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 deity at Edessa, and transferred by Heliogabalus to Rome with unbounded reverence and unlimited expense, received honours more than human—they became themselves the deities: and when Sanconiathon teaches that the worship of these Bethulia was invented by Cœlus, he but personifies the visible heavens, and ascribes to the voluntary act of giving, a necessary operation of nature. So rooted did this practice become in the East, that the two ideas of stones and worship, or divinity, became almost identical. The Hebrews frequently used the terms as synonymous, when we find them giving the name of stone or rock to kings and princes—even to God himself, as the Rock of Israel, where the stone metaphor was intended to convey as much of sanctity as of security or endurance. But in Jacob's prophetic death-voice on the fates of his sons, the progenitors of the twelve tribes (Genesis xlix. 24), Joseph is called "the Shepherd and the Stone of Israel," in more direct and unmistakable allusion.

Dating the practice from these Bethulia, on which it would have been impious to alter a line, or detach a particle from the surface, the greater sanctity of stones rude, and in their natural forms, before those tooled and fashioned by hands, most probably took its rise; and in pity to the weakness and prejudices of human nature, Jehovah himself was expressly particular and authoritative in denouncing the use of squared or sculptured stones for the pure altars of his worship (Deut. xxvii. 5): "And thou shalt build the altar of the Lord thy God of whole stones: thou shalt not lift up iron upon them;" or, according to the received version, "Thou shalt not lift up any iron tool upon them." And, concurrently (Exodus xx. 25), "And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of