temples were frequented, altars crowned, and prayers offered to the gods, in order that they might render nights of unnatural lust agreeable; that they might favour acts of poisoning; that they might cause robberies and other crimes to prosper.’ In view of the abominations prevailing at this period, the moral Seneca exclaimed—‘How great now is the madness of men! they lisp the most abominable prayers; and if a man is found listening they are silent. What a man ought not to hear, they do not blush to relate to the gods.’ Again, says he, ‘If any one considers what things they do, and to what things they subject themselves, instead of decency he will find indecency; instead of the honourable, the unworthy; instead of the rational, the insane.’ Such was heathenism and its influence in the most enlightened ages, according to the testimony of the best men of those times.

In relation to modern idolatry, the world is full of living witnesses of its corrupting tendency. We will cite, in illustration, a single case or two. The following is extracted from a public document, laid before Parliament by H. Oakley, Esq., a magistrate in Lower Bengal. Speaking of the influence of idolatry in India, he says of the worship of Kalé, one of the most popular idols, ‘The murderer, the robber, and the prostitute, all aim to propitiate a being whose worship is obscenity, and who delights in the blood of man and beast; and without imploring whose aid no act of wickedness is committed. The worship of Kalé must harden the hearts of her followers; and to them scenes of blood and crime must become familiar.’

In China, according to Medhurst, the priests of Buddha understand and teach the doctrine of the assimilation of the worshipper to the object worshipped. They say—‘Think of Buddha and you will be transformed into Buddha. If men pray to Buddha and do not become Buddha, it is because the mouth prays, and not the mind.’[3]

Two facts, then, are philosophically and historically true: First—Man is a religious animal, and will worship something as a superior being. Second—By worshipping he becomes assimilated to the moral character of the object which he worships. And (the God of the Bible out of view for the present) those objects have always had a defective and unholy character.

Here, then, is one great source which has developed the corruption of the family of man. We inquire not in this place concerning the origin of idolatry; whatever or wherever was its origin, its influence has been uniformly the same. As no object of idolatrous worship was ever conceived to be perfectly just and benevolent, but most of them no better than the apotheosis of heroes, or the deification of the imperfect faculties and impure passions of human or brute nature, the result followed, with a certainty as unerring as cause and effect, that man, by following his instinct to worship, would becloud his intellect and corrupt his heart. Notice how inevitable, from the circumstances of the case, was the corruption of man’s powers:—He was led to worship by an instinct over which he had no control:—The objects of his worship were, whether he originated them or not, all of them of a character that corrupted his heart; thus the gratification of his instinctive propensities inevitably strengthened the corruption of his nature.

Now it is not our design to inquire whether, or how far, man was guilty in producing this evil condition of things. In considering the facts in the case, the inquiry which forces itself upon the mind is—Were there any resources in human nature, or any means of any kind, of which man could avail himself, by which he might save himself from the debasing influence of idolatrous worship? In reply,

THE THIRD FACT IS STATED.

There were no means within the reach of human power or wisdom, by which man could extricate himself from the evil of idolatry, either by an immediate or by a progressive series of efforts.

This fact is maintained from the history of idolatry, the testimony of the heathen philosophers, and the nature of man.

1. Instead of man acquiring the power or the disposition, as the race became older, to destroy idolatry—idolatry, from its first entrance into the world, gained power to destroy him. Amid all the mutations of society, from barbarous to civilised, and amid all the conflicts of nations, and the changes of dynasties and forms of government, from the first historic notices which we have of the human family down to the era of Christ, idolatry constantly became more evil in its character and more extended in its influence. It is well ascertained that the first objects of idolatrous homage were few and simple, and the worship of the earliest ages comparatively pure. Man fell into this moral debasement but one step at a time. The sun, moon, stars, and other conspicuous objects of creative power and wisdom received the first idolatrous homage. Afterwards a divinity was supposed to reside in other objects, especially in those men, and beasts, and things which were instrumental in conferring particular benefits on tribes or nations of men. And finally, images of those objects were formed and worshipped. Images, which subsequently became innumerable, were not so in the earliest historic ages. In some nations, they were not allowed until after the era of the foundation of Rome.[4] As the nations grew older, images, which were at the first but few and clothed with drapery, became more numerous, and were presented before the worshippers in a state of nudity, and in most obscene attitudes. And, as has been before stated, their character, from being comparatively innoxious, became, without exception, demoralising in the extreme.

2. During the Augustan age of Rome, and the age of Pericles and Alcibiades in Greece—those periods when the mind had attained the highest elevation ever known among heathen nations—the mass of the people were more idolatrous in their habits, and consequently more corrupt in their hearts, than ever before.