If there were any doubt that this is the true history of image-worship, it would be removed by the fact that the sin has appeared under the same form, under all circumstances, and in all ages. Aaron made the calf as a representation of God, and said, “These be thy Gods, O Israel, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt;” and the Hindoo of the present day regards his idol as a representative of his deity. A Jesuit priest was in conversation the other day with a learned Hindoo in the neighbourhood of Madras, and urged him to embrace what he termed the Catholic faith. “What is the good,” said the heathen, “of my exchanging one system of idolatry for another?” “Idolatry!” said the priest, “you do not mean to say that ours is idolatry. We do not worship our images; we merely set them before us, and adore our Saviour and the saints in them.” “And do you suppose,” replied the heathen, “that we actually worship the images? No; we merely set them before us as a representation of our gods. No, Sir; a Christian I may become, but I shall never be a Roman Catholic.” There was not a shade of difference between the two systems, both having sprung from the natural tendencies of the human heart.
This identity was on one occasion curiously illustrated by the Church of Rome itself, for when they obtained possession of a magnificent statue of Jupiter Tonans, they removed the thunderbolt out of his hand, and gave him two large keys in its place. By this slight alteration, they changed Jupiter into Peter, and transferred him from a Pagan temple to a Christian Church. Could anything shew more clearly that Paganism and Romanism were nothing more than different accommodations to the idolatrous tendencies of the human heart? There was no opposition in principle, and the only difference was between the thunderbolt and the keys.
What a refreshing contrast do we find in the records of the Tinnevelly Mission, where the heathen idols have been used for pavement at the Church doors, so that none can enter God’s house for worship without first trampling the former idol under foot!
From the same nature has sprung the system of saint worship. There is always a tendency to deify the great, and just in proportion as time advances does this tendency increase. The man’s human frailty is daily witnessed by his own contemporaries, and the humanity of his nature kept in view by visible facts; but when the corrective evidence of real life loses its power through the lapse of time, the human failures are forgotten, while the great acts are exaggerated, till something supernatural is attached to the memory, and the earthly benefactor is adored as a god. This is the history of all the tutelary deities of Pagan lands. Romulus, _e.g._, was no sooner dead than deified; the most popular deity of China, Laoutze, was one of the early emperors, and there is scarcely a nation in the world that has not elevated its benefactors into gods.