The stone worship of the Semites at large, though comparatively neglected by Professor Robertson Smith, must have played a large part in the religion of that race, from which the Hebrews were a special offshoot. “In Arabia,” says Professor Smith, “where sacrifice by fire was almost unknown, we find no proper altar, but in its place a rude pillar or heap of stones, beside which the victim is slain, the blood being poured out over the stone or at its base.” To the great orientalist, it is true, the sacred stone or altar, like the sacred tree and the sacred fountain, are nothing more than “common symbols at sanctuaries”; he thinks of them not as gods but merely as representatives of the god, arbitrarily chosen. After the evidence I have already adduced, however, I think it will be seen that this position is altogether untenable; indeed, Dr. Smith himself uses many phrases in this connexion which enables us to see the true state of the case far more clearly than he himself did. “The sacred stones [of the Arabs], which are already mentioned by Herodotus, are called _ansab_, i.e., stones set up, pillars. We also find the name _ghariy_, ‘blood-bedaubed,’ with reference to the ritual just described [of sacrifice at the _nosb_ or sacred pillar]. The meaning of this ritual will occupy us later: meantime the thing to be noted is that the altar is only a modification of the _nosb_, and that the rude Arabian usage is the primitive type out of which all the elaborate altar ceremonies of the {118}more cultivated Semites grew. Whatever else was done in connexion with a sacrifice, the primitive rite of sprinkling or dashing the blood against the altar, or allowing it to flow down on the ground at its base, was hardly ever omitted; and this practice was not peculiar to the Semites, but was equally the rule with the Greeks and Romans, and indeed with the ancient nations generally.”