe, as at the city altar. When once within the sacred city, the fugitive’s first duty was to present himself before the idol, and return thanks for his protection.[435] This was substantially the Hebrew law as to the cities of refuge.[436] Safety was only within the threshold.

There are traces of the primitive idea of a spring of life-giving waters flowing from under the threshold of the goddess of life, in the Islands of the Sea. According to the myths of that region, Vari, or “The-very-beginning” of life was a woman. She plucked off a piece of her right side and it became a man, or part man and part fish, known as Vātea, or Avatea. From the under-world there came to Vātea a supernatural woman called Papa, or Foundation. From this union the human race began. Rongo was the first-born son. The Hades of Polynesia is Avaika, or Hawaika. In the days of Rongo, and later, there was an opening from earth to Avaika; but because of the misdoings of the denizens of that realm, coming up through that passage-way, Tiki, a lovely woman, a descendant of Rongo, “rolled herself alive down into the gloomy opening, which immediately closed upon her.” She was the first to die. And now “Tiki sits at the threshold” of her home below, to welcome the descendants of Rongo, who bring her an offering. A sacred stream of water, “Vairorongo,” comes up from below into the sacred grove devoted to the worship of Rongo, and near that stream it is possible for a spirit to be returned to life and to a home on earth again.[437]

It is obvious that the idea of the sacredness of the threshold, in home, in temple, or in sanctuary, is not of any one time or of any one people, but is of human nature as human nature everywhere. It shows itself all the world over, and always. And it has to do with life, and its perpetuation or reproduction.

8. ONLY ONE FOUNDATION.

An idea tangent to, rather than identical with, the thought of the altar sacredness of the temple threshold, as found among primitive peoples, is that the first temple foundation is the foundation for all subsequent temple building at that place. And it has already been shown that the threshold, or hearthstone, or corner-stone, is considered the foundation.[438]

In ancient Babylonia a temple, however grand and extensive, was supposed to be built on the foundation of an earlier temple; the one threshold being the first threshold and the latest. If, indeed, there was a variation from the original foundation in the construction of a new temple, there was confusion and imperfectness in consequence, and the only hope of reformation was in finding the first temple threshold and rebuilding on it.

There is an illustration of this in an inscription discovered in the foundation of a temple at “Ur of the Chaldees.”[439] Nabonidus (556–538 B.C.), the last Babylonian king, tells with interest of his search for the old foundation, or outline plan, of the ancient temple, Eulbar, or, more properly, Eulmash, of the goddess Istar of Agade, as follows:[440]

The foundation of Eulmash in Agade had not been found from Sargon, king of Babylon (3800 B.C.), and Narâm-Sin, his son, kings living formerly, until the government of Nabunaʾid king of Babylon.

King Kurigalzu (II.), about 1300 B.C., had, in his reign, searched for this foundation, but had failed to find it, and he had left this record: “The foundation of Eulmash I sought, but did not find it.” Later on, Esarhaddon, king of Assyria and Babylonia (681–669 B.C.), searched for it, but without success. Again, Nebuchadrezzar (605–561 B.C.) mobilized his large armies, and ordered them to search for the foundation stone, or threshold, but all his efforts were in vain. Finally Nabunaʾid, the last king of Babylon before its fall under Cyrus, gathered his many soldiers, and ordered them to search for the foundation stone. For “three years in the tracks of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon,” says Nabunaʾid, “I sought right and left, before and behind, but did not find it.”

Encouraged by a prompting from the moon-god Sin, Nabunaʾid tried at another time and in another place, and this time with success. He found the inscription of King Shagarakti-Buriash (1350 B.C.), which tells that he had laid a new foundation exactly upon the old one of King Zabû (about 2300 B.C.). Then Nabunaʾid made sure to preserve the exact outline of the old shrine. He laid the foundation, and restored the ancient temple, so that “it did not deviate an inch to the outside or the inside.”[441]

There are indications of the same high value set upon the primal foundation of a temple in the records of ancient Egypt. A temple at its highest grandeur is in the location of a prehistoric sanctuary. “The site on which it is built is generally _holy ground_,[442] that is, a spot on which since the memory of man an older sanctuary of the god had stood. Even those Egyptian temples which seem most modern have usually a long history,–the edifice may have seemed very insignificant, but as the prestige of the god increased larger buildings were erected, which again, in the course of centuries, were enlarged and rebuilt in such a way that the original plan could no longer be traced. This is the history of nearly all Egyptian temples, and explains the fact that we know so little of the temples of the Old and of the Middle Empire; they have all been metamorphosed into the vast buildings of the New Empire.”[443]

While early Vedic and Brahmanic religion makes no mention of temples as such, fire from an ancestral altar was borne to a newly erected altar, in order to secure a continuance of the sacred influences issuing from that original family threshold.[444] And Vishnooism takes old temples from Booddhism for its centers of worship, prizing the old sacred foundation.

