one of the oldest and most respected families of
antiquity. At Carthage, there were celebrated the Phiditia, religious
solemnities similar to those already described in Greece. During the two
or three days upon which these festivals were celebrated, public feasts
were prepared at which the youth were instructed by their elders in the
state concerning the principles which were to govern their conduct
in after life; truth, inward purity, and virtue being set forth as
essentials to true manhood. In later times, after these festivals had
found their way to Rome, they gradually succumbed to the immorality
which prevailed, and at last, when their former exalted significance
had been forgotten, they were finally sunk into "the licentiousness of
enjoyment, and the innocence of mirth was superseded by the uproar of
riot and vice! Such were the Saturnalia."

From the facts connected with the mysteries of Eleusis and the
Thesmophorian rites, it is evident that in its earlier stages
Nature-worship was absolutely free from the impurities which came to be
associated with it in later times. As the organs of generation had not
originally been wholly disgraced and outraged, it is not unlikely that
when the so-called "sculptured indecencies" appeared on the walls of the
temples they were regarded as no more an offense against propriety and
decency than was the reappearance of the cross, the emblem of life, in
later times, among orthodox Christians.

Neither is it probable, in an age in which nothing that is natural was
considered indecent, and before the reproductive energies had become
degraded, that these symbols were any more suggestive of impurity than
are the Easter offerings upon our church altars at the present time.
Whatever may now be the significance of these offerings to those who
present them, sure it is that they once, together with other devices
connected with Nature-worship, were simply emblems of fertility--symbols
of a risen and fructifying sun which by its gladdening rays re-creates
and makes all things new again.

If we carefully study the religion of past ages we will discover
something more than a hint of an age when the generative functions
were regarded as a sacred expression of creative power, and when the
reproductive organs had not through over-stimulation and abuse been
tabooed as objects altogether impure and unholy, and as things too
disgraceful to be mentioned above a whisper. Indeed there is much
evidenc