a great variety of useful and ornamental purposes, idols being carved out of it, and altars adorned with its semi-transparent olive-green slabs.  The inhabitants of the South Sea Islands until recently used it for their stone implements in the same way that the ancient lake dwellers did; and the Mogul emperors of Delhi set such a high value upon it on account of its superstitious virtues that they had it cut, jewelled, and enamelled into the most exquisite forms.

In Rome the martyr weights, as relics of the stone age, afford a curious example of a very primitive epoch projecting far into a highly-civilised one.  Stone weights continued in use long after bronze and iron implements were constructed, on account of the sacred associations connected with them.  Weights and measures were regarded by the Romans as invested with a peculiar religious significance; the stone of which the weights were composed was called from that circumstance, or because of the occult qualities attributed to it, lapis divinus; and therefore there was a deep-seated prejudice, which reached down to the days of the highest splendour of the Empire, against the introduction of a new substance.  This was the case with all articles used in religious ceremonies.  As late as the period of St. Paul’s residence in Rome, and at the time of the first persecution of the Christians, ancient pagan rites were celebrated in the Forum, in which the use of metal was forbidden; and only stone hatchets could be employed in slaughtering animals, and only earthen vessels used in carrying the significant parts of the sacrifices into the temples.  Treaties were also ratified by striking the victim offered on the occasion with a flint hatchet.  The ancient Egyptians, although using iron and bronze for other objects, invariably used stone knives in preparing bodies for the process of embalming.  The sacrifices which the Mexicans offered to their idols at the time of the Spanish conquest were cut up by means of knives of obsidian, which they obtained from the lavas of their volcanoes.  In the Bible we have several traces of the same universal custom.  The Jews seem to have performed the rite of circumcision with flint implements, for we read in Exodus that Zipporah, the wife of Moses, took a sharp stone for that purpose; and the phrase translated “sharp knives” in Joshua v. 2—­“At that time the Lord said unto Joshua, Make thee sharp knives, and circumcise again the children of Israel the second time”—­should be translated, as in the marginal reference, knives of flint.  To the same ancient widespread habit may doubtless be referred the prohibition, mentioned in Exodus and Deuteronomy, against making an altar in any special place where God recorded His name, of hewn stone, or polluting it by lifting up any iron tool upon it.  So strong is the conservative instinct in religion that to this very day the enlightened Brahmin of India will not use ordinary fire for sacred purposes, will not procure a fresh spark even from flint and steel, but reverts to, or rather continues the primitive way of obtaining it by friction with a wooden drill.  Everywhere innovations in religious worship are resisted with more or less reason or prejudice.  The instinct is universal, and has its good and its evil side.