UNIVERSAL RELIGION.

Augustus, according to Seneca, consecrated a temple in Gallia Narbonensis the southern Roman province of Gaul (1) to the wind Circius a violent north-northwest wind, because he believed it purified the air. Orosius claims that the famous temple of Toulouse was dedicated to the sun (2). In the writings of Gregory of Tours, we find a passage where this historian mentions the religious honors that the people of Gévaudan formerly paid to a lake located on Mount Helanus. A multitude of peasants gathered every year by the lake and made offerings to it, throwing bread, wax, fabrics, and other items into its waters. They celebrated this festival for three days.

In several places in Gaul, one finds monuments of the Egyptian cult, or the cult of Isis, which, as we have seen, is entirely related to Nature. It is true that the religion of the Druids had a more scholarly form than that of the Germanic nations, and that it is more difficult to point out its relationships with Nature; but since these divinities, such as Mars-Hesus, Dispater Father of Riches/Pluto, Vulcan, and Jupiter, are common to them as well as the Greeks and Romans, it follows that everything we have said about Greek and Roman divinities must apply to the Gallic divinities, who share the same characteristics and whom the Romans believed they recognized as their own Gods. In the monument found at Notre-Dame at the beginning of this century (3), and engraved in the memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions, one sees Jupiter, Vulcan, Castor and Pollux, who are Greek and Roman divinities. The Gallic Esus a prominent Celtic deity or Mars is also represented there, much like the tutelary God of the month of March, who is still found on the portal alongside the depictions of the twelve signs and the twelve months sculpted there. Based on all the testimonies we have just reported, we will conclude with

Mr. Hyde (4), that Sabaism the worship of the stars and celestial bodies was not confined to the East, but spread throughout the West, and that it formed the basis of the religion of the ancient European nations: the Teutons, Germans, Suebi, Goths, Danes, Gauls, and others. These nations honored the stars and particularly the planets, and the consecration they all made of a day of the week to each of the planets is still today an ancient monument of their religious respect for them.

Ancient Religion in Asia.

After having traveled across Europe, we will now turn our gaze toward Asia, which, like Egypt, was the cradle of all superstitions. We shall see that, starting from Phoenicia and the banks of the Nile as a center, the universal primitive religion extended its branches as far to the East as we have seen them extend to the West to cover all of Europe.

"The Ionians rendered a religious
worship to the images of the sun and
the moon, which they regarded as
two powerful divinities, upon whom
depended all the administration of
the world, following the principles of
Egyptian theology, and who, com-
bining their action with that of the
five other planets, nourished
and caused to grow all bodies
subject to the influence of the stars and
the general system of the heavens."

Thus speaks Cedrenus (5) on the occasion of the worship of the Asians who lived in Ionia in Asia Minor. Throughout this entire region, temples had been raised to the moon and to the God-month that she generates by her revolution. The

(1) Pelout volume 5, page 333, Ibid. 297.
(2) Orosius book 4, chapter 15.
(3) In 1726.
(4) Hyde, On the Religion of the Ancient Persians original: "de vet. Pers. Rel.", page 135.
(5) Cedrenus page 46.