CHAPTER VII.

_Paradise Lost and Moloch--The God of the Ammonites--The slaughter of Children by Fire, notices in the Scriptures--Fire Ceremonies and Moloch--Sacred Fires of the Phoenicians--The Carthaginians--Custom of the Oziese--Sardinian Customs and Moloch--The Cuthites--Persian Fire Worship--The House-Fires of Greece and Rome--Sacred Books of the East--Laws of Manu--The Rig Veda and Hymns to Agni, the God of Fire-- Vesta, worship of--The Magi--Zoroaster._

In Milton's "Paradise Lost" we read:--

"First, Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with blood Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears; Though for the noise of drums and timbrels loud, Their children's cries unheard, that passed through fire, To his grim idol. Him the Ammonite Worshipped in Rabba and her watery plain, In Argob and in Basan, to the stream Of utmost Arnon: nor content with such Audacious neighbourhood, the wisest heart Of Solomon he led by fraud to build His temple right against the temple of God, On that opprobrious hill, and made his grove The pleasant valley of Hinnom, Tophet thence And black Gehenna called, the type of Hell."

"Moloch was the god of the Ammonites. In the worship and sacrifices in his honour they burnt their sons and daughters, with the accustomed forms and ceremonies." In Leviticus xviii. 21 we find a prohibition of passing the children through the fire and in chapter xx. the punishment of death by stoning is awarded to any who gave their seed to Moloch.

"However," says Selden, "many of the Hebrews write that the children were neither burnt nor slain, but that two funeral pyres were constructed by the priests of Moloch, and that they led the children only between the pyres, as if in this way to purify them. Moses Ben Maimon says that in those days the servitors of the fires made men believe that their sons and daughters would die unless they were thus led, and on this account and the love of their children they hastened to do that which was so easy, and there was no other way of saving the children from the fire. There are some who say that the father in due form delivered the child to the priests to be given back, and that he led it through, carrying it on his shoulders. It is nevertheless true that the children were not only led between the fires, but were also burnt in the sacrifices of the idols. See Psalm cvi. 37 and 38, and read, "Yea, they sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto devils, and shed innocent blood, even the blood of their sons and their daughters, whom they sacrificed unto the idols of Canaan, and the land was polluted with the blood."

Philastrius says "that they placed an altar in the valley of the children of Hinnom, and so called after the name of a certain Tophet, and in that place the Jews sacrificed their sons and daughters to demons." There are other places which sufficiently indicate immolation of children in those regions of Syria where Moloch was adored. Thus, see Wisdom of Solomon,