Part 12 (1/2)
Let the reader suppose himself to have been present as a disinterested spectator of the condition of the Hebrew Church in Egypt prior to the legation of Moses; to have witnessed their practice of the rites and forms of the patriarchal wors.h.i.+p, in contrast with the idol wors.h.i.+p of the Egyptians; to have witnessed instances, like that of Moses, of individuals ”choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of G.o.d than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of CHRIST greater riches than the treasures of Egypt;” to have heard their sighs and cries to G.o.d by reason of their bondage, and known that ”G.o.d heard their groaning, and remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob, and looked upon the children of Israel, and had respect unto them;”
and that the Messenger Jehovah said, ”I have surely seen the affliction of my people, and have heard their cry by reason of their task-masters; for I know their sorrows, and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians;” and further, to have known that they were familiar with the historical facts of the patriarchal history, and of the appearances of Jehovah in the form and under the designation of man to Abraham and to Jacob, and often visibly as the Messenger Jehovah; and that altars were erected, and sacrifices and prayers were offered to him in that form; and that he was customarily recognized and wors.h.i.+pped in that form, at places specially appropriated by him for that purpose, where he was to be invoked and acknowledged as Jehovah the Elohe of Abraham; and he will the more easily conceive, in some degree, of the enormity of the insult and provocation offered by the partisans of the rival counterfeit system, in erecting altars, offering sacrifices, and bowing themselves down before molten images as representatives of the great antagonist intelligence; or, as in the case of Aaron, Micah, Jeroboam and others, as representatives of Jehovah. If the reader suppose himself to have witnessed the appalling demonstrations against the false system, in the plagues of Egypt, at the Red Sea, at Mount Sinai, and in the wilderness, in connection with the visible presence, agency, and glory of the Messiah; or under a vivid impression of the reality and import of these scenes and wonders; to have been present at those periods and on those occasions when the defection of the Israelites to image and Baal wors.h.i.+p was specially marked and signally punished, his impression of the nature of the antagonism, and the enormity of the provocation and insult, cannot fail to be heightened.
The apostle Paul, treating (Rom. i.) of the defection of men to idolatry, says, ”they changed the glory of the incorruptible G.o.d into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things:” meaning, it is presumed, that they ascribed to the images of those creatures--which they made and served as representatives of the created intelligence whom they wors.h.i.+pped--the attributes, perfections, and prerogatives which he had conspicuously and gloriously manifested in his works of creation and providence. Whether the formation of such images was coeval with the earliest practice of idolatrous rites or not, may be a question. But in the selection of men, birds, and four-footed beasts as models of the forms of the images earliest employed in their idolatry, there is ground to presume that they copied or simulated the cherubic figures so familiar to the Israelites under the Levitical economy, and probably to the Church at all previous times, as a const.i.tuent of the inst.i.tuted system of manifestation and instruction, from the appearance of the cherubim at the gate of Eden. That primeval appearance demonstrates that they were not borrowed from any inst.i.tution or example of the idolaters; and in so capital a point as that of inst.i.tuting representative images in their antagonist system, they would be sure to counterfeit, and to pervert from its office and meaning in the true system, whatever would serve the purpose of craft and deception. In respect to ”creeping things,” they had in the serpent a prototype altogether their own, which, when the images previously mentioned had been adopted, and impiously consecrated to idolatry, might easily be brought into use.
Pankhurst, under the word Cherubim, in his Hebrew Lexicon, describes no less than sixty examples in which heads or other parts resembling the cherubic figures are incorporated in the objects of idolatrous homage of different heathen nations.
Maimonides, as quoted by Parkhurst, says that the first idolaters regarded the heavenly bodies as messengers or mediators of a supreme, infinite, invisible Being. In the wors.h.i.+p of those bodies, or rather of the mediating intelligence supposed to reside in them, either because they were often out of sight, or for other reasons, they selected representative creatures, chiefly of the species comprised in the four-faced cherubim, but sometimes of other species, and among them of the serpent, and at length of mineral and metallic images of such creatures.
