VIII THE EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 311 



Farrar, in Kitto's " Cyclopaedia of Biblical 



Literature," which is so much to the purpose 



of my argument, that I venture to quote it 

 in full: 



The main and certain results of this review are that the 

 teraphim were rude human images ; that the use of them was 

 an antique Aramaic custom ; that there is reason to suppose 

 them to have been images of deceased ancestors ; that they 

 were consulted oracularly ; that they were not confined to 

 Jews ; that their use continued down to the latest period of 

 Jewish history ; and lastly, that although the enlightened 

 prophets and strictest later kings regarded them as idolatrous, 

 the priests were much less averse to such images, and their cult 

 was not considered in any way repugnant to the pious worship 

 of Elohim, nay, even to the worship of him "under the awful 

 title of Jehovah. " In fact, they involved a monotheistic idolatry 

 very different indeed from polytheism; and the tolerance of them 

 by priests, as com [tared with the denunciation of them by the 

 prophets, offers a close analogy to the views of the Roman 

 Catholics respecting pictures and images as compared with the 

 views of Protestants. It was against this use of idolatrous 

 symbols and emblems in a monotheistic worship that the second 

 commandment was directed, whereas the first is aimed against 

 the graver sin of direct polytheism. But the whole history of 

 Israel shows how utterly and how early the law must have 

 fallen into desuetude. The worship of the golden calf and of 

 the calves at Dan and Bethel, against which, so far as 

 we know, neither Elijah nor Elisha said a single word ; the 

 tolerance of high places, teraphim and betylia ; the offering of 

 incense for centuries to the brazen serpent destroyed by 

 Hezekiah ; the occasional glimpses of the most startling 

 irregularities sanctioned apparently even in the temple worship 

 itself, prove most decisively that a pure monotheism and an 

 independence of symbols was the result of a slow and painful 

 course of God's disciplinal dealings among the noblest thinkers 

 of a single nation, and not, as is so constantly and erroneously 



