ANCIENT POLYTHEISM. 215 rate his descendants from the apostate race, and to constitute them a distinct and peculiar people, among whom the knowledge and worship of Jehovah should be preserved till the time for the introduction of Christianity, when He would again reveal himself to the world, and destroy the gods of the Gentiles. By this precept the religions of all heathen nations are condemned; for they are directly opposed to the fundamental doctrine of the unity of the divine essence; and they either exclude the true God, or they associate others with him as sharers in the honors to which He alone is entitled. 496. We are informed by Hesiod, Varro, and other ancient authors, that no less than thirty thousand subordinate divinities were comprised in that system of Polytheism which prevailed among the Greeks and Romans. They had both celestial and terrestrial deities. They assigned peculiar gods to the fountains, the rivers, the hills, the mountains, the valleys, the groves, the sea, and even to hell itself. To cities, fields, houses, families, gates, nuptial chambers, marriages, births, deaths, sepulchres, trees, and gardens, they also appropriated distinct and peculiar deities. Their chief idol was Jupiter, whom they called the father of gods and men. Instead of worshiping the living God, they deified a host of dead men, called heroes, distinguished for nothing so much as for murder, adultery, sodomy, rapine, cruelty, drunkenness, and all kinds of debauchery. To such contemptible divinities splendid temples were erected, adorations addressed, costly offerings presented, and rites and ceremonies performed, subversive of every principle of decency and morality, and degrading to the reason and character of man. [For a full account of the rise of Polytheism and Pantheism, consult Douglas on Errors regarding Religion; also Dewar's Moral Philosophy, vol. ii. pp. 152-182.] 497. In ancient Egypt, the meanest, and the most contemptible objects-sheep, cats, bulls, dogs, cows, storks, apes, vultures, and other birds of prey; wolves, and several sorts of oxen, were exalted as objects of adoration. Each city and district in Egypt entertained a peculiar devotion to some animal or other, as an object of worship; 216 ANCIENT AND MODERN POLYTHEISM. nourished it with the greatest care and delicacy when living, and mourned deeply for it when dead. 498. If the Egyptians, the Greeks, and the Romans, who were distinguished from the rest of the world for their improvements in literature, science, and the arts, had so far renounced their allegiance to the true God, we may rest assured that the surrounding nations were sunk still further into the pollution of idolatry and of mental debasement. The Phoenicians, the Syrians, the Canaanites, the Chaldeans, the Babylonians, the Arabians, the Scythians, the Ethiopians, the Carthaginians, the ancient Gauls, Germans, and Britons, were, if possible, more deeply debased, and mingled with their idolatrous rites many cruel, obscene, and vile practices. 499. The moral debasement of modern heathen nations, in consequence of Polytheism, is about as great as that of the ancient. Even the Hindoos, the Burmans, the Chinese, the Persians, and the Japanese, though ranked among the most polished nations of the heathen world, are sunk into the grossest ignorance of the true God, and are found perpetrating, in their religious worship, deeds revolting to humanity, and stained with cruelty and injustice. 500. All pretenses to witchcraft or to magic, fortunetelling, charms, astrology, or enchantments, are, by some, considered as herein prohibited; as, in these ways, men expect that information or assistance from other beings which God only can afford. 501. It has been alleged that ancient legislators and philosophers were not idolators themselves; that their doctrines to a considerable extent counteracted the tendency of idolatry, and that the mysteries which were so generally established, and to which the initiated only were admitted, were expressly designed to preserve the knowledge of the one true God. But Dr. Dewar and others have proved that these suppositions are unfounded; and that the philosophers and legislators of antiquity were the supporters and patrons of idolatry. Without alluding to all their erroneous opinions on this subject, there was one which, more than any other, seemed to make idolatry a duty, and furnished the most plausible arguments in its favor-namely, that the soul of the world (anima mundi) is God; that the mind which governs the world passeth through every part of it, as the soul doth in us: or, as the poet has expressed it, "All are but parts of one stupendous whole, That changed through all, and yet in all the same, These lines, while they may be understood as merely expressing the doctrine of the omnipresence of God, and in that view must be considered as peculiarly beautiful and sublime, do also give a lively representation of the grossly erroneous doctrine of the Stoics and other heathen philosophers; for some of these, after proving the existence and providence of the gods from the beauty and order of the works that are made, gravely maintained that the world is an animal, reasonable, wise, and happy, and therefore is God. On this principle, whatever parts of the universe they chose to deify, were parts of God, and therefore entitled to religious worship. They themselves, also, and their fellow-men, were parts of the divinity, a notion which tended to produce that pride and self-sufficiency for which the Stoics were so distinguished. Need we wonder that an apostle should caution the disciples of Christianity to beware lest any man should spoil them through philosophy and vain deceit ? [Dewar, vol. ii. p. 170.] 