Their most extraordinary peculiarities are certain forms and ceremonies retained from their ancient Jewish worship. Their churches, which are generally small and mean, resemble precisely the Jewish temple. Like it, they are divided into three parts; the innermost being the holy of holies, and inaccessible to the laity, who, except on certain occasions, are forbidden to pass the outer porch. Unbelievers, and all subject to Levitical uncleanness, are carefully excluded. All who enter must be barefoot, and the doorposts and threshold must be kissed in passing. The service is performed in the ancient Ethiopic, or Geez, now a dead language. It commences with the Jewish Trisagion, and as David danced before the ark, so their priests caper and beat the ground with their feet, and, with other similar antics and performances, complete a remarkable form of devotion. They observe the Levitical prohibitions of unclean animals, and the Pharisaical ceremonies of genuflexions and ablutions. Like the Jews, they practise concubinage. Fasts of unexampled strictness and extraordinary frequency are constantly observed. With scriptural examples before them, and unenlightened by science and philosophy, it is perhaps not surprising that they should believe in witchcraft, magic, and sorcery. The whole country is overspread to excess with churches, and the number of the professedly religious in Shoa amounts to one-fourth of the population. The aboon, or abuna, is the ecclesiastical head, and the church confines to his hands alone the grace or virtue that makes a clergyman, differing in this from other churches called apostolic, which allow it to all bishops.