which Mr. Bunting also declined, though, no doubt, for different reasons than led him to reject the second one, despite your kind recommendation of it. With profound respect and gratitude, I remain, Dear Sir, Yours faithfully, ALEXANDER H. JAPP. UNIV. OF CALIFORNIA SOME HERESIES DEALT WITH. HEBREW "PASSINGS-OVER" MR. ANDREW LANG in the "Contemporary Review" for August, 1896, had an interesting article in which he presented some new and curious facts, suggesting survivals of the ancient and very widespread observance of "passing through the fire," or, more properly, "passing over to the god through the fire." Some of these instances were clearly coloured by later knowledge of herbs and chemicals, or it may be magic and spiritualism; and, though Mr. Lang dexterously wove his materials together, it may be questioned whether he did not fail to draw the proper inference, and, in vulgar phrase, just a little "put the cart before the horse." He argued from them that probably all the Hebrew "passings through the fire" were of the same or very similar character-I fear rather forgetting some of his own deliverances in "Custom and Myth,” as well as in "Myth, Ritual, and Religion"-and actually wound up his article by saying, "At present I think it highly probable that the Jewish 'passing through the fire' was a harmless rite," forgetting the 1 Myth, Ritual, and Religion," passim. H. B law that all merely ceremonial observances had once a real and serious basis-formulated neatly by Grimm when he says that all superstitions were once parts of serious religion and worship, and all merely formal rites had once a practical bearing, in which he was followed by Nilsson. As an instance of what is here meant, most anthropologists and sociologists now agree that the practice of throwing shoes, slippers, &c., after the newly-married bridegroom is a survival from the very ancient marriage by capture, as is the custom in some places of actually advancing a party to the house of the bride's father with firearms, &c., which they make a great noise in discharging, while they pretend to carry the bride away as if by force amid cries and missiles thrown after them by the party of the bride's father. So also with the Parsee ritual, where the bull of the old sacrifice is represented only by a hair of the tail; or the baked clay offerings to ancestors of Prof. Petrie's New Race, in which meat, fruits, and flowers were well simulated in clay, &c.; so also with the baked clay votive figures found in tombs in Cyprus and elsewhere. Now, in his desire to carry out his idea, Mr. Lang even goes so far as to lay it down that probably all the "passings through the fire" of the Hebrews were, like these survivals, "harmless rites." I think it could be demonstrated from the Hebrew language itself (with which Mr. Lang confesses himself unacquainted or unfamiliar) that such was very far from being the case. It is quite true that Mr. Lang makes a kind of easy survey of what certain Biblical critics. have thought about the "passing through the fire," balances them off, and finds 'tis about even weight; |