The superstitious heathens, whom the Hebrews called, Yedonim, pretended that the bones of those they worshipped as gods when alive, revealed both present and future things, that were otherwise concealed: and the hieroglyphics, the priestly legible images, which the Egyptians inscribed on the tombs of the deceased, to praise their living virtue, and incite youth to imitate them, proved a great means of inducing them in process of time to worship their dead. But the Americans praise only the virtues of their dead, as fit copies of imitation for the living. They firmly believe that the hand of God cuts off the days of their dead friend, by his pre-determined purpose. They are so far from deifying fellow-creatures, that they prefer none of their own people, only according to the general standard of reputed merit.
The Chinese, likewise, though they call God by the appellative, Cham Ti, and have their temples of a quadrangular form, yet they are gross idolaters; like the ancient Egyptians, instead of offering up religious oblations to the great Creator and Preserver of the universe, they pay them to the pictures of their deceased ancestors, and erect temples to them, in solitary places without their cities—likewise to the sun, moon, planets, spirits, and inventors of arts; especially to the great Confucius, notwithstanding he strictly prohibited the like idolatrous rites. And the religious modes of the ancient inhabitants {25} of Niphon, or the Japanese, are nearly the same; which are diametrically opposite to the religious tenets of the wild Americans.
The diviners among the Philistines pretended to foretel things, by the flying, chirping, and feeding of wild fowls. The Greeks and Romans called fowls, Nuncii Deorum. And Calchas is said to have foretold to Agamemnon, by the number of sparrows which flew before him, how many years the Trojan war should last. The Assyrians worshipped pigeons, and bore the figure of them on their standards, as the sacred oracles shew us, where the anger of the pigeon, and the sword of the pigeon, points at the destroying sword of the Assyrians. But, though the American woods swarm with a surprizing variety of beautiful wild fowl, yet the natives do not make the least pretension to auguries. They know it is by a certain gift or instinct, inferior to human reason, that the birds have a sufficient knowledge of the seasons of the year. I once indeed observed them to be intimidated at the voice of a small uncommon bird, when it pitched, and chirped on a tree over their war camp. But that is the only trace of such superstition, as I can recollect among them. Instead of calling birds the messengers of the gods, they call the great eagle, Ooōle; which seems to be an imitation of Eloha.—This may be accounted for, from the eagle being one of the cherubic emblems, denoting the air, or spirit. They esteem pigeons only as they are salutary food, and they kill the turtledove, though they apply it as a proper name to their female children.
The Babylonians were much addicted to auguries: and they believed them to be unerring oracles, and able to direct them in doubtful and arduous things, Ezek. xxi. 21. Those auguries always directed their conduct, in every material thing they undertook; such as the beginning and carrying on war, going a journey, marriage, and the like. But, as we shall soon see, the Americans, when they go to war, prepare and sanctify themselves, only by fasting and ablutions, that they may not defile their supposed holy ark, and thereby incur the resentment of the Deity. And many of them firmly believe, that marriages are made above. If the Indian Americans were descended from any of the states or people above mentioned, they could not well have forgotten, much less could they have so essentially departed from their idolatrous worship. It is hence probable, they came here, {26} soon after the captivity, when the religion of the Hebrew nation, respecting the worship of Deity, was in its purity. And if any of the ancient heathens came with them, they became proselytes of habitation, or justice—hereby, their heathenish rites and ceremonies were, in process of time, intirely absorbed in the religious ceremonies of the Jews.
Had the nine tribes and half of Israel which were carried off by Shalmaneser, King of Assyria, and settled in Media, continued there long, it is very probable, that by intermarrying with the natives, and from their natural fickleness and proneness to idolatry, and the force of example, they would have adopted, and bowed before the gods of the Medes and the Assyrians, and carried them along with them. But there is not a trace of this idolatry among the Indians. The severe afflictions they underwent in captivity, doubtless humbled their hearts, and reclaimed them from the service of the calves, and of Baalam, to the true divine worship—a glimpse of which they still retain. And that the first settlers came to America before the destruction of the first temple, may be inferred, as it is certain both from Philo and Josephus, that the second temple had no cherubim. To reflect yet greater light on the subject, I shall here add a few observations on the Indians supposed religious cherubic emblems, the cherubimical names of their tribes, and from whence they, and the early heathens, may be supposed to have derived them.
