Page:On the Desert - Recent Events in Egypt.djvu/146

 across the desert, and ready to crumble into its sands. They had need to cast out every element of discord, the greatest of which was diversity of religion. Their only safety was in a perpetual guard against that demon-worship, which the more debasing it was, the more it exercised over them a horrible fascination.

Nor did these dangers fade away with the memories of Egypt. As they receded from Africa, they approached the hills of Canaan, which smoked with the altars of idolatry. Over all that land reigned a disgusting and cruel worship; not that purer form of idolatry, the worship of the sun, moon, and stars, which anciently looked up to the skies of Arabia and Chaldea, but a worship of wood and stone, by rites earthly, sensual, and devilish. Some writers give the impression that the native inhabitants of Palestine were an innocent, pastoral people — a simple, primitive race, that were hunted from their pasture-grounds by the Hebrew invaders. But history speaks another language. It describes their religion as a compound of lust and cruelty. They offered human sacrifices to their hideous idols, and even burned their sons and daughters in fire unto their gods. Centuries later, the Carthaginians, a people of the same Phœnician origin, were found offering human victims upon their altars, on the shores of Africa; and the fact is beyond question, that among the Canaanites such sacrifices prevailed to a frightful extent. The Valley of Hinnom resounded with their drums, and with the shrieks of their burning children. Indeed they seemed to have a strange thirst for blood. Their favorite god, Moloch, fitly represented the cruelty and ferocity of the national character. So enormous had their crimes become that the land itself was ready to "vomit out its inhabitants."

Against all participation in these dark idolatries, Moses