now ripening, and we had a beautiful illustration of Scripture. Our Arabs were an hungered,' and, going into the fields, they plucked the ears of corn and did eat, rubbing them with their hands.' On being questioned, they said this was an old custom, and no one would speak against it; they were supposed to be hungry, and it was allowed as a charity. We saw this afterwards in repeated instances' (Luke vi. 1 seq). At the present day the rights of property are, in regard to the productions of the earth, by no means so rigidly guarded as with us. There is an entire want of enclosures in agricultural districts. The only exception is found in a few gardens and vineyards close to the walls of some towns. The limits of a field are usually marked by a narrow strip of unploughed ground, sometimes by a rough pillar or heap of stones. The crops are secured against cattle only by the watchful care of the herdsman, who usually keeps them at a distance upon the hills. Hence travellers do not hesitate to enter fields of corn, or to take of their crops.' 'Our muleteers,' says Olin (ii. 435), 'never hesitated to ride into a field of wheat, and graze their animals upon the growing or ripening harvest.'

HUNTING, the capture of wild animals with a view to food, or for the preservation of flocks and herds, must have occupied men at a very early period, though we may doubt if even human society passed through the hunting period' any more than other sharply-defined conditions successively arising from the modes in which subsistence was obtained. The wide, open plains and uplands of Western Asia afforded good hunting grounds, and there first we find Nimrod, the mighty hunter (Gen. x. 9). The practice was pursued by the patriarchs, for it is mentioned as a matter of course that Ishmael and Esau procured sustenance by hunting (xxi. 20; xxv. 27). Palestine was rich in wild beasts, affording temptations to the chase (Exod. xxiii. 29). But hunting, as appears in the case of Ishmael and Esau, tended to produce a rude, wandering life, and finds, therefore, no sanction in the Mosaic law, which was founded on agriculture as a far better source of social and individual improvement. As weapons of the chase are mentioned the bow, arrow, and spears (Gen. xxvii. 3. Ps. lvii. 4, 6). Nets were also set even for large beasts (Ezek. xix. 8), and pits were dug (Ps. cxix 85. Proverbs xxvi. 27), which were covered over (2 Sam. xxiii. 20). According to Shaw, pits were used especially for taking lions. As the dog was an unclean animal, hounds were not kept for hunting. Instances that strong men, without arms, could take and destroy wild animals, are found in Judg. xiv. 6. 1 Sam. xvii. 35.

HUSKS is, in Luke xv. 16, the English translation of a Greek word, keration (L. siliqua), which (from keras, a bern. the

pods resembling a horn) denotes the truit of a tree of the leguminous order, called by the Arabs kharnoob, written also kharoobɩ whence our carob tree. This tree grows in the Levant and Southern Europe, where it still supplies food for swine and cattle, though of an inferior kind, which is eaten by human beings only when in great need. The food is found in the pods, about a finger long, an inch broad, and curved somewhat like a sickle, not unlike beans, but with a harder and darker shell; which the carob tree produces in great abundance, and which contain hard seeds, bitter at first, but after being kept, somewhat sweet. The seeds are said to be commonly thrown away, while the pods are eaten. Hasselquist found the tree abundant on the hills around Jerusaiem. It is also called St. John's Bread, from a notion that John used its pods for nutriment.

HYMENÆUS, a disciple at Ephesus, who deviated from the essential doctrines of the Christian faith, in maintaining that the re surrection was already past (1 Tim. i. 20 2 Tim. ii. 17).

HYPOCRISY is a Greek word in English letters, which, taken from the stage, signifies the acting of an assumed part. The Hebrew term ghohneph means to conceal, and so to be false or hypocritical. It is characteristic of the simplicity and truthfulness of the primitive manners set forth in the earlier Biblical records, that it is in only the later books that hypocrisy and hypocrites make their appearance (Job viii. 13. Is. xxxiii. 14). As might be expected, the realities of religion long preceded its counterfeits and shows It is in the degenerate times of the New Testament that hypocrisy chiefly comes before the reader of the Bible; and from the lips of him who was the truth' as well as 'the life,' this detestable vice received awful rebuke. Hypocrisy is of two kinds-simulation, or affecting to be better than you are; which involves dissimulation, or the concealment of your bad qualities. These bad qualities are often accompanied by malice against others, as was exemplified in the case of the Scribes and Pharisees on whom our Lord pronounced his woe (Mark xii. 15. Matt. xxiii. 28, seq.). Sometimes the term hypocrite seems to imply a less heinous offence, and may mean little more than what we term inconsistency (Matt. vii. 5).

HYSSOP (H. esob), according to Dr Royle ('Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society,' xv. Nov. 1844), the caper plant (capparis spinosa of Linnæus), which has in Arabic a name, azuf, similar to its Hebrew appellation, is found in Lower Egypt (as required by Exod. xii. 22), in the deserts of Sinai, and in Palestine Compare Lev. xiv. 4. Numb. xix. 6, 18. Heb. ix. 19. Ps. li. 2, 7. Its habit is to grow on the most barren soil, rocky precipice, or the side of a

wall. Comp. 1 Kings iv. 33. It has always been held to possess cleansing properties. Hence, probably, its selection in the ceremonies of purification. It is also capable of yielding a stick fit for the purpose mentioned in John xix. 29; comp. Matt. xxvii. 48. Mark xv. 36.

