warranted, therefore, in supposing, when we see such circles, or such huge stones thus placed, that we see a place occupied, in heathen times, for public worship; and, amongst other things, for the rite of sacrificing; especially as wherever the ground about any of these temples is excavated, considerable remains of the bones both of sheep and oxen are found.*

Now, if we advert to the Scriptures, we shall find, not only the earliest account, but the origin of these structures. Thence we find that, when the covenant between God and Israel was about to be ratified at the foot of Mount Sinai, Moses not only built an altar, but that he erected twelve pillars of stone according to the number of the twelve tribes of Israel, and that there the solemnities of the ratification were performed. This is the first record we have in any history of a number of stones being thus used for sacred purposes. We are not indeed told that they were placed in a circular form, but most probably they were. This was about three hundred years after Jacob's pillar had been erected to mark the place of assembly for worship, and about fifteen hundred years before Christ. Shortly after this, about forty years, we find twelve stones pitched in Gilgal, which, though they were immediately designed as a memorial of Israel's passing through Jordan, yet the spot seems, at least, to have been * Identity, &c. p. 66.

a place of general assembly; and since here the people offered sacrifices, at the appointment of Saul to be king, and it afterwards was the place where Saul offered his burnt-offering and peaceoffering, we may fairly infer that it was a place of worship. Certainly, afterwards it became a place of idolatrous worship for Israel, as did also the very Bethel of which we have before spoken.* As to Gilgal, we may remark moreover, that the word baba, Galgal, or Gilgal, signifies a circle; it is therefore not improbable that it derived its name from the stones placed there in a circular form.

To occurrences like these, then, we trace the origin of the circular temples above mentioned; nor do we find any other method of accounting for them at all. Let the Scriptures, therefore, have their due honour, as the most ancient and interesting record of antiquity: for, whether the traveller meet with the common altar, or the cromlech, or the carn altar, or the pillar, or the circle of pillars, he may account for them, or at least have great light thrown upon them, by a reference to that sacred record.

But there are several other monuments of antiquity that have not respect to worship, on which the Scriptures will throw light.

* Josh. iv. 20, v. 10; 1 Sam. xi. 13; xiii. 8-12; Hos. iv. 15; Amos, iv. 4; and v. 5.

Fifthly. Pillars and stones as marks or memorials.

These have been erected for different purposes; for boundaries, for remembrance of the dead, and of persons of eminence, as well as of remarkable events or achievements.

Who will call in question their use as boundaries? As memorials of the dead, our common churchyards supply us with evidence as to stones; and, though pillars of stone are in disuse, yet they are not wholly obsolete, for we have ourselves seen one in a churchyard at Eyam, near Dovedale, about six feet high and one foot broad, as far as our recollection serves us, which doubtless has been standing for many hundred years, and probably is the oldest monument in the place. There are pillars in existence, near which ashes and bones are found, sometimes in urns, and sometimes in stone coffins: also scales, hammers, pieces of weapons, and other things, some finely gilt or polished. It seems to have been a custom among the Greeks, thus to erect pillars as memorials of the dead. Thus, a stone was raised over the grave of Achilles and Patroclus, which Alexander the Great anointed with oil. And Sarpedon, the king of the Lycians, had a stone raised over his tomb.

And who knows not, that pillars or obelisks have been, and still are, erected, in order to commemorate remarkable events and exploits?

Now let us advert again to the Scriptures. Have pillars been placed as boundaries? See the first mention of such a thing in the history of Jacob the patriarch. Jacob and Laban were about finally to separate from each other by mutual agreement, therefore they placed a pillar to mark the boundary over which neither party was to pass; and that pillar, in conjunction with the heap of stones (of which more hereafter), was to be a witness between them of their mutual covenant, and a beacon or watch-tower. See the history.*

Were pillars erected as memorials of the dead? In Scripture, about a thousand years before Christ, we find Absalom rearing up a pillar to be a memorial of himself. "Now Absalom in his lifetime," says the sacred historian, " had taken and reared up for himself a pillar, which is in the king's dale: for he said, I have no son to keep my name in remembrance: and he called the pillar after his own name, and it is called unto this day Absalom's place." A pillar, by the way, that proved the monument of his disgrace as a rebellious son, rather than of his honour! But there is an instance of such monumental pillar far earlier than that of Absalom. We refer to the one that was placed over the grave of Rachel, the beloved wife of Jacob, so far back as more than seventeen hundred years before Christ. The record of it runs

* Gen. xxxi. 41-45, 46.

thus:-" And Rachel died, and was buried in the way to Ephrath, which is Beth-lehem. And Jacob set a pillar upon her grave; that is the pillar of Rachel's grave unto this day." Nor was it remaining in Moses's time only, but in that of Samuel the prophet, for when, six or seven hundred years after, he was informing Saul concerning the asses that were lost, he makes mention of "Rachel's sepulchre" as a well-known place.†

Again, are pillars raised as memorials of remarkable events and exploits? Samuel, we find, on occasion of a remarkable deliverance of Israel from the Philistines, "took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh and Shem, and called the name of it Eben-ezer," or the stone of help," saying, Hitherto hath the Lord helped us." Probably the "stone of Reuben," " the stone of Ezel," "the stone of Gibeon," and " the stone of Zoheloth," of which severally we read in Scripture, were all of them set up to commemorate some remarkable event or exploit. But there is one which we must not pass over, and that is the "great stone" that was set up by Joshua, "under an oak that was by the sanctuary of the Lord," in commemoration of, and as a witness to Israel, of their having in solemn assembly taken Jehovah to be their God.

Perhaps some of those pillars or obelisks that are now standing in different parts of the British † 1 Sam. x. 2.

* Gen. xxxv. 19, 20.