"Samuel judged Israel every year at Bethel, the place of Jacob's sacred pillar; at Gilgal, the place where Joshua's twelve stones were set up; and at Mizpeh, where stood the cairn surmounted by the pillars of Laban's servant. He, himself, 'took a stone and set it up between Mizpeh and Shen'; and its very name, Ebenezer, 'the stone of help,' shows that it was originally worshipped before proceeding on an expedition, though the Jehovistic gloss, 'saying Hitherto the Lord hath helped us,' does its best, of course, to obscure the real meaning. It was to the stone circle of Gilgal that Samuel directed Saul to go down, saying; 'I will come down unto thee, to offer burnt offerings, and to sacrifice sacrifices of peace offerings.' It was at the cairn of Mizpeh that Saul was chosen king; and after the victory over the Ammonites, Saul went once more to the great Stonehenge at Gilgal to 'review the kingdom,' and 'There they made Saul king before Jahveh in Gilgal; and there they sacrificed sacrifices of peace offerings before Jahyeh.'" This last passage, as Mr. Allen points out, is very instructive, as showing that in the opinion of the writer, Jahveh was then domiciled at Gilgal. M. Soury, in his note to chap. ii. of his _Religion of Israel_, says: "It is needful to point out, with M. Schrader, that the most ancient Babylonian inscriptions in the Accadian tongues, those of Urukh and of Ur Kasdim, preserved in the British Museum, were engraved on clay phalii. We have here the origin of the usages and customs of religion so long followed among the Oanaanites and Hebrews (Y. Movers, _Die Phonizer_, I., 591, _et passim_)." In the old hymn embodied in Deut. xxxii., God is frequently called _Tsur_, "The Rock which begat thee," etc. Major-General Forlong believes "that the Jews had a Phallus or phallic symbol in their 'Ark of the Testimony' or Ark of the Eduth, a word which I hold tries to veil the real objects" (_Rivers of Life_, vol. i., p. 149). He does not scruple to say this was "the real God of the Jews; that God of the Ark or the Testimony, but surely not of Europe" (vol. i., p. 169). This contention is forcibly suggested by the picture of the Egyptian Ark found in Dr. Smith's _Bible Dictionary_, art.