y to the Congo
native, a force but dimly understood, and, like all mysterious natural
manifestations, it is a power that must be propitiated and persuaded to
his good."[83]

The Egyptian religion was permeated with phallicism. In India phallic
worship is widely scattered. In Benares, the sacred city, "everywhere,
in the temples, in the little shrines in the street, the emblem of the
Creator is phallic." Symbols of the male and female sexual organs, the
Lingam and the Yoni, have been objects of worship in India from the
earliest times. With the Sakti ceremonies, Hindu religion dispenses with
symbols, and devotion is paid to a naked woman selected for the
occasion.[84] This worship of a nude female is a very familiar
phenomenon in the history of religion. Some of the early Christian sects
were said to have practised it, and it is a feature of some Russian
religious sects to-day. The subject will be dealt with more fully
hereafter.

In ancient Rome, in the month of April, "when the fertilising powers of
nature begin to operate, and its powers to be visibly developed, a
festival in honour of Venus took place; in it the phallus was carried in
a cart, and led in procession by the Roman ladies to the temple of Venus
outside the Colline gate, and then presented by them to the sexual part
of the goddess."[85] In the Greek Bacchic religious processions huge
phalli were carried in a chariot drawn by bulls, and surrounded by women
and girls singing songs of praise. Phallic worship was also associated
with the cults of Dionysos and Eleusis. It is met with among the ancient
Mexicans and Peruvians, and also among the North American tribes. The
famous Black Stone of Mecca, to which religious honours are paid, is
also said by authorities to be a phallic symbol. The stone set up by
Jacob (Gen. xxviii. 18-9) falls into the same category. References to
phallic worship may be found in many parts of the Bible, and
authoritative writers like Mr. Hargrave Jennings and Major-General
Forlong have not hesitated to assert that the god of the Jewish Ark was
a sexual symbol. Seeing the extent to which phallic worship exists in
other religions, it would be surprising did this not also exist in the
early Jewish religion.

In Christendom we have evidence of the perpetuation of the phallic cult
in the decree of Mans, 1247, and of the Synod of Tours, 1396, against
its practice. Quite unsuccessfully, however. Indeed, the architecture of
medieval churc