“Buddha-Gaya,” or “Bodhi-Gaya,” in Upper India, is famous as the locality of the holy pipal tree, or the Booddha-drum (“Tree of Knowledge”), under which for six years sat Sakya Sinha, in meditation, before he attained to Booddha-hood. A temple still standing on that site is supposed to have been rebuilt A.D. 1306, on the remains of one visited by Hwen Thsang, a Chinese traveler, in the seventh century of our era, which, in turn, had been built by Amara Sinha, or Amara Deva, about A.D. 500. This earlier temple is said to have been built by a command of Booddha himself conveyed in a vision, or by a command of the Brahmanical Mahâdeva, on the site of a still earlier sanctuary, or monastery, erected by Asoka between 259 and 241 B.C., on the site of Booddha’s meditations, about 300 B.C.[445] The existing temple has been called at different times “Buddha-pad” and “Vishnu-pad,” “Booddha’s foot” and “Vishnoo’s foot.”

Kuru-Kshetra, or the “Plain of Kuru,” near Delhi, India, has been deemed holy ground from time immemorial. At Thâvesar, on this plain, a temple of Siva was built on a site that was sacred long before Sivaism was known. It is even believed that the sacredness of this site runs back to the ancient times of the Rig Veda. The boundaries of this “Holy Land” are given in the great Hindoo epic, the Mahabharata. This plain is said to comprise three hundred and sixty holy shrines, each of which is erected on a foundation sacred from the times of the gods themselves.[446]

So general, in India, is this habit of building a sanctuary on an old sacred foundation, that it is said that “the erection of a mosk by a Muhammadan conqueror always implies the previous destruction of a Hindu temple.”[447] Thus a mosk erected by the emperor Altamash, A D. 1232, is supposed to have been on the foundation of a temple of the sun, built for Raja Pasupati about A.D. 300.[448] Not a new foundation, but an old one, was sought, in India, for a new temple, even to a god newly worshiped there.

Fourteen centuries before Christ, Pan-Kăng, an emperor of China, moved his capital from north of the Ho to south of it because he had ascertained that the original foundation was attempted to be laid there by his ancestor Thang in the Shing dynasty, seventeen reigns before him; hence the removal back to that first foundation would renew the blessing of Thang upon his descendants.[449]

A temple has added sacredness in China according as its foundation is on a spot originally chosen or honored by a representative of Heaven as a threshold of a place of worship. Thus Tai Shan, or the “Great Mount,” in the province of Shantung, China, is mentioned in the Shoo King, or Book of Records, as the site of the great Emperor Shun’s altar of sacrifice to Heaven, 2254 B.C., or, say, three centuries before the time of Abraham. On this holy mountain, as the earliest historic foundation of Chinese worship, “is the great rendezvous of devotees, every sect has there its temples and idols, scattered up and down its sides;” and great multitudes come thither to worship from near and far.[450]

This idea shows itself in modern discoveries among the ruins of ancient Greece. It appears that when Pericles (437 B.C.) began his building of the new Propylæa on the Acropolis, he would have cleared away the remains of such ancient sacred structures as stood within its outline. “The plan of Mnesikles the architect was very simple, and is still clear enough, though it was never fully carried out.” “That the original plan of Mnesikles had undergone modifications was long ago seen by every architect who made the Propylæa matter of serious study.” Dr. Dörpfeld thinks he has discovered how the plan was modified, and why. The enforced departure from the original plan seems to have been because that plan involved the destruction of shrines on an earlier foundation, with a threshold that might not be moved. The gate of Cimon, with its “statue of some guardian god of the gate,–it may be Hermes Propylaios himself,”–was within that outline, and also other sacred sites.

“Against such intrusion it is very likely the priesthood rose and protested, and, before even the foundations were laid, he had to give up, at least for the time, the whole of the southeast hall, and a part of the southwest wing.” This conclusion is the result of recent investigation by careful scholars, and it is in accordance with the ascertained fact that in primitive thought an original foundation for a temple or shrine is counted sacred for all time as the foundation there for such a place of worship, not to be swept away or ignored in any rebuilding or new building.[451]

When from any reason, in early Europe, an ancient shrine must be removed from its primitive foundation, it was deemed desirable to remove to the new site a portion of the foundation itself, as well as the sanctuary or altar above that foundation. Thus, for example, when Thorolf of Norway, who had charge of the temple of Thor in Mostur, removed to Iceland in A.D. 833, he took with him the temple posts and furniture “and the very earth on which the altar of that idol had been erected.” And when he landed in Iceland, Thorolf built a new temple of Thor, with an altar on the foundation which he had brought from the earlier shrine. A thousand years after this the foundation-site of that second temple was still pointed out near Hofstad, in Iceland.[452]

Bible language and narrative abound with incidental evidence of the commonness of this primitive idea. When Jacob, on his way to Haran, came to Beth-el–a House of God–he lighted on “the place” (_hammaqâm_) where,[453] long before, his ancestor Abraham had worshiped, as he came from Egypt by way of the Negeb.[454] And yet earlier Abraham himself, as he came a pilgrim from Haran and Ur, had there “builded an altar unto the Lord, and called upon the name of the Lord.”[455] And if that place were already known as Beth-el it must have been a sanctuary before Abraham’s day.

