- pent was still practiced by the people of Jehovah. Many other
countries afford examples of the same worship. To take a single case; the Chevalier des Marchais, who traveled in the last century, relates that serpents of a certain kind were worshiped in Guinea. There was one, however, which was called the father of these gods, and was reputed to be of prodigious size. It was kept in a place of its own, where it had "secret apartments," and none but the chief sacrificer was permitted to enter this holy of holies. The king himself might only see it once, when, three months after his coronation, he went to present his offerings (V. G., vol. ii. p. 169).
Even Christianity did not entirely put an end to the worship of the serpent; for an early Christian writer, in a treatise against all heresies, makes mention of a sect of Ophites who (he says) "magnify the serpent to such a degree, that they prefer him even to Christ himself; for it was he, they say, who gave us the origin of the knowledge of good and evil. His power and majesty (they say) Moses perceiving, set up the brazen serpent; and whoever gazed upon him obtained health. Christ himself (they say further) imitates Moses' serpent's sacred power in saying: 'And as Moses upreared the serpent in the desert, so it behoveth the Son of man to be upreared.' Him they introduce to bless their eucharistic [elements]" (Adv. omn. haereses., II.—A. N. L., vol. 18, p. 262).
Holy objects are very often connected with some eminent man, from whose relation to them they derive their sanctity. Such are all the innumerable relics of saints to which so much importance is attached in Catholic countries. Such is that pre-*eminently sacred relic, the tooth of Buddha, so carefully preserved and guarded in Ceylon. When Major Forbes witnessed the tooth festival at Kandy, fifty-three years had passed since the last exhibition of this deeply revered member of the founder of the faith. It was kept in its temple within six cases; of which the three larger ones having been first removed, the three inner ones, containing it, were placed "on the back of an elephant richly caparisoned." It was shown to the people on a temporary altar, surrounded with rich hangings; the festival being attended by crowds of pious worshipers, who thought that the privilege of seeing the tooth, so rarely exhibited to the
