2. Sacred fires.
Among the Semites the sacrificial fat was burned on the altar. And we have seen that “this could be done without any fundamental modification of the old type of sacred stone or altar pillar, simply by making a hollow on the top to receive the grease.”[107]
Fig. 49.—Cresset-stone, Lewannick. From Baring-Gould’s Strange Survivals.
Baring-Gould[108] has written on the question of sacrificial and sacred fires in ancient times in Britain, and points out that there still remain in some of our churches (in Cornwall, York and Dorset) the contrivances—now called cresset-stones—used. They are blocks of stone with cups hollowed out precisely as described by Robertson Smith. Some are placed in lamp-niches furnished with flues. On these he remarks (p. 122):—
“Now although these lamps and cressets had their religious signification, yet this religious signification was an afterthought. The origin of them lay in the necessity of there being in every place a central light, from which light could at any time be borrowed.”