Moses, in the wilderness of Sinai, is told that the ground whereon he stands is “holy ground,” and that he is to bring the Hebrews out of Egypt to worship God in that mountain.[456] And the Egyptian records give reason for supposing that that region of Mt. Sinai, perhaps of the moon-god “Sin,” was known as holy ground, and as the “land of God,” or of the gods, before the days of Moses.[457]

At Jerusalem the Temple was built on Mt. Moriah, where the ark of the covenant rested after its return from Philistia,[458] and where David erected an altar to the Lord after the staying of the pestilence from Israel.[459] And it is supposed that this same Mt. Moriah was where Abraham offered a sacrifice to God on an altar he had built for the sacrifice of his son.[460] And this site of the Temple at Jerusalem is held sacred to-day, in view of its being deemed by multitudes a holy place from the beginning of the world.[461]

When Naaman the Syrian was healed of leprosy by Elisha, the prophet of Israel, he desired thenceforth to worship Jehovah in his Syrian home. To this end he asked of Elisha the gift of “two mules’ burden of earth” from Samaria, in order that he might on that sacred foundation erect in Syria an altar to Jehovah.[462]

In a prophecy of the Messiah as the foundation, or threshold, of a new temple, it was declared by the Lord: “Behold, I lay [or, I have laid] in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone of sure foundation.”[463] Again, it was the promise of God to the Israelites that they should be restorers of worship on former foundations. “They that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called The repairer of the breach, The restorer of paths to dwell in.”[464]

New Testament phraseology makes frequent reference to this same idea. “According to the grace which was given unto me, as a wise master-builder, I laid a foundation,” says Paul. “But let each man take heed how he buildeth thereon. For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Christ Jesus.”[465] The Christian saints of the “household of God,” as “living stones,”[466] are “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief corner stone; in whom each several building, fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord.”[467]

Muhammadanism, which shows many survivals of primitive ideas and primitive customs, emphasizes the importance of the first foundation as the only foundation, in the traditions and legends of the holy places of its most sacred city. Every _masjid_, or “place of prostration,” in that vicinity is on a site counted holy long centuries before the days of the Prophet of Islam.

The Kaʿbah, or Holy House, in the mosk at Meccah is said to have been built by Adam himself, on the model of a similar structure in heaven. It would seem as if no earthly foundation, or threshold, could have been earlier than that; indeed, the Qurân declares: “The first house appointed unto men to worship in was that which was in Beccah [or Meccah];”[468] yet there is a tradition that Adam erected a place of prayer even before he built the Kaʿbah. In the Deluge the Holy House was destroyed; but Abraham was directed to rebuild it, and on digging beneath the surface of its site he discovered the original foundation, and the Kaʿbah was newly built up on that.

According to Muhammadan traditions, it was while Hagar was near the site of the Holy House, with her famishing son Ishmael, that a spring of water gushed forth with its life-giving stream from beneath that holy site. And that spring is the well Zemzem, or Zamzam, whose waters are deemed sacred and life-giving to-day.

Mount Arafat, a holy hill near Meccah, is another place of pilgrimage, and its sacredness dates from even an earlier day than the laying of the first foundation of the Holy House at Meccah by Adam. When our first parents were cast out of their heavenly paradise, Adam lighted in Ceylon, and Eve in Arabia. Seeking each other, they met on Mount Arafat, or the Mount of Recognition, and therefore that spot of their reunion and new covenanting is a place of pilgrimage and worship for the faithful of all the world at this time.[469] Adam is said to have built a _madaa_, a place of prayer, on Mount Arafat, before he built the Kaʿbah.[470] The religion of Islam thus teaches its subjects to worship at the earliest threshold laid by our first parents in their primal covenanting, and all other religions recognize the importance of a similar idea.

-----

Footnote 261:

Darmesteter’s translation of _Zend Avesta_, in “Sacred Books of the East,” IV., 12, note.

Footnote 262:

De Coulange’s _Ancient City_, pp. 32–35, 46 f.

Footnote 263:

Compare Friedrich Delitzsch’s _Assyrisches Handwörterbuch_, s. v. “Êkallu.”

