The intellectual activity of succeeding ages has been mainly devoted to these _Sacred Writings_; and the disputes, as to the meaning, never-ending. Every word has been criticised. _Sects_ have been formed upon a syllable--appearing and disappearing. Now one would madly starve, another feast. Some fanatics would live in caves, some on inaccessible mountains; some tortured themselves, and held women to be unclean unless they married _Christ_. Some would only shout their invocations, others would only commune with the god _inside_. Some _would_ kneel, others _would_ stand. Sometimes a sect more wild than usual would organise vast bands of warriors, all wearing a symbol to show that they were Christians--usually a _cross_ (because the Jews put Christ to death by hanging him upon a cross); and, placing Priests at the head, would rush to distant parts to root out _pagans_. These dreadful slaughters of distant tribes were called _Crossades_ (from the symbol referred to). Some Sects destroyed society by another fanaticism; they forced men to live in caves or in dark stone chambers, shut off from all cheerful life, and from all intercourse with women; where they should constantly make invocations, lash themselves with thongs, and half-starve themselves; having skulls to hold before them, and awful paintings of Hell and devils to horrify them,--if perchance they may propitiate the _Christ-God_, Jah. Women also being driven into similar, horrid imprisonment in stone vaults, where the whole life is spent in invocations and sufferings, without so much as seeing any man. These and numberless other things grow out of the interpretations, ever-changing, of the _Sacred Writings_; which, to the dark imaginings of Priests and devotees, seem ever to give such utterances as fit to their feelings. To the Priests they are an unfailing arsenal of power. For many ages nearly all the Books written--mainly by Priests--were in respect of the _Sacred Writings_; called commentaries, homilies, disputations, doctrines, invocations, sermons; endless in name, and nameless. This _Literature_ is less in repute than formerly, and immense collections of huge writings are now rotting away in the dismal alcoves of _Libraries_ [Buk-sti], as great stone buildings for keeping Books are called. This _Literature_ is rarely looked at now, excepting by the Priests and antiquaries [ol-olphoo]; much of it is obsolete in form, or in the Roman--not now so much in vogue as formerly. A large portion of the writings, and a larger portion of the "speeches" [phi-lu-tin], however, are devoted to the same subject; but the style is modern, and less obscure, though not less deformed by a dark and irrational superstition.