The Old Testament is a veritable deathtrap. On every page, and behind every sentence, almost, there is a trap. It takes a very clever dodger to escape falling into one of them. Even Moses was caught and smashed in a trap. Out of all the people who left Egypt for the promised land, all but two perished in the wilderness because of some infringement of the ceremonial law. What a failure! Even as Eden, offered for a paradise to man, became the tomb of the human race, the promised land became the cemetery of the people who sacrificed their homes for it. Such is the humor of the gods! But let us speak of another totem. The Catholics eat fish on Friday. Not one out of a million Catholics knows why fish is preferred to meat on a certain day in the week. The fish, too, was at one time a totem in Syria. The early Christians, being largely from that part of the country where the fish was sacred, made a place for it in their new faith. In the writings of the Christian Fathers, Jesus is often called the Big Fish, and his disciples the little fish. Upon many of the ancient Christian tombstones there was engraved a fish. Tertullian, a shining light in the early church, speaks of his converts as "the fishes born in the waters of baptism." In the early communion service, the fish represented the divine elements. To this day the fish, an ancient Syrian totem, holds its sway not only upon Christians, but also upon the Jews. An orthodox Jew, no matter how poor, must have his fish every Friday evening. * * Orpheus, Solomon Reinach, page 29.