Footnote 264:

Wilkinson’s _Egyptians in the Times of the Pharaohs_, p. 141.

Footnote 265:

Erman’s _Life in Ancient Egypt_, p. 279 f.

Footnote 266:

Guhl and Koner’s _Life of the Greeks and Romans_, p. 297.

Footnote 267:

See, for example, _Odyssey_, VII., 80.

Footnote 268:

Perrot and Chipiez’s _Hist. of Art in Persia_, pp. 240–254.

Footnote 269:

Comp. Gen. 18 : 1–9, and Exod. 26 : 1–14; 39 : 32, etc.

Footnote 270:

Douglas’s _Society in China_, p. 343.

Footnote 271:

See Chamberlain’s _Things Japanese_, pp. 37, 226 f., 378; Griffis’s _Mikado’s Empire_, p. 90; Isabella Bird’s _Unbeaten Tracks in Japan_, II., 282.

Footnote 272:

Turner’s _Samoa_, pp. 18–20.

Footnote 273:

Maspero’s _Dawn of Civilization_, p. 703 f.

Footnote 274:

See Fergusson’s _Rude Stone Monuments_, pp. 100, 411–413.

Footnote 275:

Gen. 11 : 1–9.

Footnote 276:

See Mühlau and Volck’s Gesenius’s _Heb. und Aram. Handwörterbuch_ (12th ed.), s. v. “Babel;” also Schrader, in Richon’s _Dict. of Bib. Antiq._ (2d ed.).

Footnote 277:

See Brugsch’s _Egypt under the Pharaohs_, I., 63; also, Erman’s _Life in Ancient Egypt_, p. 58.

Footnote 278:

See Perrot and Chipiez’s _History of Art in Chal. and Assy._, II., 72.

Footnote 279:

See Count de Gobineau’s _Les Religions et les Philosophies dans l’Asie Centrale_; also Browne’s _Year among the Persians, and Traveller’s Narrative to Illustrate the Episode of the Bab_.

Footnote 280:

_Bibliothèque Orientale_, s. v. “Bab.”

Footnote 281:

John 10 : 9.

Footnote 282:

See, for example, Griffis’s _Mikado’s Empire_, p. 419; Isabella Bird’s _Unbeaten Tracks in Japan_, I., 295 f.; II., 367 f.; Gray’s _China_, I., 90; Fergusson’s _Rude Stone Monuments_, p. 413.

Footnote 283:

See Chamberlain’s _Things Japanese_, p. 429 f.; and, Lowell’s _Chosön_, pp. 262–266, for a fuller explanation of the origin and signification of this primitive entrance way.

Footnote 284:

See, for example, Douglas’s _Society in China_, p. 411; Isabella Bird’s _Unbeaten Tracks in Japan_, I., 64; Fergusson’s _Tree and Serpent Worship_, frontispiece, plates iv-ix, xxi.

Footnote 285:

See Maspero’s _Dawn of Civilization_, p. 656.

Footnote 286:

_Ibid._, p. 569. The doorway in the engraving from the intaglio is clearly one of the doorway shrines, with the guardians of the doorway on either side, and not, as has been supposed, an opening into the ark.

Footnote 287:

Maspero’s _Dawn of Civilization_, pp. 657, 662, 759, 762; also Perrot and Chipiez’s _Hist. of Art in Chal. and Assy._, I., 203, 212; II., 95, 163, 210, 211.

Footnote 288:

_Ibid._, II., facing p. 212.

Footnote 289:

Perrot and Chipiez’s _Hist. of Art in Chal. and Assy._, II., 231; Perrot and Chipiez’s _Hist. of Art in Phœnicia and Cyprus_, I., 9. See, also, note in Rawlinson’s _Herodotus_, II., pp. 148–151.

Footnote 290:

Wilkinson’s _Anc. Egypt_, III., 349; Erman’s _Life in Anc. Egypt_, pp. 274, 283; and Maspero’s _Dawn of Civilization_, pp. 189, 239.

Footnote 291:

Erman’s _Life in Anc. Egypt_, p. 311; Maspero’s _Dawn of Civilization_, pp. 237, 250, 253, 262, 316, 413.

Footnote 292:

Erman’s _Life in Anc. Egypt_, p. 314. See, also, illustrations in Perrot and Chipiez’s _Hist. of Art in Anc. Egypt_, I., 131, 140, 175.

Footnote 293:

Erman’s _Life in Anc. Egypt_, p. 319.

Footnote 294:

Perrot and Chipiez’s _Hist. of Art in Phœnicia and Cyprus_, I., 256; II., 31, 57, 147, 178.

Footnote 295:

_Ibid._, I., 53, 54.

