explanation for the
massacre of the babes ordered by Herod when he learned that the wise men
of the East, guided by a star, had designated "a young child" as the
future "King of the Jews." It is an interesting reflection that, to many
of his contemporaries, the establishment of the "Kingdom of Heaven,"
announced by the Messiah, may have appeared as a movement to revive the
most ancient form of government and to reinstate Jerusalem as the central
metropolis of an empire, the organization of which would have resembled
the Chinese and ancient American forms of "Middle Kingdoms," or "Celestial
Empires."

The ideal of many of these descendants of ancient pole-star worshippers
may well have been the reversion to the primitive, pure type of single
central, celestial and terrestrial rule which had been superseded in
western Asia by the pernicious growth of the utterly abasing and
demoralizing separate cults of the dual principles of nature.

A curious remnant of the worship of the Earth-mother and of the stable
centre of the world, recalling ancient American symbolism, exists in
Arabia and merits a passing notice. "The great holy place of Jiddah, the
principal landing place of the pilgrims to Mecca, on the eastern coast of
the Red sea, is the singular tomb of 'our mother Eve' surrounded by the
principal cemetery. The tomb is a walled enclosure said to represent the
dimensions of the body about 200 paces long and 15 feet wide. At the head
is a small erection where gifts are deposited and rather more than half
way down a whitewashed dome encloses a small, dark chapel, within which is
the black stone known as el-surrah=the navel. The grave of Eve is
mentioned by Edrisi but, except the black stone, nothing bears any aspect
of antiquity" (Encycl. Brit., article Jiddah).

The fact that the Arabian appellation for Mecca is om-el-kora="the mother
of cities" deserves special attention. Exactly in the centre of the city
is the mosque enclosing the kaaba, a structure the only door of which
opens to the north. It contains the celebrated black sacred stone and a
trough, reputed to be of pure gold, which conducts freshly fallen rain
water to the interior of the building and pours it upon its floor of dark
earth. The following details are given in a recently published account by
an anonymous visitor:

"The Moslems believe that the original Kaaba was built in heaven two
thousand years before the creation of the world and that, at the comman