is a subject on which light is still
called for. The Caaba of Mecca and the stone of the temple of Diana
at Ephesus are famous isolated instances of it; but it has been
suggested that the standing stones or menhirs which are found in
every part of Europe, and in the south and west of Asia, were objects
of this worship. In Palestine these stones are not found, though they
occur in the neighbouring lands; and this is attributed by Major
Conder[4] to the zeal of the orthodox kings, who, we know from the
Bible, destroyed all the monuments of idolatry in their territory.

[Footnote 3: In Mr. G. A. Gomme's _Ethnology in Folklore_ many sacred
wells are mentioned which are still, or were lately, frequented in
England. St. Wallach's well and bath, in the parish of Glass,
Morayshire, was much resorted to within living memory.]

[Footnote 4: _Scottish Review_, 1894, vol. xvii. p. 33, "Rude Stone
Monuments in Syria."]

What is common to these cults, and cannot be disregarded, is their
local nature. This gives its colour to all the religion of early man.
The god of the sacred tree cannot be worshipped anywhere else than
where the tree stands, and he who would have his wishes granted by
the well must come to it. The deity of this kind of religion has his
abode at a certain spot, and he is a fixed, not a movable deity.
There is a story, or a set of stories, connected with his shrine, and
there are observances of one kind or another to be done there; and
this goes on from age to age. Now a deity who is fixed to one spot
will be worshipped by the people who dwell around that spot. The god
will have his own people and dwell among them, and they alone will be
his worshippers. And thus the surface of the earth comes to be
parcelled out among a number of deities, each seated, like a little
prince, at his own court among his own people. In passing from his
own home to a distant spot, a man will leave the territory of his own
god and enter on that of another, and as the god can only be
worshipped at his own shrine, the man will leave his religion when he
leaves his home, and either be compelled to serve the gods of
strangers, or to perform no religious duties at all.[5] Thus the
ideas connected with totemism meet and harmonise in many old
countries with those connected with local shrines.[6] Those dwelling
around the shrine form a kindred of one blood, of which the local god
is both the progenitor and the living head. Religion is thus both