Footnote 296:

_Ibid._, I., 287; II., 147.

Footnote 297:

_Ibid._, I., 264, 321.

Footnote 298:

_Ibid._, I., 320.

Footnote 299:

Bent’s _Sacred City of the Ethiopians_, pp. 185–193.

Footnote 300:

See, for example, Fergusson’s _Rude Stone Monuments_, pp. 100, 168 f., 217, 233, 335, 337, 344, 385, 388, 398–401, 411–413, 441, 464, 468, 484, 532.

Footnote 301:

See illustrations in Sherrin’s _Early History of New Zealand_, pp. 406, 514, 648.

Footnote 302:

Bancroft’s _Native Races_, IV., 481.

Footnote 303:

See, for example, Williams’s _Middle Kingdom_, I., frontispiece; Gray’s _China_, I., 11 f.

Footnote 304:

See citation in Bonomi’s _Nineveh and its Palaces_ (2d ed.), pp. 157–160, 174.

Footnote 305:

_Ibid._

Footnote 306:

_Nineveh and its Remains_ (Am. ed.), II., 202.

Footnote 307:

_Assyrian Discoveries_, pp. 75, 78, 429.

Footnote 308:

_Chaldean Magic_, pp. 47, 48, 54.

Footnote 309:

See, for example, 1 Sam. 29 : 6; 2 Sam. 3 : 25; 2 Kings 19 : 27; Psa. 121 : 7, 8; Isa. 37 : 28; Ezek. 43 : 11.

Footnote 310:

See references to the Mezuza of the Hebrews at page 69 f., _supra_.

Footnote 311:

Grotefend Cylinder, Col. I., ll. 44–46. See, also, Rawlinson’s _Cuneiform Inscriptions of Western Asia_, Vol. I., p. 65, Col. I., ll. 19–21.

Footnote 312:

_East India House Inscription_, Col. III., ll. 48–50.

Footnote 313:

_Ibid._, Col. VIII., ll. 5–9.

Footnote 314:

_Ibid._, Col. IX., ll. 9–16.

Footnote 315:

Grotefend Cylinder, Col. I., ll. 36–38.

Footnote 316:

_East India House Inscr._, col. II., ll. 48–50.

Footnote 317:

See Layard’s _Nineveh and Babylon_ (Am. ed.), p. 424; Perrot and Chipiez’s _Hist. of Art in Chald. and Assy._, I., 366–392; Rawlinson’s _Herodotus_, Bk. II., Chap. 99, 125; Sayce’s _Religion of the Ancient Babylonians_, p. 96; Mariette Bey’s _Monuments of Upper Egypt_, p. 79 f.; Bunsen’s _Egypt’s Place in Universal History_, II., 378–386; Rawlinson’s _History of Ancient Egypt_, I., 188–194; Réville’s _Religions of Mexico and Peru_, pp. 41 f., 179 f., Ellis’s _Polynesian Researches_, II., 207.

Footnote 318:

Rawlinson’s _Herodotus_, Bk. I., Chap. 181–183.

Footnote 319:

The word “_sullam_,” here translated “ladder,” is a derivative from “_salal_,” “to raise up in a pile, to exalt by heaping up as in the construction of a mound or highway.” Comp. Isa. 57 : 14; 62 : 10; Jer. 50 : 26. See Bush’s _Notes on Genesis_, in loco.

Footnote 320:

Gen. 28 : 10–22.

Footnote 321:

See Maspero’s _Dawn of Civilization_, pp. 691–696, with citation of authorities at foot of p. 693, and note at p. 695.

Footnote 322:

_Ibid._; also, Sayce’s _Relig. of the Anc. Babyl._, pp. 221–278; 286, note 3.

Footnote 323:

Comp. Job 1 : 21; Eccl. 5 : 15; 1 Tim. 6 : 7.

Footnote 324:

Maspero’s _Dawn of Civilization_, p. 696.

Footnote 325:

Ezek. 47 : 1–9.

Footnote 326:

Zeph. 2 : 13, 14, with margin.

Footnote 327:

See _Survey of Western Palestine_, “Memoirs,” I., 107.

Footnote 328:

See Gen. 2 : 8–10; Rev. 22 : 1, 2.

Footnote 329:

Ezek. 8 : 8–16.

Footnote 330:

Layard’s _Nineveh and Babylon_ (Am. ed.), pp. 302–311.

Footnote 331:

_Ibid._, p. 69 f.

Footnote 332:

1 Sam. 5 : 1–5.

Footnote 333:

_In loco._

Footnote 334:

Zeph. 1 : 9.

Footnote 335:

Ezek. 46 : 2.

Footnote 336:

_Ibid._, 10 : 4; 9 : 3.

Footnote 337:

_Ibid._, 43 : 8.

