In many cases the monoliths are without carving or inscription, for they undoubtedly antedate both the use of tools and the art of writing. In some instances the stones have been trued into columns or obelisks, as in the runic monuments and the Hindu lingams and sakti stones; in other instances they are fashioned into rough likenesses of the human body, as in the Easter Island statues, or into the elaborately sculptured figures of the Central American Indians and the Khmers of Cambodia. The first rough-stone images can hardly be considered as effigies of any particular deity but rather as the crude effort of primitive man to portray in the enduring qualities of stone the procreative attributes of abstract Divinity. An instinctive recognition of the stability of Deity has persisted through all the intervening ages between primitive man and modem civilization. Ample proof of the survival of litholatry in the Christian faith is furnished by allusions to the rock of refuge, the rock upon which the church of Christ was to be founded, the corner stone which the builders rejected, Jacob's stony pillow which he set up and anointed with oil, the sling stone of David, the rock Moriah upon which the altar of King Solomon's Temple was erected, the white stone of Revelation, and the Rock of Ages.

It is said also in a certain oracle,- "A pillar to the Thebans is joy-inspiring Bacchus," from the history of the Hebrews. Also Euripides says, in...

But of us mortals, many erring far In heart, as solace for our woes, have raised Images of gods - of stone, or else of brass, Or figures wrought of go...