universal joy that the supreme Divinity had found a new habitation. Cats and crocodiles occupied the places of inferior divinities, and shared the debasing homage of an ignorant people. While his heart would be filled with pity for the degradation of his species, he would feel no less regret, that the land which Joseph ruled, and which Moses owned as the place of his nativity should not have shared some rays of that religious light which she shed on the world through him. For as he journeyed up the Nile he would have encountered the noblest monument to the religious principle in man which the world any where affords. At Thebes he would have seen the most stupendous temple that the hands of man have ever raised. He would have approached, through an avenue bordered with colossal statues, of some miles in length, a temple a mile and a half in circuit, for one of whose columns our neighboring monument would have barely sufficed, still dedicated to other worship than that of the Most High.

Pursuing his way around the eastern shore of the Mediterranean, the next considerable city he would pass through would be Tyre, fallen indeed from her ancient greatness, but still opulent and beautiful. There he would have found the reigning deity to be Moloch, a disgusting idol, whose image is still seen on some ancient coins, a human body surmounted by a calf's head. It was at the feet of this statue that

Alexander when he captured the city found a beautiful Grecian Apollo in chains, the spoils of a military expedition into Sicily. In after times the memory of this idol was especially odious, as he was thought above all others to delight in human sacrifices. In the reign of Manasseh the worship of this idol was introduced into Jerusalem, and an altar erected to him in the valley at the south of the city, where it is said that children were sacrificed to him, which was called "passing through the fire to Moloch."

The next country he would traverse would be Syria, from time immemorial devoted to the worship of Baal, or the sun. He was worshipped with a magnificence second only to the temples of Egypt. Besides his temple in Babylon, where in the course of ages a vast treasure was accumulated, a temple was built to him on the very confines of the Holy Land, the ruins of which are still the astonishment and admiration of the traveller. The stones which composed its walls are so huge that it seems impossible to modern engineers that they should ever have been brought from the quarry and elevated so high; and an army is said to have encamped upon its roof. This idolatry often overspread the Holy Land, and in the days of Elijah the prophets of Baal were four hundred and fifty.

The next country we come to is Asia Minor, and the idolatry of this country we learn incidentally from

the Acts of the Apostles. In the fourteenth chapter we read, that when Paul and Barnabas were at Lystra, they healed a man who was lame in his feet. "And when the people saw what was done, they lifted up their voices, saying; The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men-and they called Barnabas, Jupiter, and Paul, Mercurius, because he was the chief speaker. Then the priest of Jupiter, which was before their city, brought oxen and garlands unto the gates, and would have done sacrifice with the people. Which, when the apostles heard, they rent their clothes, and ran in among the people, crying out; Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men, of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, who made heaven and earth, and sea, and all things that are therein. Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, filling our hearts with food and gladness. And with these words scarce restrained they the people that they had not done sacrifice unto them."

In some places pride and interest, as well as superstition, kept the people bound to their idol deities. This was plainly the case at Ephesus, as we read further on in the Acts. The temple of Diana at that place was accounted one of the wonders of the world.

It was an object not only of veneration but curiosity. It had grown up into a trade to make silver models of it as an article of merchandise, to be sold in different parts of the earth. The silversmiths as well as the priests took alarm at the spread of the Gospel, as the almost comic account of the town meeting called by Demetrius and his fellow craftsmen evidently shows, and that most cogent argument addressed to the cupidity of his hearers. "Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our wealth. Moreover, ye see and hear that not alone at Ephesus, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people, saying, that they be no gods, which are made with hands. So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at nought, but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth. And when they heard these things they were filled with wrath, and cried out, saying, Great is Diana of the Ephesians." The religion of Greece was at all times most grossly idolatrous. Athens was full of statues, erected to imaginary deities, and deified men. Her superstition was not only bigoted but bloody. It was there that Socrates had suffered death, merely on suspicion * of maintaining opinions subversive of the popular faith. Paul, to escape the same fate, was obliged to introduce the true God under the name of an unknown deity, to

which they had some where erected an altar. While they rejected all foreign religions and raised a most beautiful temple and statue to their patron goddess, Minerva, their religious faith did not take sufficient hold of their minds to have the slightest influence upon their moral conduct, and while they had the reputation of knowing best of all men what was right, they fell under the reproach of practising it the least.

The Corinthians were always a dissipated people. Their vast commerce gave them boundless wealth, and they imported the luxuries and the vices as well as the merchandise of all nations and all climes. Their sacred rites, so far from sanctifying their manners, only ministered occasions for intemperance and excess. And so gross were their conceptions, that the Eucharist itself had not been established long among the converts to Christianity, before it was perverted to a like occasion of riot and sensuality. Near to Corinth was the temple of Delphi, consecrated to Apollo, which for nearly a thousand years had cheated the world with its pretended oracles of futurity. It is hardly necessary to say that it was all one stupendous deception, contrived with consummate art to make gain of the superstition of mankind; in fact no more respectable, except in its gold and its treasures, than the hovel of any witch or fortune teller of modern times.

And what shall we say of imperial Rome herself?