Footnote 338:

Lev. 17 : 2–9.

Footnote 339:

Exod. 29 : 4.

Footnote 340:

_Ibid._, 29 : 10–12.

Footnote 341:

Exod. 33 : 8–10; see, also, Num. 12 : 5; 20 : 6; Deut. 31 : 15.

Footnote 342:

See, for example, Exod. 40 : 6, 29; Lev. 1 : 3, 5; 3 : 2; 4 : 4, 7; 8 : 1–36; 12 : 6; 14 : 11, 23; 15 : 14, 29; 16 : 7; 17 : 4–9; 19 : 21; Num. 6 : 10–18.

Footnote 343:

2 Chron. 23 : 4, 5.

Footnote 344:

_Ibid._, 34 : 8, 9 (see margin).

Footnote 345:

1 Chron. 15 : 23, 24; Jer. 35 : 4; 52 : 24, etc.

Footnote 346:

Psa. 84 : 10 (see margin).

Footnote 347:

See Edersheim’s _The Temple: Its Ministry and Services_, p. 191; also, Ginsburg’s art. “Passover,” in Kitto’s _Cycl. of Bib. Lit._, p. 426.

Footnote 348:

See 2 Kings 12 : 9; 22 : 4; 23 : 4; 25 : 18.

Footnote 349:

See, for example, representation and description of temples at Byblus and Baalbec, in Donaldson’s _Architectura Numismatica_, pp. 105 f., 122–128.

Footnote 350:

Fellows’s _Travels and Researches in Asia Minor_, p. 256.

Footnote 351:

Roberts’s _Oriental Illus. of Scrip._, p. 148 f.

Footnote 352:

Maurice’s _Indian Antiquities_, V., 89.

Footnote 353:

Maurice’s _Indian Antiquities_, V., 79 f., note. Compare Trumbull’s _Blood Covenant_, pp. 157–164.

Footnote 354:

Maurice’s _Modern Hist. of Hindostan_, Pt. I., Bk. 2, chap. 3, p. 296 f.

Footnote 355:

Hughes’s _Dictionary of Islam_, art. “Masjid;” also Conder’s _Heth and Moab_, p. 293 f.; also Lane’s _The Modern Egyptians_, I., 105.

Footnote 356:

Morier’s _Second Journey through Persia_, p. 254.

Footnote 357:

The moon is said to have thus bowed before Muhammad, at the threshold of the Kaabeh at Meccah. _Anecdotes Arabes et Mussulmans_, p. 22 f. (By J.F. de la Croix, Paris, 1772.)

Footnote 358:

Chardin’s _Voyage_, I., 282.

Footnote 359:

_Ibid._, I., 292.

Footnote 360:

Laurie’s _Dr. Grant and the Mountain Nestorians_, p. 134 f.

Footnote 361:

Vambéry’s _Travels in Central Asia_, p. 233.

Footnote 362:

Huc’s _Travels in Tartary, Thibet, and China_, I., 191.

Footnote 363:

Hearn’s _Glimpses of Unfamiliar Japan_, I., 188.

Footnote 364:

Lowell’s _Occult Japan_, pp. 270–273; also, Isabella Bird’s _Unbeaten Tracks in Japan_, II., 278–285.

Footnote 365:

_Ibid._, I., 111–119; II., 286–288.

Footnote 366:

See Petrie’s _Ten Years’ Digging in Egypt_, pp. 138–142; also, Mariette’s _Monuments of Upper Egypt_, p. 107 f., and Maspero’s _Dawn of Civilization_, pp. 358–361.

Footnote 367:

Brugsch’s _Egypt under the Pharaohs_, I., 67.

Footnote 368:

See Wilkinson’s _Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians_, I., xiv.

Footnote 369:

This is on the testimony of Prof. W. Max Müller, who adds that “so far the Egyptologists have not paid any attention to the threshold;” hence there is a lack of material yet available as showing its peculiar sacredness.

Footnote 370:

Erman’s _Life in Anc. Egypt_, p. 272.

Footnote 371:

Lemm’s “Ritual Book,” p. 29 ff., 47; cited in Erman’s _Life in Anc. Egypt_, p. 274 f.

Footnote 372:

Erman’s _Life in Anc. Egypt_, pp. 260, 308 f.; Mariette Bey’s _Monuments of Upper Egypt_, p. 26.

Footnote 373:

Wilkinson’s _Ancient Egyptians_, III., 65–86.

Footnote 374:

_Book of the Dead_, CXLII.

Footnote 375:

Renouf’s _Relig. of Anc. Egypt_, p. 191 f.

Footnote 376:

See p. 106, _supra_.

Footnote 377:

_Book of the Dead_, CXLV., CXLVI.

Footnote 378:

Renouf’s _Religion of Ancient Egypt_, p. 202 f.

