"saw sculptured before them the gods of their country."

Upon the subject of the identity of Eastern religions, Wilford
remarks that one and the same code both of theology and of
fabulous history, has been received through a range or belt about
forty degrees broad across the old continent, in a southeast and
northwest direction from the eastern shores of the Malaga
peninsula to the western extremity of the British Isles, that,
through this immense range the same religious notions reappear in
various places under various modifications, as might be expected;
and that there is not a greater difference between the tenets and
worship of the Hindoos and the Greeks than exists between the
churches of Home and Geneva.

Concerning the universality of certain religious beliefs and
opinions, Faber, commenting upon the above statement of Wilford,
observes that, immense as is this territorial range, it is by far
too limited to include the entire phenomenon, that the
observation

"applies with equal propriety to the entire habitable globe; for
the arbitrary rites and opinions of every pagan nation bear so
close a resemblance to each other, that such a coincidence can
only have been produced by their having had a common origin.
Barbarism itself has not been able to efface the strong primeval
impression. Vestiges of the ancient general system may be traced
in the recently discovered islands in the Pacific Ocean; and,
when the American world was first opened to the hardy adventurers
of Europe, its inhabitants from north to south venerated, with
kindred ceremonies and kindred notions, the gods of Egypt and