It is a noteworthy fact, that among the Jews in Tunis, near the old Phœnician settlement of Carthage, the sign of a bleeding hand is still an honored and a sacred symbol, as if in recognition of the covenant-bond of their brotherhood and friendship. “What struck me most in all the houses,” says a traveler (Chevalier de Hesse-Wartegg) among these Jews, “was the impression of an open bleeding hand, on every wall of each floor. However white the walls, this repulsive [yet suggestive] sign was to be seen everywhere.” How many times, in the New Testament epistles, does the idea show itself, of an inter-union of lives, between Christ and his disciples, and between these disciples and each other. “We, who are many, are one body in Christ, and severally members one of another” (Rom. 12 : 5). “We are members of his body” (Eph. 5 : 30). “We are members one of another” (Eph. 4 : 25). “Know ye not that your bodies are members of Christ?” (1 Cor. 6 : 15). “Ye are the body of Christ, and severally [are] members thereof” (1 Cor. 12 : 27). It is in this truth of truths, concerning the possibility of an inter-union of the human life with the divine, through a common inter-bloodflow, that there is found a satisfying of the noblest heart yearnings of primitive man everywhere, and of the uttermost spiritual longings of the most advanced Christian believer, in the highest grade of intellectual and moral enlightenment. No attainment of evolution, or of development, has brought man’s latest soul-cry beyond the intimations of his earliest soul-outreaching. “Take, dearest Lord, this crushed and bleeding heart, And lay it in thine hand, thy piercèd hand; That thine atoning blood may mix with mine, _Till I and my Beloved are all one_.” FOOTNOTES: [666] See pages 238-240, _supra_. [667] _Speaker’s Comm._, at Exod. 24 : 8. [668] Exod. 24 : 3-8. [669] Heb. 9 : 20. [670] _Speaker’s Com._, at Exod. 24 : 8. [671] Mark 14 : 24. [672] John 6 : 53, 54. [673] _Principles of Sociology_, II., § 364. [674] _Anc. Egypt._, III., 411. [675] See pages 245 f., _supra_. [676] _Anc. Egypt._, II., 32. [677] Note on Lev. chap. 17. [678] _Dictionnaire d’Archéologie Égyptienne_, s. v. “Cœur.” [679] In substance from Castren’s _Ethnologische Vorlesungen über die Altaischen Völker_, p. 174, as cited in Ralston’s _Russian Folk Tales_, p. 122. [680] From Bleek’s _Reynard the Fox in South Africa_, p. 55; as cited _Ibid._, p. 123, note. [681] From _Asbjornsen and Moe_, No. 36, Dasent, No. 9, p. 71, as cited _Ibid._, p. 120. [682] See references to Köhler’s _Orient und Occident_, II., 99-103, _Ibid._, p. 123, note. [683] From Khudyakof, No. 110, as cited _Ibid._, p. 124. [684] Timæus of Locri, cited in Liddell and Scott’s _Greek Eng. Lex._, s. v., “Hepar.” See also page 108 f., _supra_. [685] Pollux’s _Onomasticon_, II., 4, 226. [686] _Pilgrim. to Mec. and Med._, p. 376. [687] See page 128, _supra_.