s adorned, or defiled, with three hundred and sixty idols
of men, eagles, lions, and antelopes; and most conspicuous was the
statue of Hebal, of red agate, holding in his hand seven arrows, without
heads or feathers, the instruments and symbols of profane divination.
But this statue was a monument of Syrian arts: the devotion of the ruder
ages was content with a pillar or a tablet; and the rocks of the desert
were hewn into gods or altars, in imitation of the black stone of Mecca,
which is deeply tainted with the reproach of an idolatrous origin. From
Japan to Peru, the use of sacrifice has universally prevailed; and the
votary has expressed his gratitude, or fear, by destroying or consuming,
in honor of the gods, the dearest and most precious of their gifts.
The life of a man is the most precious oblation to deprecate a public
calamity: the altars of Phnicia and Egypt, of Rome and Carthage, have
been polluted with human gore: the cruel practice was long preserved
among the Arabs; in the third century, a boy was annually sacrificed by
the tribe of the Dumatians; and a royal captive was piously slaughtered
by the prince of the Saracens, the ally and soldier of the emperor
Justinian. A parent who drags his son to the altar, exhibits the most
painful and sublime effort of fanaticism: the deed, or the intention,
was sanctified by the example of saints and heroes; and the father of
Mahomet himself was devoted by a rash vow, and hardly ransomed for the
equivalent of a hundred camels. In the time of ignorance, the Arabs,
like the Jews and Egyptians, abstained from the taste of swine's flesh;
they circumcised their children at the age of puberty: the same customs,
without the censure or the precept of the Koran, have been silently
transmitted to their posterity and proselytes. It has been sagaciously
conjectured, that the artful legislator indulged the stubborn prejudices
of his countrymen. It is more simple to believe that he adhered to the
habits and opinions of his youth, without foreseeing that a practice
congenial to the climate of Mecca might become useless or inconvenient
on the banks of the Danube or the Volga.

Chapter L: Description Of Arabia And Its Inhabitants.--Part III.

Arabia was free: the adjacent kingdoms were shaken by the storms of
conquest and tyranny, and the persecuted sects fled to the happy land
where they might profess what they thought, and practise what they
professed. The religions of the Sabi