The Phenicians offered to the gods, in times of war and drought, the fairest of their children. The books of Sanchoniathon and Byblian Philo are full of accounts of such sacrifices. In Byblos boys were immolated to Adonis; and, on the founding of a city or colony, a sacrifice of a vast number of children was solemnized, in the hopes of thereby averting misfortune from the new settlement. The Phenicians, according to Eusebius, yearly sacrificed their dearest, and even their only children, to Saturn. The bones of the victims were preserved in the temple of Moloch, in a golden ark, which was carried by the Phenicians with them to war.[41:1] Like the Fijians of the present day, those people considered their gods as beings like themselves. They loved and they hated; they were proud and revengeful; they were, in fact, savages like themselves. If the eldest born of the family of Athamas entered the temple of the Laphystian Jupiter, at Alos, in Achaia, he was sacrificed, crowned with garlands, like an animal victim.[41:2] The offering of human sacrifices to the Sun was extensively practiced in Mexico and Peru, before the establishment of Christianity.[41:3] FOOTNOTES: [39:1] See Müller's Hist. Sanscrit Literature; and Williams' Indian Wisdom, p. 29. [39:2] Quoted by Count de Volney; New Researches in Anc't Hist., p. 144. [39:3] See Inman's Ancient Faiths, vol. ii. p. 104. [39:4] Prog. Relig. Ideas, vol. i. p. 302. [40:1] Ibid. [40:2] See chapter xi. [41:1] Baring-Gould: Orig. Relig. Belief, vol. i. p. 368. [41:2] Kenrick's Egypt, vol. i. p. 448. [41:3] See Acosta: Hist. Indies, vol. ii. CHAPTER V. JACOB'S VISION OF THE LADDER. In the 28th chapter of Genesis, we are told that Isaac, after blessing his son Jacob, sent him to Padan-aram, to take a daughter of Laban's (his mother's brother) to wife. Jacob, obeying his father, "went out from Beer-sheba (where he dwelt), and went towards Haran. And he lighted upon a certain place, and tarried there all night, because the sun was set. And he took of the stones of the place, and put them for his pillow, and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed, and behold, a _ladder_ set upon the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven. _And he beheld the angels of God ascending and descending on it._ And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said: 'I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac, the land whereon thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed.' . . . And Jacob awoke out of his sleep, and he said: 'Surely the Lord is in this place, and I know it not.' And he was afraid, and said: 'How _dreadful_ is this place, _this is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of Heaven_.' And Jacob rose up early in the morning, _and took the stone that he had put for his pillow, and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it_. And he called the name of that place _Beth-el_."