ime of Moses, the
grossest idolatry had come to prevail. Notwithstanding the fact that
Moses had learned much from the Egyptians, he seems not to have risen
above a very gross conception of a deity. His god was by turns
angry, jealous, revengeful, vacillating, and weak. He was in fact the
embodiment of human passions and desires. We have seen that the third
person in the ancient Trinity had, in Egypt, India, and Persia, come
to be recognized in place of the three principles originally
worshipped--that, as it really embodied the essence of the other two,
little was heard of the Creator and Preserver. Doubtless this God was
the one which Moses intended the Israelites to worship, but as they
were unable to conceive of an abstract principle he invested it with a
personality which, as we have seen, was burdened with the frailties and
weaknesses common to themselves.

As the Regenerator or Destroyer represented the processes of
Nature,--the dying away of the sun's rays at night only to reappear on
the following day, and the withdrawal of its warmth in winter only to
be renewed in the spring,--so this God portrayed also the beneficent
Creator and Preserver of all things, at the same time that it was the
Destroyer. It embodied the fundamental idea in all religions, namely,
life and fertility. So also did the "Lord" of the Israelites represent
reproductive energy, but as man being spirit had come to be a Creator of
offspring, while woman being only matter furnished the body, this
"Lord" was male. Connected with it was no hint of the female nature or
principle, except the ark or chest in which it was carried about. To
those who have acquainted themselves with the significance of ancient
religious symbols, the fact is plain that the "Lord" of the Israelites,
which in their journeyings toward Canaan they carried in an ark or
chest, and which was symbolized by an upright stone, was none other
than a "Life-giver" in the most practical sense. It was the emblem of
virility, and from the facts at hand, at the present time, there is
little doubt but that all the spirituality with which we find this
"Lord" invested was an after-thought and comprehended no part of the
belief of the Jews until after their contact with the Persians during
the Babylonian captivity.

Doubtless the story in which their journeyings toward Canaan are set
forth contains an esoteric as well as an exoteric significance for ages
known only to the priests, and that