16 
ISRAEL. 
incontestably superior in substantial power to all that the senses can display, must tend to 
shake their supremacy. Experience, proves this; and perhaps no man has ever fixed his 
mind upon the idea of a Supreme Being, without feeling himself for the time less shackled 
by his corporeal nature. The impression is more effectual still, when we regard the 
Almighty in his relation to human existence, as our Father, our Redeemer, and our God. 
But the habit created by the simplest conception of infinite power, vigilance, and 
government always present, yet always invisible, and thus asserting a resistless predomi¬ 
nance of the unseen over the seen, must, like all other habits, have a tendency to spread 
over the whole mind. 
On this principle we can account for the extraordinary magnificence of the 
Jewish temple. Heathenism was profuse in its decoration of the altar. The Jewish 
religion was utterly abhorrent of its rites, and yet in that pomp of public worship 
where heathenism laid its chief snares for the popular mind, Judaism altogether 
eclipsed its most prodigal splendours. All that the arts and opulence of the earth 
could contribute, architectural grandeur, the jewels and embroidery of the East, thousands 
of minstrels, tens of thousands of attendants, glittering vestures, the most stately and 
solemn ritual of the earth, illustrated the temple on Mount Sion. In both instances 
alike, the purpose was to exalt the object of the worship; but in Judah the worship 
was of the Invisible. An image on the altar, even the most sublime that ever 
entered into the mind of man, would have degraded the spirituality of the worship, 
have overthrown the true virtue of the magnificence, and have so far tended to 
restore the dominion of the senses. 
W e can comprehend the astonishment of a heathen conqueror, a Pompey or a Titus, 
when, after hastening through marble courts, and passing through veil within veil of 
gold and purple, to gaze on the overwhelming lustre of the idol worthy of such a shrine, 
he found nothing but the loneliness of the sanctuary; yet a loneliness more majestic, than 
if it had displayed a colossus of solid diamond. 
But other and not less direct charges lie against idolatry. It gives an untrue 
representation; a picture or a statue cannot express the existence of Deity. It gives 
a humiliating one—matter for spirit, lifelessness for essential activity, the stock and 
the stone for poAver; feeble, earthly locality for that Infinite Presence, Avhich “ the heaven 
and the heaven of heavens cannot contain.” 
The practical evil is darker still. It is the course of human nature to substitute the 
seen for the unseen; the image quickly supersedes the God; yet the most prostrate 
worshipper must feel that the statue is but the work of men’s hands : if such be the deity, 
what must be the religion ? Heathenism made gods as rapidly as it made statues. Men 
soon deified their passions, their follies, and even their vices; thus religion, instead of being 
the check, became the spur to crime. The evil naturally spread: number produced 
rivalry, popularity Avas courted by arts which beguiled, exhibitions which beAvildered, and 
abominations which corrupted the people, until Satan Avas Lord of earth, and the heathen 
altar his throne . 1 
1 “New Interpretation of the Apocalypse.” 
