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Spiritual Gifts, Volume 3
They erected altars to the honor of their gods, and they required even
their own children to pass through the fire. After they had erected their
altars they required their children to leap over the altars through the
fire. If they could do this without their being burned, the idol priests
and people received it as an evidence that their God accepted their
offerings, and favored especially the person who passed through the
fiery ordeal. He was loaded with benefits, and was ever afterward
greatly esteemed by all the people. He was never allowed to be pun-
ished, however aggravating might be his crimes. If another person who
leaped through the fire was so unfortunate as to be burned, then his
fate was fixed; for they thought that their gods were angry, and would
be appeased with nothing short of the unhappy victim’s life, and he
was offered up as a sacrifice upon their idol altars.
Even some of the children of Israel had so far degraded themselves
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as to practice these abominations, and God caused the fire to kindle
upon their children, whom they made to pass through the fire. They
did not go to all the lengths of the heathen nations; but God deprived
them of their children by causing the fire to consume them in the act
of passing through it.
Because the people of God had confused ideas of the ceremonial
sacrificial offerings, and had heathen traditions confounded with their
ceremonial worship, God condescended to give them definite direc-
tions, that they might understand the true import of those sacrifices
which were to last only till the Lamb of God should be slain, who was
the great antitype of all their sacrificial offerings.