The idea that by symbolic burial a man became regenerate, that he put off the old condition and entered into another that was new, by passing through the earth or a hole in the rocks, was very general, and it has continued to the present day in the modified form of enabling a sufferer by this means to leave behind his infirmities and pass into a condition of robust health, or of one charged with a crime clearing himself by this ordeal. The passing of a child through the earth was forbidden by the Canons of Edgar (A.D. 969). [Footnote: Thorpe, "Ancient Laws and Institutes," Lond. 1840.] Women who had crying children dug a hole in the earth and thrust the child through, drawing it out at a further hole. Men were forbidden also to pass cattle through a hollow tree or _per terram foratam transire_. In France weak children were passed through a hollow stone of S. Tessé. In the crypt of Ripon Minster is a hole in the rock through which young women crept to establish their innocence when charged with incontinence. In Iceland a long turf was cut attached to the soil at both ends, and such as would pass out of a condition of hostility into one of brotherhood crawled through the gap. At Ilefeld, in the Harz, is a holed stone called the Nadelöhr. Any one coming to settle in the Harz for the first time is required to creep twice through the perforation. In a good many places in Germany a similar process is gone through to cure lumbago. Indra, the god of Thunder among the Hindoos, drew a sick man thrice through a hole, and thereby gave him health and new birth. The many Helfensteins that are found in Germany were in like manner stones of Help, by traversing which the old man was put off and the new man put on. [Footnote: Sepp, _Altbayerischer Sagenschatz_, Munich, 1876, p. 87 _et seq_.] Creeping through a holed stone, or under one suspended over another, is still practised in Ireland as a cure for disorders. From passing under the earth the custom passed to going through a split tree, the tree representing the coffin. An interesting account of this usage will be found in White's "Selborne." And now let us turn to something else. A religion of the worship of ancestors formed the ground-work of many religions that in process of time have totally changed their character. It lies at the root of the creeds and practices of most peoples in east and west. It was in Greece before its religion passed into the stage of the deification of natural forces. The Assyrians and Chaldeans clung to it in Western Asia. The Egyptians in the valley of the Nile, the Etruscans in Italy. At the other extremity of the world, the Chinese and Anamites perform its rites to this day from Saghalien to Cambodia.