xxxi, 26), and that at the dedication of King Solomon's temple (Chron.

vii, 1).

And when Elijah made his sacrifice to prove that Baal was not God, "the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust and the water that was in the trench." (1 Kings, xviii, 38.) Since sacrifice had from the earliest days been considered as food offered to the gods, it was quite logical to argue that when fire from Heaven fell upon the offering, God himself was present and consumed His own.

Thus the Paracelsists and other fire believers sought, and as they believed found, high authority for continuing a part of the fire worship of the early tribes.
The Theosophists, according to Hargrave Jennings in "The Rosicrucians," called the soul a fire taken from the eternal ocean of light, and in common with other Fire-Philosophers believed that all knowable things, both of the soul and the body, were evolved out of fire and finally resolvable into it; and that fire was the last and only-to-be-known God.
In passing I might call attention to the fact that the Devil is supposed to dwell in the same element.
Some of the secrets of heat resistance as practiced by the dime-museum and sideshow performers of our time, secrets grouped under the general title of "Fire-eating," must have been known in very early times.

To quote from Chambers' "Book of Days": "In ancient history we find several examples of people who possessed the art of touching fire without being burned.