Footnote 379:

_Book of the Dead_, CXXV.

Footnote 380:

Lane’s _Thousand and One Nights_. Notes to Chapter 3, Vol. I., p. 215 f. See, also, Stanley Lane’s _Arabian Society in the Middle Ages_, p. 73.

Footnote 381:

Or, “by steps,”–“_gradibus_.”

Footnote 382:

Cranch’s _Æneid of Virgil_, I., 572–585; _Æneis_, I., 441–449.

Footnote 383:

Bruce’s _Travels_ (Dublin ed.), III., 644, Bk. IV., chap. 12.

Footnote 384:

Bent’s _Sacred City of the Ethiopians_, p. 40 f.

Footnote 385:

See Wood’s _Wedding Day in all Ages and Countries_, II., 17.

Footnote 386:

See, for example, _Iliad_, I., 426; XIV., 173; XXI., 427, 505; _Odyssey_, VIII., 321.

Footnote 387:

Professor W.A. Lamberton, in a personal note to the author.

Footnote 388:

_Odyssey_, XIII., 4; VII., 83, 87, 89.

Footnote 389:

_Iliad_, VIII., 15.

Footnote 390:

See Hesiod’s _Theogony_, V., 749.

Footnote 391:

_Iliad_, IX., 404.

Footnote 392:

_Odyssey_, VIII., 80.

Footnote 393:

_Oedipus at Colonus_, 54 ff. See, also, 1591. Comp. Hesiod’s _Theogony_, 811.

Footnote 394:

Prof. W.A. Lamberton.

Footnote 395:

Æschylus’s “Suppliants,” p. 497; cited in Smith’s _Dict. of Greek and Roman Antiq._, s. v. “Ara.” See, also, Donaldson’s _Architectura Numismatica_, pp. xvi, xvii, 33, 54.

Footnote 396:

Euripides, _Androm._, 1098. Smith’s _Dict. of Greek and Rom. Antiq._, s. v. “Antæ.”

Footnote 397:

Acts 14 : 8–14.

Footnote 398:

_Odyssey_, VII., 130.

Footnote 399:

Euripides, _Hippolytus_, 741.

Footnote 400:

_Pausanias_, Bk. X., 24, 5.

Footnote 401:

Bingham’s _Antiquities of the Christian Church_, Bk. VIII., chap. 3.

Footnote 402:

_Ibid._, Bk. VIII., chap. 4.

Footnote 403:

_Ibid._, Bk. VIII., chap. 7.

Footnote 404:

Blunt’s _Annotated Book of Common Prayer_, p. 210.

Footnote 405:

_Ibid._, p. 217.

Footnote 406:

See Wood’s _Wedding Day in all Ages and Countries_, II., 15 f.

Footnote 407:

Baring-Gould’s _Germany, Present and Past_ (Am. ed.), p. 105.

Footnote 408:

Wood’s _Wedding Day in all Ages and Countries_, II., 14 f.

Footnote 409:

Vaux’s _Church Folk-Lore_, p. 99.

Footnote 410:

Wood’s _Wedding Day in all Ages and Countries_, II., 16.

Footnote 411:

Vaux’s _Church Folk-Lore_, p. 98.

Footnote 412:

Wood’s _Wedding Day in all Ages and Countries_, II., 17.

Footnote 413:

Wood’s _Wedding Day in all Ages and Countries_, II., 254.

Footnote 414:

Wood’s _Wedding Day in all Ages and Countries_, II., 255.

Footnote 415:

See Henderson’s _Folk-Lore of the Northern Counties of England and the Borders_, p. 38.

Footnote 416:

Curtin’s _Myths and Folk-Lore of Ireland_, p. 177.

Footnote 417:

See Jones’s and Kropf’s _Folk-Tales of the Magyars_, p. 410.

Footnote 418:

On the eye-witness testimony of Prof. Dr. Morris Jastrow, Jr.

Footnote 419:

Réville’s _Nat. Relig. of Mex. and Peru_, pp. 41, 179 f., 207; also Bancroft’s _Mex._, I., 296.

Footnote 420:

Réville’s _Nat. Relig. of Mex. and Peru_, p. 183; Bancroft’s _Mex._, I., 162.

Footnote 421:

Réville’s _Nat. Relig. of Mex. and Peru_, pp. 31, 184, 207 f.

Footnote 422:

_Ibid._, p. 83.

Footnote 423:

Bancroft’s _Native Races_, “Civilized Nations,” II., 706 f.

Footnote 424:

See Bancroft’s _Native Races and Antiquities_, IV., 209 f., 314, 321, 323, 332, 338, 351, 531, 801, 803, 805. See also, Stephens’s _Incidents of Travels in Yucatan_, I., 137, 167–176, 303, 306, 403–407, 411–413; II., 42, 54, 56, 72, 122.