The caper plant has by some been supposed to be the abigonah, translated in Eccles. xii. 5,desire,' but in the Septuagint and Vulgate, capparis. On this point Dr. Royle remarks, This plant may have had two names in the Hebrew language, as indeed it has in the Arabic, and we may suppose it to be particularly adduced as growing especially on old walls and tombs. Further,

if we suppose, as is natural, that the figura. tive language employed by Solomon is car. ried on throughout the sentence, it appears to me appropriate. For the caper plant, like most of its tribe, is conspicuous for its long flower-stalks, which are erect when the plant is in flower and the fruit young, but which bend and hang down as the fruit ripens. As the flowering of the almond-tree has been thought to refer to the whitening of the hair, so the drooping of the ripe fruit of a plant which is conspicuous on the walls of buildings and on tombs, may be held to typify the hanging down the head before man goeth to his long home.'

ICHABOD (H. the glory is departed), son of Phinehas, and grandson of the high-priest Eli (see the article), who was prematurely born in consequence of the grief felt by his mother on hearing the tidings that the ark of God was taken, and that her father-in-law and her husband were dead.

ICONIUM, the modern Konia, was the capital of Lycaonia, in the south-east of Asia Minor, lying at the foot of Mount Taurus, in a fruitful plain (Acts xiv. 1, seq., xvi. 2. 2 Tim. iii. 11).

IDDO (H. his hand), the name of the grandfather (Zech. i. 1), who in other passages (Ezra v. 1. Neh. xii. 16), as is not uncommon among the Hebrews, appears as the father of Zechariah. He is found among the priests who, after the exile, laboured for the restoration of the temple-worship, and may therefore be presumed to have been distinguished for his zeal in divine things; on which account, probably, he received the name of seer. He wrote a long-lost book, or history, on the act of Rehoboam (2 Chron. xii. 15; xiii. 22).

IDOLATRY (G. eidolon, an image,' and latreia, worship') is the worship and service of images as divine, or as representatives of divinity (for the mere stock or stone (Jer. iii. 9) could not originally have been held worthy of divine worship), as the expression of a thought and emotion recognises the divinity of the object worshipped; which object, remaining impalpable to sense, may be conceived of in the mind, or be set forth by some visible representation. By degrees, however, the feelings which at first regarded the Divinity were transferred to the repre

sentative. Such a transference, when completed, was idolatry. The essence of idolatry, then, is the transference to a creature of that worship which belongs to the Creator (Rom. i. 25). But transference is a secondary act. Hence the worship of God, in point of time, preceded the worship of idols. Such is certainly the view given in the Scriptures, which imply that the worship and service of God, who made heaven and earth, was prior to idolatry. The scantiness, however, of the Scripture narrative prevents us from exhibiting the steps by which men declined from the one to the other. In the absence of historical facts, we may reasonably suppose that the idea of God, the invisible Creator and Governor of the universe, was too purely spiritual to be retained in its primitive simplicity by rude and sinful races of men (28), who, not succeeding to obliterate all sense of the divine from their souls, aided their faint concep tions by material images, and could worship only when some object of sight was before them. Thus sin debased men's souls, and gave rise to spiritual blindness and idolatry. As its causes were general, so idolatry spread itself over the whole earth; and it is as a revival of an old truth that monotheism appears in the practice of Abraham, who was called to this great trust from the midst of idolatrous nations. The universal prevalence of idolatry implied in the Book of Genesis and the Old Scriptures at large, is exhibited as a fact in profane history, and has come down to the present hour in evidence afforded by sculpture and painting; for though we are not without historical in

timations that the recognition of one God prevailed in the first ages, yet so early as the epoch of the most ancient monarchies idolatry appears universally prevalent.

The earliest shape which idolatry seems to have taken, was the deification of the human form; for God was conceived of under that form as being the noblest known to man. This deification of self which is found in primitive ages constitutes the essence of idolatry, for sin is nothing else than selfworship, and may be traced through different manifestations down to the modern pantheism, in which man's ideal is the highest power, and human genius the sole divinity.

In some other object than man himself, however, was the human form adored. What that object was, depended on circumstances. If, with the aid of the imagination, the form was found in natural objects, those objects received men's homage Thus the original image of Diana of the Ephesians was a log of wood, fabled to have fallen from heaven. If trees and stocks did not present the lookedfor resemblance, men's hands' gave them the required shape (Isaiah xl. 20). Our engraving represents in Thor of the Finlanders an image of the kind (comp. Jer. x. 3).

that the world could be made and governed by one Being, united in the work several, whose existence and operation were set forth by sculptures set up in temples, or, as in India, hewn in colossal dimensions in the

HECATE.

living rock. In many parts of the heathen world these ideas ran into a triple form, exemplified in this cut of Diana Triformis, as worshipped among the Latins, and in the various Indian Trimurtis, of which the following figure gives a specimen.

With the progress of human skill, the resources of art were set in action for the formation of humanly-shaped objects of worship, which proceeded step by step with men's advancement in the arts, till it reached its height in the sublimity, loveliness, and grace of the gods of Greece,' in whose figures the sense of beauty finds full expression and the highest homage.

In countries where the meditative faculties predominated, polytheistic theories of creation and Providence obtained prevalence, which, presuming the impossibility

What is here set forth under a union of forms, is in other instances expressed by a combination in one form of several members of the human body, as in the ensuing picture of Vishnoo, in which many hands denote efficiency of operation. The god is inscribed on a square so as to occupy four triangles, a device which, in allusion to geo