502. Such effects have been produced by a departure from this fundamental law of the Creator, as correspond to the religious system adopted. Man generally copies the actions of those whom he conceives to be placed in a superior station. When, therefore, the gods were introduced to his view, as swollen with pride, mad with rage, fired with revenge, inflamed with lust, engaged in battles and contests, delighting in scenes of blood and rapine, in hatred, and mutual contentions, and in all kinds of riot and debauchery, it was natural to suppose that such passions and crimes would be imitated by their blinded votaries. Accordingly, we find that such vices universally prevailed, even among the politest nations of antiquity, and some of their sacred rites solemnized in honor of their gods were so bestial and shocking, as to excite K 218 EFFECTS OF ATHEISM AND POLYTHEISM. horror in every mind possessed of the least sense of decency and virtue. Dreadful tortures were inflicted on their bodies, to appease their offended deities; human victims, in vast numbers, were sacrificed. On the altars of the city of Mexico twenty thousand human beings are said to have been sacrificed every year in the most horrid manner; and fifty thousand in the various parts of the empire. In Hindostan, even in our own day, several thousands of women have been annually burned on the funeral piles of their deceased husbands, as victims to the religion they profess; beside multitudes of other human victims, who have been crushed to death under the wheels of that infernal engine which supports the idol Juggernaut. 503. The violation, by Polytheism, of the first precept of the moral law, is the greatest crime, next to Atheism, of which a rational creature can be guilty. It is a comprehensive summary of wickedness. As to Atheism, its horrid effects, even when restrained by remaining impressions of Theism upon the mind, were developed during the French Revolution at the close of the last century. 504. Were either Atheism or Polytheism to become universal in the world, there is no crime, no species of cruelty, which would not ere long be perpetrated without a blush in the open face of day. 505. From the foregoing facts and statements, we may learn our obligation to the goodness of God for enacting laws to counteract the influence of pagan theology. (3.) Polytheism, or Idolatry, in Christian Lands. 506. "The precept does not seem to be directed primarily and immediately against that idolatry which consists in the use of fabricated images, although this is virtually forbidden, but against the putting anything else in the place of the one living and true God. "This may be done mentally, as well as manually. There may be idolatry without idols; and the scope of this prohibition seems to be mainly to forbid the making of any other objects, whether persons or things, real or imaginary, the objects of that supreme regard, reverence, esteem, affection, and obedience which we owe to God alone. 66 Consequently, the proud man, who idolizes himself; IDOLATRY IN CHRISTIAN LANDS. 219 the ambitious man, who pays homage to popular applause; the covetous man, who deifies wealth; the sensualist, who lives to gratify his low appetites; the doting lover, husband, father, mother, who suffer their hearts to be supremely absorbed in the love of the creature, all come under the charge of transgressing the first commandment." [Bush on Exodus.] 507. St. Paul instructs us that the root and essence of Idolatry, is the worshiping and serving God's creatures more than God himself. Whoever then loves and serves any one of God's creatures, more than he loves and serves God; whoever makes any one of God's creatures more an object of his thoughts, and allows it to fill a greater space in his mind than God fills,—that man is guilty of idolatry in the spiritual and Christian sense of that word. And by the word creatures, is here meant not living creatures merely, but creatures of every kind; everything which God has made for us, or enabled us to make for ourselves; all the sweet and relishing things we can enjoy in this world; pleasures, honors, riches, comforts of every kind. Therefore if any man is foolish and wicked enough to give up his heart to any one of these creatures, and by means of it suffers himself to be drawn away from serving God, he is an idolator in the sight of heaven. 508. St. Paul, in his epistle to the Colossians, expressly tells us that covetousness, or, as the word may perhaps be more closely rendered, insatiableness and greediness, is idolatry; and again, in the epistle to the Ephesians, he tells us that the covetous man, that is, the insatiable and greedy man, is an idolator. It matters little what the man is greedy of,—whether he is greedy of money, or of business, or of land, or of meat and drink, or is greedy of praise and honor, and distinction: if a man is greedy of any earthly thing, and does not know when he has had enough, and is ever longing and craving after it, and wishing to add more to more, the sentence is express against that man: St. Paul has declared him to be an idolator. To set up any worldly thing as the end and object of our chief longings, is to throw away on what is bounded and perishable, the worship due to what is infinite and eternal. 509. Three prominent idols have been introduced from |