Forlong - Rivers of Life

190
Rivers of Life, or Faiths of Man in all Lands.
was a stone of the Strays; he that had lost or found anything was to repair thither;
he that had found was to stand there to produce it, he that had lost, to tell the signs
and marks; . . . . . the Jew is bound to restore for the satisfying of the name
of the Lord” (Tser or Hamor), so that it is here plain that we have a stone acting the
part of Jupiter Fœderis, a “righteous Lord,” and Presence, before which all are
bound to act truthfully and honestly. It was probably a remnant of a Lingam or
Pillar, such as the good and pious King Josiah “stood beside” and made his compact
(2 Kings xxiii. 3), as I am of opinion the present fragment of the “black stone” in the
the wall of AI-Ka-aba of Meka is,—see my illustration under “Arabian faiths.”
The Jewish temple idea to the present moment is still that of a fetish or magical
idol which no unbeliever can understand or should be permitted to behold. Up to
the time when the Rabbim were expelled their city, they insisted on the constant and
miraculous interpositions and even sayings of their Jhavh. Thus “flesh they said could
not corrupt on his altar, and any woman smelling the offerings could not miscarry;
rain could not put out the everlasting fire, nor the wind hinder the smoke from rising
towards heaven as of old like a pillar.” This is a purely Sivaik idea; it was Siva’s
mode of proving himself to Vishnoo. All Jerusalem is so holy (on account of “this
rock, my Elohim,” 2 Sam. xxii. 3—Ps. xviii. 2), that nothing that has happened to
it from the time of Solomon is capable of profaning it and so on, see Calmet, Art.
Jerusalem. Can anything be more superstitious? Not Benares, nor any place or people I
know of in the East, seems to have a more degraded idea of the Almighty Spirit which
we call God, than the utterers and believers of such nonsense. No respectable Hindoo
of ordinary education would so talk or think.
In regard to the shape which the Eduth may have taken, I have shown in Fig.
76 the ordinary lingam as standing on the top of the ark—“the mercy seat” as we
have it translated, which is, however, rather too
grand a phrase, and not at all so appropriate as
the proper translation, which. signifies ‘the
place of sacrifice,’ or the place for making offerings,
or ‘the propitatory place’—the ƒlast»rion
of the LXX, in fact, the Argha. The step adjoining
this is where we see worshippers come and
deposit their rice, fIowers, &c., I am half inclined
to think, however, that the Eduth of Moses was
feminine, as he seemed to prefer the Arkite
symbolism to that of the Bull or Aaronic Calf or
Fig. 72.—AN EGYPTIAN ARK.
Cone; and if so, this Egyptian ark—an ordinary
one, such as we see in Kitto’s Pictorial Bible at
Exodus xxv. and in many other books—might possibly be what Moses would adopt.
Whether male or female, of course when travelling it was shut up inside the ark,