of an edifice in Philadelphia wherein recently met the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the United States, the symbolic serpent was prominent; and those who criticised it were silenced by a member’s pointing to the fact that the serpent is engraved upon the seal of the General Assembly itself. Think of Presbyterians perpetuating serpent-symbolism! It was doubtless the emblematic snakes which had been used in Ireland in the Druidic worship, before the introduction of Christianity, that the somewhat mythical St. Patrick drove out of the “Emerald Isle”—all the snakes according to Romish tradition, now believed by millions of devout worshippers to be strictly historical, though known by priests to be mythical. He destroyed the emblematic serpents. It was not until after the invention of the talking subtle serpent that tempted Eve in Eden that the serpent became a symbol of evil. The Jews never heard of that “old serpent the devil” until after their captivity in Babylon. We must not fail, however, according to the Old Testament, to give King Hezekiah credit for having been a sort of Hebrew St. Patrick, in attempting to drive serpent-worship from among the Israelites after it had prevailed among them for about seven hundred years. In a line or two we sum up the symbolism of the serpent, as has been suggested, in that it is thoroughly alive, has a fiery nature, is swift in motion, and moves without bands or feet. It assumes a variety of forms, is long-lived, and renews its youth by shedding its external covering, and at pleasure stands erect, enlarges its size, is strong, and is said to have the marvellous secret of fascination. Initiates worshipped only the qualities or principles symbolized by outward forms, while the ignorant may have really worshipped the external or literal object. Every quality in the objects of the ancient Nature-worship has suggested a religious dogma, which was first incorporated into ancient systems of sacerdotalism, and can now be traced in an occult and esoteric sense in all bodies of modern dogmatic theology. Ninety-nine out of every one hundred of professional ecclesiastics are as ignorant of these things as unborn babes, while the select few know, but conceal, the truth. The larger class are honest dupes and dunces, while the others are hypocrites and impostors. _Phallieism_, the worship of the genital organs, was another form of natural symbolism. Men saw that in some mysterious way the race was propagated by the congress of the generative organs, male and female, and soon naturally worshipped them as at least the symbols of the unknown fecundating power of the universe.