This form of symbolism prevailed in the most distant ages, and has continued in many countries unto the present time. Richard Payne Knight, an honorable English gentleman, in 1865 wrote a quarto book, of which only two hundred copies were printed, entitled _A Discourse on the Worship of Priapus, and its Connection with the Theology of the Ancients_, in which this whole subject is boldly discussed, and phallicism illustrated by one hundred and thirty-eight engravings, many of them copied from actual emblems now preserved in the British Museum and in the Secret Museum in Naples. Major-General Forlong, of the British army, has also fully presented this subject in his recent quarto in two volumes, entitled _Rivers of Life; or, Sources and Streams of the Faiths of Man in all Lands._ It would doubtless astound many modern theologians to be told that even the Jews did not escape the influence of this form of Nature-worship, and that our Bible, especially the Old Testament, contains many evidences of it; and yet it is a fact. Circumcision was no doubt an offshoot of phallicism. It did not originate with Abraham. It was known by the Egyptians, Abyssinians, and African tribes long before the time he is said to have lived. It was practised, according to Herodotus, at least twenty-four hundred years before our era, and was even then an ancient custom. When Jacob entered into a covenant with Laban, a pillar was set up, surrounded by a heap of stones (Gen. 31:45-53), which was a phallic emblem, and frequently used in the Old Testament. Hebrew patriarchs desired numerous descendants, and hence the symbolic pillar was well suited to their religious cult.