earlier patriarch, though perhaps of wood, and the stone “_bethel_” of Jacob had the same form, and were simply the _betylus_,[112] the primitive symbol of deity among all the Semitic and many Hamitic peoples. The participation of the Hebrew patriarchs in the rites connected with the “pillar-worship” of the ancient world, renders it extremely probable that they were not strangers to the later planetary worship. Many of the old Phallic symbols were associated with the new superstition, and Abraham, being a Chaldean, it is natural to suppose that he was one of its adherents. Tradition, indeed, affirms that Abraham was a great astronomer, and at one time at least a worshipper of the heavenly bodies, and that he and the other patriarchs continued to be affected by this superstition is shown by various incidents related in the Pentateuch. Thus, in the description given of the sacrificial covenant between Abraham and Jehovah, it is said that, after Abraham had divided the sacrificial animals, a deep sleep fell upon him as the sun was going down, and Jehovah spoke with him. “Then when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp, that passed between those pieces.” The happening of this event at the moment of the sun’s setting reminds us of the Sabæan custom of praying to the setting sun, still practised, according to Palgrave, among the nomads of central Arabia. That some great _religious_ movement, ascribed by tradition to Abraham, did take place among the Semites at an early date is undoubted. What the object of this covenant was it is difficult to decide. It should be remembered that the Chaldeans worshipped a plurality of gods, supposed to have been symbolised by the seven planets. Among these deities the sun-god held a comparatively inferior position—the moon-god _Hurki_ coming before him in the second triad.[113] It was at Ur, the special seat of the worship of the moon-god,[114] that Abraham is said to have lived before he quitted it for Haran. This fact, considered in the light of the traditions relating to the great patriarch, may perhaps justify us in inferring that the reformation he endeavoured to introduce was the substitution of a simple sun-worship, for the planetary cultus of the Chaldeans, in which the worship of the moon must to him have appeared to occupy an important place. The new faith was, indeed, a return to the old Phallic idea of a god of personal generation, worshipped through the symbolical _betylus_, but associated also with the adoration of the sun as the especial representative of the deity. That Abraham had higher notions of the relation of man to the divine being than his forerunners is very probable, but his sojourn in Haran proves that there was nothing fundamentally different between his religious faith and that of his Syrian neighbours. I am inclined, indeed, to believe that to the traditional Abraham must be ascribed