The God-Idea of the Ancients, page 209 by Eliza Burt Gamble
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the time of the Reformation this service was forbidden, "it has since been performed on the top of the tower." After the hymn is sung "boys blow loud blasts to Sol through bright new tin horns."
Perhaps none of the ideas which enter into present religious rites and ceremonies proclaims its eastern origin more forcibly than do those connected with the veneration of fire. The testimony of all writers upon this subject agrees that in Europe, down to a late date in the Christian era, fire was still adored, and in some mysterious manner was connected with the Creator.
Upon the subject of the continuation of sun and fire worship to modern times, it is stated that the ancient bonfires with which the North German hills used to be ablaze mile after mile are not altogether given up by local custom. In Ireland as late as the year 1829, the ancient Canaanitish and Jewish rite of passing children through fire as a cleansing or regenerating process was still in operation. It is related that at stated seasons great fires were lighted in public places, on which occasions, fathers, taking their children in their arms, would leap and run through the flames. At the same time, two large fires were kindled a short distance from each other through which the cattle were driven. It was believed that by means of this ceremony, fecundity is imparted both to man and beast. May, the month in which all Nature revives, and in which life starts anew, is the time selected for the lighting of those sacred fires. May is the month of the fires of Baal. According to Maurice in his work on the Antiquities of India, the festival and the May-pole of Great Britain are the remnants of a religious ceremony once common in Egypt, India, and Phoenicia, which nations all worshipping the same Deity, celebrated the entrance of the sun into the sign of Taurus at the vernal equinox, but which in consequence of the precession of the equinoxes is removed far in the year from its original situation. This festival is thought to be coeval with a time w