Mysticism and its Results

ifices were offered on mountain tops. Why? Abraham went to such a place to offer up his son. Was it not for secrecy in the religious rite? If the earliest instruction was from God, whose truth is unchangeable and eternal, were not the earliest sacrifices offered in secret by reason of the same command which subsequently obliged the high priest of his chosen people to offer the great sacrifice in secret within the veils, first of the Tabernacle, afterward of the Temple? The Elohistic age ended with the first official act of Moses, after he, also, had met with Aaron on "the mount of God."[16]

A new era then commenced. As men dispersed {19} themselves over the earth, the original belief in the one true God (Monotheism) was lost, and people fell into the worship of many deities (Polytheism), adoring the visible works of creation, more particularly the sun and the stars of heaven, or else reverencing the operative powers of nature as divine beings. Faith in the one Great JEHOVAH was preserved by the childre