Forlong - Rivers of Life

Serpent and Phallic Worship.
these, at the entering in of all her cities. Though Jeremiah was scourging with
angry wail and prophetic curses, and though Isaiah had long done the same and prayed
to his people to spiritualise their faith, yet no phallic, solar or fire-rite was here
omitted. In “the valley” “of the sons of Hinnom,” the drums of Tophim were ever
sounding, to drown from the ears of loving but fanatical parents the wails and shrieks
of their offspring, consigned by ruthless and bloody priests into the red hot stomach
of the great brass god Molek; or else clasped by his horrid arms to his burning frame,
in which blazed a fire as fierce as that which Christians are taught to believe exists, by
a loving Father’s command, through all eternity for us in Hell.
Yet these great old Faiths, not carried as by these smaller tribes of the earth into the
barbarities of Hinnom, were not the dwarfed conceptions of rude people, but marked the
ascendancy of mighty nations, and the bold, grand thoughts of strong men, manly and
full of fire and vigour. We can read this very clearly in the great empire of the Asyrians
and Egyptians, in the Olympic ages of Greece, and down to their conquest by the
Romans; also in the brave, robust rule of Rome, whether Imperial or Republican, as
well as in the softer, more fitful, but not effeminate kingdoms of the Aryan conquerors
of the far East. These were faiths which men fought for and died to propagate, and loved
as dearly as devout Christian Evangelicals and the Mahommedan zealots of our own days
do theirs. For countless ages did men and women on this account “make swift to shed
blood,” and freely permit their own to be spilt like water. Nearly all Jewish history shows,
that Egypt and the countries to her north and east never disturbed her, unless she was
trying to upset these old Faiths. Hezekiah, king of Judah, began burning altars and groves
in 726 B.C., when there came up against him in 713 B.C., or as soon as the heresy seemed
to have taken root, Senakerib king of Asyria, whom he had twice to buy off. It took,
says 2 Chronicles xxx. 10, a long time to get the people bacl to a semi-spiritual faith
in Jehovah, and in their revered ancestors; for we read here that the people “laughed
to scorn” Hezekiah’s writings and fulminations, “and mocked” at his messengers.
Again, in 610 B.C., we read that Josiah, the “good king,” had revived the reformation
of his great-grand-father Hezekiah, which Manasseh and Amon his father and grandfather,
had dropped for 74 years; when. as soon as the “holy temple” was prepared,
up comes Neko, king of Egypt (2 Chron. xxxv. 20). Josiah was killed, and the good
Jeremiah appears as one of his mourners. Jerusalem after this received her kings from,
and paid tribute to Egypt, worshipping its orthodox gods till Syria was retaken by
Babylon in 599 B.C. In 588 B.C. was completed the captivity of these little tribes when
a change of Eastern Empire gave them a respite; for on Cyrus finding himself strong in
536 B.C., be granted them permission to return to their country, and Nehemiah 100 years
later succeeded in rebuilding the walls of JerusaIem; so that the people were once more
at liberty to select their own faiths. But we must remember that this and other captivities
changed any originally pure Jewish blood which they previously claimed, and show us
the stern fact that the tribes were votaries of almost pure Sun, fire, and phallic faiths,
according to their own records up to at least 440 B.C.; and that the only purer aspiration
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