heaven and heaven of heavens cannot contain thee; how much less this house that I have builded?" Hence the Apostle declares: "God that made the worlds, and all things therein, seeing he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing."

3

The molten calf, which the Israelites set up while Moses was on Mount Sinai, was to represent the true God. It was not an image of any strange deity. It was described; "These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt :" the very title God gave himself: "I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt, and out of the house of bondage." Aaron, who had made it, built an altar before it, and proclaimed: "To-morrow is a feast to the Lord: and they arose up early, and offered burnt-offerings." The name of the true God is used in the ori

1 1 Kings, viii. 27. 2 Acts, xvii. 28. 3 Exod. xxxii. 4.

ginal and the plural number is not unusual to denote him; for "the Lord thy Gods," occurs a hundred times in the law. And so the Psalmist exclaims of them: "They made a calf in Horeb, and worshipped the molten image: thus they changed their glory into the similitude of an ox that eateth grass." And the Lord said unto Moses, "Thy people have corrupted themselves: they have made a molten calf, and worshipped it now therefore let me alone that I may consume them."

It was to represent the true God, that the mother of Micah made a graven image, and a molten image, with an ephod, and teraphim, and a Levite to be the priest. And the image was set up by the children of Dan all the time that the house of God was in Shiloh. And "in

2

those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes."

Again, it was to represent the true God,

1 Psalm cvi. 19. 2 Judges, xvii. 3; xviii. 3.

that Jeroboam made two calves of gold.1 He also proclaimed them under the title, which the Lord had himself adopted: "Behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt." Thus he too ranked himself among those, whom the Apostle describes, as "changing the glory of the uncorruptible God, into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things." "And this thing became a sin for the people went to worship before the calf, even unto Dan :" and from worshipping an image of the true God, they soon proceeded to worship false gods: and so fell into grosser superstitions and idolatries, until the avenging arm of Heaven cut them off as a nation from the face of the earth.

1 The idolatry of Jeroboam is distinguished from that of worshipping false gods in 1 Kings, xvi. 31, where it is said of Ahab, that, as if it had been a light thing for him to walk in the sins of Jeroboam, he went and served Baal, and worshipped him.

1 Kings, xii. 28.

3 Rom. i. 2, 3.

So that the second commandment does not stand alone in forbidding the worship of images, and the use of them to represent God. Yet, as a distinct command, it is a prohibition so precise and express, that, to diminish its force, and attach its purport, if possible, to another object, the Church of Rome makes it a part of the first commandment, and understands both almost in the same sense. They have admitted pictures of the Holy Trinity, and images, before which they bend the knee and they attribute to that which we call the second commandment, the force only of a particular specification of one species of that sin, which is generally forbidden in what we call the first. The tenth commandment, which refers to the sin of coveting alone, they divide into two their first table contains but three, and their second seven commandments: and so that relative to graven images is often omitted altogether in their books of devotion.

It is a Roman Catholic maxim, that

the pastors of the true Church of Christ. may be distinguished by the moral influence which their teaching and institutions are calculated to exercise, and by the spirit which animates their whole body. Thus they interpret our Saviour's precept, "Ye shall know them by their fruits;"1 justly forbidding to pass hasty and unauthorised sentence upon individual ministers of religion, and yet more justly prohibiting, that we should conceive doctrines to be true, because he who professes them appears honest, holy, pious, amiable, or benevolent. But to adopt their correct interpretation of our Saviour's words, consider what has been the influence of image-worship, and the invocation of saints, with which they serve and adore the incomprehensible deity. There is hardly a country where these forms of devotion have held a full ascendancy, in which the masses of the people are not

1 Matt. vii. 16.