The statue of the goddess stood colossal in size and exquisite in form and decoration. In her right hand she held the sceptre, in her left the distaff; for, while she swayed the hearts of women, she was at the same time the patroness and rewarder of their domestic industry. On her head was a tower of gold, whose gleaming spikes well imitated the rays of the sun by day. But at night her peculiar glory was revealed. Then the sacred stone that was set in her crown glowed with mysterious light, and filled the temple with soft rays as of the moon. The central gleam from the stone followed the beholder as an eye, shooting the beam from the omniscience of the goddess into the very soul of the devotee. A statue of Baal sometimes floated in the air, and invited the questions of worshippers, to which it gave oracular response by swaying forward if the answer were affirmative, and backward if a request were refused. There were varieties of worship adapted to the caprice of all comers. Some bent over the pool, where the torrent, issuing from the cave and plunging from the ledge, makes its first halting-place. Into the swirling waters they cast jewels and gems. If these sank to the bottom, they were presumed to have been accepted by the divinity; if they were cast up by the swift and turbulent eddies, the worshipper retired without assurance of favor. Perhaps the devotee did not confess to himself the selfishness of his motive for making his offering of goodly weight; nor did the priests confess to the people the motive with which every night they dragged the pool and took up the sunken basins they had placed in the bottom. In the temple court were daily hung some golden caskets containing the hair and beards of young men, their first manly offering to the goddess, whose favors they entreated with the fair sex; and other caskets or bags of golden thread held the similar offerings of the maidens. A less attractive sight was that of one who had sacrificed a sheep, and, while its skin was still warm with life, placed its head upon his own, tied its forelegs about his neck, the greasy inside against his face, and, doubling his body so that he could kneel upon the lower part of the skin, prayed to the Sheep-goddess--one of the appellations of the Queen of Heaven.