The sacred groves of Palestine where devout and voluptuous Jews mingled the worship of Jehovah and Aschera live, too, in the Protestant camp meetings of our western world, where, in shady bowers, Christians worship fervently at the altar of Christ, and then, not infrequently, meet clandestinely and pay their vows to Aschera. The palm tree, and where the palm did not grow, the pine, both symbols of the phallus, were worshiped. Newton says: "Palm-branches have been used in all ages as emblems of life, peace, and victory. They were strewn before Christ. Palm-Sunday, the feast of palms, is still kept. Even within the present [19th] century, on this festival, in many towns of France, women and children carried in procession at the end of their palm-branches a phallus made of bread, which they called, undisguisedly, 'la pine,' whence the festival was called 'La Fete des Pinnes.' The 'pine' having been blest by the priest, the women carefully preserved it during the following year as an amulet" (The Assyrian Grove). 6. Fetichism. Closely related to the foregoing worship is fetichism, the worship of idols and images. This is popularly supposed to be the religion only of savages and barbarians; but it also prevails to some extent among people who are considered civilized and enlightened. While it was opposed by some of the kings, priests, and prophets, idolatry flourished among the Jews from the earliest ages down almost to the Christian era. Abraham's father, Terah, was an idolater (Josh. xxv, 2). Jacob's wives were daughters of an idolater. Rachel stole and hid her father's images (Gen. xxxi, 30-34). Jacob's family were, for a time at least, idolaters. "Then Jacob said unto his household, and all that were with him, Put away the strange gods that are among you.... And they gave unto Jacob all the strange gods that were in their hands, ... and Jacob hid them under the oak which was by Shechem" (Gen. xxxv, 2-4). The kingdoms of Israel and Judah were steeped in idolatry. Israel "set them up images" and "served idols" (2 Kings xvii, 10, 11), and "did offer sweet savor to their idols" (Ezek. vi, 13). Judah was "full of idols" (Is. ii, 8). The fetichism of Christ's ancestors reappeared in the image worship of his devotees. The Christians of the middle ages, Dr. Draper says, "were immersed in fetichism." "The worship of images, of fragments of the cross, or bones, nails and other relics, a true fetich worship, was cultivated" (Conflict, p. 49). "A chip of the true cross, some iron filings from the chain of St. Peter, a tooth or bone of a martyr, were held in adoration; the world was full of the stupendous miracles which these relics had performed. But especially were painted or graven images of holy personages supposed to be endowed with such powers. They had become objects of actual worship" (Intellectual Development of Europe, vol. i, p. 414).