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In the Turkish towns, travellers are incessantly met with the cry of Allah Ackbar; and by Mussulmans, who would be esteemed pious, the divine name is as frequently repeated as if reverent and devout thoughts were habitually uppermost in their minds. Purifications are constantly, and with great strictness, performed by the Mussulmans of every country, but especially by those of Turkey.
The sayings of our forefathers are despised, the fasts and purifications abolished, the Sabbath desecrated, the priests of God deprived of their office, and the holy sacrifices are at an end." As Nathanael concluded, all the fathers of the council exclaimed with one voice: "True most true." As he had been speaking they had been interchanging notes of appreciative and sympathetic comment.
With terrible imprecations she devoted herself to the gods, and each time that Schahabarim pronounced a word she falteringly repeated it. He indicated to her all the purifications and fastings that she was to observe, and how she was to reach Matho. Moreover, a man acquainted with the routes would accompany her. She felt as if she had been set free.
This necessary habit of decency was with us a part of religion, and therefore we had many purifications and washings; indeed almost as many, and used on the same occasions, if my recollection does not fail me, as the Jews. Those that touched the dead at any time were obliged to wash and purify themselves before they could enter a dwelling-house.
They were preceded by fasting and various purifications on the part of the king and the parties who were to assist in the performance of them. The was a great concourse of the feudal princes, and much importance was attached to the presence among them of the representatives of former dynasties; but the duties of the occasion devolved mainly on the princes of the same surname as the royal House.
The situation of this village, at the entrance of the fertile plains of Hindustan, had caused it to be much frequented by pilgrims, and it was at this spot that purifications in the waters of the holy river took place during the hot season.
As he went forward on his journey, and was come as far as the River Cephisus, some of the race of the Phytalidae met him and saluted him, and upon his desire to use the purifications, then in custom, they performed them with all the usual ceremonies, and having offered propitiatory sacrifices to the gods, invited him and entertained him at their house, a kindness which, in all his journey hitherto, he had not met.
Only the consecrated ... were allowed access to them. For Plato also thought it not lawful for 'the impure to touch the pure. Thence the prophecies and oracles are spoken in enigmas, and the Mysteries are not exhibited incontinently to all and sundry, but only after certain purifications and previous instructions."
Genius, nevertheless, is so commensurate with absurdity throughout the book, and there are even such sweet and balmy as well as sublime pictures in it occasionally, nay often, that not only will the poem ever be worthy of admiration, but when those increasing purifications of Christianity which our blessed reformers began, shall finally precipitate the whole dregs of the author into the mythology to which they belong, the world will derive a pleasure from it to an amount not to be conceived till the arrival of that day.
This theory is, that when there had been placed under the eyes of the initiated symbolical representations of the creation of the universe, and the origin of things, the migrations and purifications of the soul, the beginning and progress of civilization and agriculture, there was drawn from these symbols and these scenes in the Mysteries an instruction destined only for the more perfect, or the epopts, to whom were communicated the doctrines of the existence of a single and eternal God, and the destination of the universe and of man.
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