“Oh! many a widow, many an orphan cursed
The building of that fane; and many a father,
Worn out with toil and slavery, implored
The poor man’s God to sweep it from the earth,
And spare his children the detested task
Of piling stone on stone, and poisoning
The choicest days of life,
To soothe a dotard’s vanity. 
There an inhuman and uncultured race
Howl’d hideous praises to their demon—­God;
They rushed to war, tore from the mother’s womb
The unborn child—­old age and infancy
Promiscuous perished; their victorious arms
Left not a soul to breathe.  Oh! they were fiends,
And what was he who taught them that the God
Of nature and benevolence had given
A special sanction to the trade of blood? 
His name and theirs are fading, and the tales
Of this barbarian nation, which imposture
Recites till terror credits, are pursuing
Itself into forgetfulness.”

With the enlightenment of the present century in every department of knowledge, so has a corresponding degree of advancement been thrown on the science of history, which Shelley only partially apprehended.  An enormous amount of new information is now to be gleaned from the writings of Ewald, Fergusson, Bunsen, Deutsch, Max Muller, Baring-Gould, Stanley, and other scholars of Orientation, which shows that the Hebrews, like every other nation, passed through the various phases of Nomadism and Pastoralism, to that of offensive and defensive war.  The same as other races, they came through the usual steps in religious progress—­Fetishism, Astrolatry, Polytheism and Monotheism.  During phases in their history they participated in the various forms of tree and serpent, Phallic, or fire-worship.  They had, as the Talmud, Targums, and the Old Testament show, a knowledge of the Egyptian or Chaldaic account of the creation and fall, the latter still to be seen on the walls of the temple of Osiris at Philae.  They had much knowledge of the Cabala, through their great prophet Moses, who was “learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,” and, like Pythagoras, had been initiated into their mysteries, and who both imparted the knowledge in part to their compatriots, on which they both founded systems.

A great traveler, and most learned modern writer on Occultism, who claims, on good grounds, to have been received into the ancient branch of the Rosie Cross in the far East, Madame Helena P. de Blavatsky, imparts the following particulars:  “The first Cabala in which a mortal man ever dared to explain the greatest mysteries of the universe, and show the keys to those masked doors in the ramparts of Nature, through which no mortal can ever pass without rousing dread sentries never seen upon this side her wall, was compiled by a certain Simeon Ben Jochai, who lived at the time of the second temple’s destruction.  Only about thirty years after the death of this renowned Cabalist, his MSS. and written explanations, which had till then remained in his possession as a most