By _lamb_, no doubt, you mean a young sheep: but let me ask you, what connection can you perceive between a _young sheep_ and the _taking away of sin_? That of immolation, you answer, as typifying the _grand offering_. Well, then, why add “of God”? Why say, the _young sheep of God_, if it was an ordinary animal of the mere _ovine species_ that was intended? No, sir; recollect the “_Lamb_ slain from the beginning of the world,” recorded in the Revelations, as quoted before.[568] A deep mystery is involved in this expression, which the ingenuity of man could not evolve but through the Irish. In that language _lambh_ is a word having _three_ significations. The first is a _hand_; the second a _young sheep_; and the third a _cross_.[569] Let us now, in rendering the text, substitute this latter instead of the intermediate; and it will be, “Behold the _cross_ of God, which taketh away the sin of the world!” By which you perceive that when John the Baptist, by inspiration, pointed out Jesus Christ as the universal Saviour of the world, his _very words_ establish a previous _crucifixion_! You now see how it happened that ten, in numerals, came to be represented by a cross X. _This_ being the _number_ of _fingers_ upon each person’s hands: and a _hand_ and a _cross_ being both prefigured in the _sacred_, that is, in the _Irish_ language,[570] by the same term, _lambh_, it hence occurred that in all reckoning and notation, a _new score_ should be commenced therefrom--that its _sanctity_ should be still further enhanced by the epithet of _diag_, or _perfection_, which characterises it as a _submultiple_, and that the _mysteriousness_ of the _whole_ should be additionally shrouded under the _comprehensive symbol_ of a _pyramid_ or _triangle_ △[571] “Our Hibernian Druids,” says Vallancey, “always wore a key, like the doctors of law of the Jews, to _show they alone had the key of the sciences_, that is, that they alone could communicate the knowledge of the doctrine they preached. The name of this key was _kire_, or _cire_; and _eo_, a peg or pin, being compounded with it, forms the modern _eo-cire_, the key of a lock. The figure of this key resembled a _cross_; those of the Lacedæmonians and Egyptians were of the same form.” Estimable and revered Vallancey, it pains me to say anything against you! but on those subjects you were quite _at bay_! _It was not_ to “show that they alone had the key of the sciences,” that “the doctors of law of the Jews always wore _a key_,” but because that _they had seen it in the ceremonial of the Egyptians_, from whom, like the Lacedæmonians, they had borrowed its use, without _either of them being able to penetrate its import_![572]