Footnote 425:

Chateaubraud’s _Voyage en Amérique_, pp. 130–136; cited in Frazer’s _Golden Bough_, II., 383.

Footnote 426:

Ellis’s _Polynesian Researches_, II., 206.

Footnote 427:

_Ibid._, II., 211 f.

Footnote 428:

_Ibid._, II., 207, illustration.

Footnote 429:

_Ibid._, II., 212 f.

Footnote 430:

Ellis’s _Hist. of Madagascar_, I., 176–187.

Footnote 431:

Ellis’s _Through Hawaii_, p. 73 f.

Footnote 432:

_Ibid._, p. 75.

Footnote 433:

Ellis’s _Through Hawaii_, p. 81 f.

Footnote 434:

_Ibid._, p. 135 f.; also, Isabella Bird’s _Six Months in the Sandwich Islands_, p. 196.

Footnote 435:

Ellis’s _Through Hawaii_, p. 153 f. See, also, Isabella Bird’s _Six Months in the Sandwich Islands_, p. 135 f.

Footnote 436:

Num. 35 : 6–32; Deut. 4 : 41–43; 19 : 1–13; Josh. 20 : 1–9.

Footnote 437:

Comp. Gill’s _Myths and Songs from the South Pacific_, pp. 3, 4, 7, 14, 18, 20, 26, 152, 155, 158, 160, 170; also Turner’s _Samoa_, p. 259.

Footnote 438:

See pp. 21–23, 45 f., 55, _supra_.

Footnote 439:

Gen. 11 : 28; Neh. 9 : 7.

Footnote 440:

Rawlinson’s _Inscript. of W. Asia_, Vol. I., pl. 69, Col. II., l. 29 ff.

Footnote 441:

See Hilprecht’s _Assyriaca_, pp. 54, 55, 97.

Footnote 442:

Inscription in the temple of Rameses III. at Karnak.

Footnote 443:

Erman’s _Life in Ancient Egypt_, p. 279.

Footnote 444:

See “Grihya-Sutras,” in _Sacred Books of the East_, XXX., 193–201; also De Coulange’s _Ancient City_, pp. 36, 47 f.

Footnote 445:

See Julien’s _Mémoires de Hionen-Thsang_, I., 459–466; Cunningham’s _Archæological Survey of India_, I., 1–12; Sir Monier Monier-Williams’s _Buddhism_, pp. 390–401.

Footnote 446:

Cunningham’s _Archæological Survey of India_, II., 212, 213.

Footnote 447:

_Ibid._, II., 353 f.

Footnote 448:

_Ibid._

Footnote 449:

“The Shih King,” Bk. 7, § 3, in _Sacred Books of the East_, III., 111.

Footnote 450:

Williams’s _Middle Kingdom_, I., 90 f.

Footnote 451:

Harrison and Verrall’s _Myth. and Monu. of Anc. Athens_, pp. 353–361.

Footnote 452:

Henderson’s _Iceland_, II., 64–67; also _ibid._, I., xiv.

Footnote 453:

Gen. 28 : 10–22.

Footnote 454:

_Ibid._, 13 : 1–3.

Footnote 455:

_Ibid._, 12 : 1–8.

Footnote 456:

Exod. 3 : 1–12.

Footnote 457:

Brugsch’s _Egypt under the Pharaohs_, I., 411.

Footnote 458:

2 Sam. 6 : 1–19.

Footnote 459:

_Ibid._, 24 : 15–25.

Footnote 460:

Gen. 22 : 1–13.

Footnote 461:

As evidenced in the traditional claim that the grave of Adam was under the cross.

Footnote 462:

2 Kings 5 : 17.

Footnote 463:

Isa. 28 : 16; 1 Pet. 2 : 6.

Footnote 464:

Isa. 58 : 12.

Footnote 465:

1 Cor. 3 : 10, 11.

Footnote 466:

1 Pet. 2 : 5.

Footnote 467:

Eph. 2 : 20, 21.

Footnote 468:

_Sura_ 3 : 90.

Footnote 469:

See Sale’s _Koran_, “Preliminary Discourse,” Sect. IV.; Burton’s _Pilgrimage to El-Medinah and Meccah_, III., 149–222; Hughes’s _Dictionary of Islam_, s. vv. “Abraham,” “Adam,” “Arafāt,” “Hagar,” “Ishmael,” “Kaʿbah,” “Masjidu ʾl-Harām,” “Zamzam;” Sprenger’s _Life of Mohammad_, pp. 46–62; Muir’s _Mahomet and Islam_, pp. 12–17, 215–219.

Footnote 470:

Burton’s _Pilgrimage_, III., 260.

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