When the goodness of Deity induced him to promise a saviour to fallen man, in paradise, he stationed flaming cherubim in the garden. The type I shall leave; but when mankind became intirely corrupt, God renewed his promise to the Israelites, and to convey to posterity the true divine worship, ordered them to fix in the tabernacle, and in Solomon’s temple, cherubim, over the mercy-seat,—the very curtains which lined the walls, and the veil of the temple, likewise, were to have those figures. The cherubim are said to represent the names and offices of Yehowah Elohim, in redeeming lost mankind. The word כרבים, is drawn from כ, a note of resemblance, and רב, a great or mighty one; i. e. the “similitude of the great and mighty One,” whose emblems were the bull, the lion, the man, and the eagle. The prophet Ezekiel has given us two draughts of the cherubim (certainly not without an instructive design) in his two visions, described in the first {27} and tenth chapters. In chap. x. ver. 20, he assures us that “he knew they were the cherubim.” They were uniform, and had those four compounded animal emblems; “Every one had four faces—פגים,” appearances, habits, or forms; which passage is illustrated by the similar divine emblems on the four principal standards of Israel. The standard of Judah bore the image of a lion; Ephraim’s had the likeness of a bull; Reuben’s had the figure of a man’s head; and Dan’s carried the picture of an eagle, with a serpent in his talons[[VI]]: Each of the cherubim, according to the prophet, had the head and face of a man—the likeness of an eagle, about the shoulders, with expanded wings; their necks, manes, and breasts, resembled those of a lion; and their feet those of a bull, or calf. “The sole of their feet was like the sole of a calf’s foot.” One would conclude, from Ezekiel’s visions, and Psal. xviii. 10.—Ps. xcix. 1. “He rode upon a cherub, and did fly:”—“The Lord reigneth, let the people tremble: he sitteth between the cherubim, let the earth be moved,”—that Elohim chose the cherubic emblems, in condescension to man, to display his transcendent glorious title of King of kings. We view him seated in his triumphal chariot, and as in the midst of a formidable war camp, drawn by those four creatures, the bull, the lion, the man, and the eagle; strong and descriptive emblems of the divine essence. What animal is equal to the bull, or ox, for strength, indefatigable service, and also for food? In eastern countries, they were always used to plough, and beat out the grain, besides other services omitted in modern times; the lion excels every other animal in courage, force, and prowess: man far surpasses all other creatures, in understanding, judgment, and wisdom; and there is no bird so sagacious, or can fly so swift, or soar so high as the eagle, or that bears so intense a love to its young ones.
[VI]. The Man, which the lion on the standard of Judah, and the head on Reuben’s, typified, was, in the fulness of time, united to the divine essence.
These are the emblems of the terrestrial cherubim: and the Psalmist calls them Merabha Hashekina, “The chariot of Divine Majesty:” “God sitteth between, and rideth upon, the cherubim,” or divine chariot. The celestial cherubim were fire, light, and air, or spirit, which were typified by the bull, the lion, and the eagle. Those divine emblems, in a long revolution of time, {28} induced the ancients by degrees, to divide them, and make images of the divine persons, powers, and actions, which they typified, and to esteem them gods. They consecrated the bull’s head to the fire, the lion’s to light, and the eagle’s to the air, which they worshipped as gods. And, in proportion as they lost the knowledge of the emblems, they multiplied and compounded their heads with those of different creatures. The Egyptians commonly put the head of a lion, hawk, or eagle, and sometimes that of a ram, or bull, to their images; some of which resembled the human body. Their Apis, or Osiris, gave rise to Aaron’s, and apostate Israel’s, golden calf: and their sphynx had three heads. Diana of Ephesus was triformis; Janus of Rome, biformis, and, sometimes, quadriformis; and Jupiter, Sol, Mercury, Proserpine, and Cerberus, were triple-headed.
Hesiod tells us, the ancient heathens had no less than thirty thousand gods. It is well known that the ancient heathens, especially the Greeks and Romans, abounded with male and female deities; and commonly in human effigy. As they imagined they could not safely trust themselves to the care of any one god, they therefore chose a multiplicity. They multiplied and changed them from childhood to old age. The Romans proceeded so far, as to make Cloacina the guardian goddess of each house-of-office. The heathens in general, appointed one god to preside over the land, and another over the water; one for the mountains, and another for the valleys. And they were so diffident of the power of their gods, that they chose a god, or goddess, for each part of the body; contrary to the religious system of their best poets and philosophers, and that of the present savage Americans: the former affirmed, sapiens dominabitur astris, &c.; “A wife, good man, will always be ruled by divine reason; and not pretend to be drawn to this or that, by an over-bearing power of the stars, or fortune:” and the latter assert, “that temporal good or evil is the necessary effect of their own conduct; and that the Deity presides over life and death.”
If this first institution of the cherubic emblems was not religious, nor derived from the compounded figures of the scripture cherubim, how is it that so many various nations of antiquity, and far remote from each other, should have chosen them as gods, and so exactly alike? Is it not most reasonable to suppose, that as they lost the meaning of those symbolical figures, and {29} their archetypes, fire, light, and air, or spirit, which represented the attributes, names, and offices of Yohewah Elohim, they divided them into so many various gods, and paid them divine worship. Yet, though the Indian Americans have the supposed cherubimical figures, in their synhedria, and, through a strong religious principle, dance there, perhaps every winter’s night, always in a bowing posture, and frequently sing Halelu-Yah Yo He Wah, I could never perceive, nor be informed, that they substituted them, or the similitude of any thing whatsoever, as objects of divine adoration, in the room of the great invisible divine essence. They use the feathers of the eagle’s tail[[18]], in certain friendly and religious dances, but the whole town will contribute, to the value of 200 deer-skins, for killing a large eagle; (the bald eagle they do not esteem); and the man also gets an honourable title for the exploit, as if he had brought in the scalp of an enemy. Now, if they reckoned the eagle a god, they would not only refuse personal profits, and honours, to him who killed it, but assuredly inflict on him the severest punishment, for committing so atrocious and sacrilegious an act.