None of them was held in such universal honour as the bull Apis. The particular animal which represented the deity, and which was lodged with great state and honour in his temple at Memphis, was thought to be divinely selected for the purpose, and to be impressed with certain marks. His colour must be black, except a square spot on the forehead, a crescent-shaped white spot on the right side, and the figure of an eagle on his back. Under the tongue must be a knob shaped like the sacred scarabæus, and the hairs of his tail must be double. This representative animal was only allowed to live for a certain time, and when he had reached this allotted period, he was taken in solemn procession to the Nile, and drowned in its sacred waters. His body was then embalmed, and placed with great state in the tombs at Memphis. After his death, whether natural or not, the whole nation went into mourning, and exhibited all the conventional signs of sorrow, until the priests found another bull which possessed the distinctive marks. The people then threw off their mourning robes, and appeared in their best attire, and the sacred bull was exhibited in state for forty days before he was taken to his temple at Memphis. The reader will here remember the analogous case of the Indian cattle, some of which are held to be little less than incarnations of divinity. Even at the very beginning of the exodus, when their minds must have been filled with the many miracles that had been wrought in their behalf, and with the cloud and fire of Sinai actually before their eyes, Aaron himself made an image of a calf in gold, and set it up as a symbol of the Lord. That the idol in question was intended as a symbol by Aaron is evident from the words which he used when summoning the people to worship, "To-morrow is a feast of the Lord" (Gen. xxxii. 5). The people, however, clearly lacked the power of discriminating between the symbol and that which it represented, and worshipped the image just as any other idol might be worshipped. And, in spite of the terrible and swift punishment that followed, and which showed the profanity of the act, the idea of ox-worship still remained among the people. Five hundred years afterwards we find a familiar example of it in the conduct of Jeroboam, "who made Israel to sin," the peculiar crime being the open resuscitation of ox-worship. "The king made two calves of gold and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. And he set the one in Bethel, and the other put he in Dan.... And he made an house of high places, and made priests of the lowest of the people, which were not of the tribe of Levi. And Jeroboam ordained a feast ... like unto the feast in Judah, and he offered upon the altar. So did he in Bethel, sacrificing unto the calves that he had made."