In a number of the examples cited by Parkhurst, the serpent, or the serpent's head, appears conspicuous; and particularly in idol forms representative of the sun or Baal. In most of the images, the human form predominates; around which the serpent often appears entwined. The cherubic wings are indifferently attached to the human and the leading animal forms, and to the serpent. The combinations, especially of heads, in these representative images, strikingly suggest that the example of the cherubic faces was perverted to be the basis of the system, and that the serpent, when not exhibited as a distinct and sole object of homage, was foisted in and superadded to the figures which were familiar in the original system of revealed religion. In most of the complex forms in which different animals are combined, reference appears to have been had to the sun or Baal, _i. e._ to Satan, the supposed mediating intelligence resident in the sun.
In a published account of two ”sculptured images” disinterred by Mr.
Layard from the ruins of ancient Nineveh, and forwarded by him to Williams College, Ma.s.s., being supposed to have ”been buried in the ruins of that city not less than twenty-five hundred years,” and to be samples of the earliest ”idols” inst.i.tuted in that capital, the date of which is supposed to be about one hundred and thirty years after the deluge, the figure of one is described as ”that of _a man with wings and an eagle's head and beak_, well proportioned. The two wings, springing from the back of the shoulders, are gracefully spread.” The other is a figure simply of a man, seven and a half feet in height. They are p.r.o.nounced ”perfect of their kind. The slabs on which they are sculptured are dark gypsum, such as are described as lining the walls of the rooms and pa.s.sages of the ruin, which Layard regards as having const.i.tuted at once the temple and palace of the king. One of the slabs is seven feet, and the other seven and a half feet high, and they are each three feet and two inches wide. The figures are the whole length of the slabs.”
Here is a manifest, and in all likelihood a surrept.i.tious combination of two of the figures in the cherubic emblem, which, without some prototype, and a prototype already a.s.sociated with the religion which was to be renounced, perverted, and counterfeited, would not be likely to occur, or to be easily brought into use and favor. An existing and familiar prototype might be copied exactly--as altars, sacrifices, incense, and various rites appear to have been--or with some modifications, and yet be readily adopted. In this view it would be obvious to argue, that as Jehovah often appeared on earth in the similitude of man, and thereby taught and virtually antic.i.p.ated his future predicted incarnation; and as that form was a.s.sociated with others in the cherubic emblem, therefore that emblem might be taken as representative of the Intelligence to be wors.h.i.+pped, and as teaching the doctrine of his incarnation not merely in the form and nature of man, but also in birds, four-footed beasts, and all other creatures brought into existence by him. Such pantheism undoubtedly resulted. But had the first forms of images been wholly an original device of the idolaters, they would naturally have selected not complex, but simple ones. They would have copied nature. They would in all probability have selected first the human form; but they would have taken that as it visibly appears, without a mysterious and inexplicable combination of inferior natures with it.
Next, they would very likely select the bird--the eagle--whose flight transcends the clouds, and whose eye endures the blaze of solar light; and next, the most docile and most useful, and then the most powerful and sagacious quadrupeds; in all instances, as is held by Warburton and others, and is highly probable in itself employing images and pictures long before they idolized the animals themselves.
A progress and an a.n.a.logy of this kind--notwithstanding that the whole subject of idolatry, its origin, its nature, its rationale, its import as an antagonism to the revealed religion, and as involving the reason and an intelligible and ample justification of the jealousy, wrath, indignation, judgments, retributions, and finally of exterminating vengeance against it, has been mystified and misrepresented, under the rabbinical and figurative systems formerly adverted to--might be traced, and indefinitely ill.u.s.trated, by reference to the Sphinxes, Centaurs, Pans, &c., of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans; the Brahmas, the Vishnus, the Sivas, and the incarnations and transmigrations of India, and the Boodism and Lamaism of the whole Eastern world.
The notion of local deities, national G.o.ds, &c., implied the doctrine of incarnation, and was no doubt suggested by the Theophanies of the patriarchal history and the Theocracy of the Mosaic, administered by the Messenger Jehovah, locally present in the tabernacle in a cloud-like form, where he was inquired of in respect to things future, and held converse with Moses, Joshua, and their successors. In imitation, the devotees of Baal conceived of him as present in their temples, inhabiting the forms of their idols, and hearing their statements and requests.
Thus Moses returned to Jehovah as present in the burning bush, and said, ”O Adonai! wherefore,” &c. Exod. v. 22. ”And David the king came and sat before Jehovah, [_i. e._, in the tabernacle,] and said,” &c. 1 Chron.
xvii. 16.
So, on the other hand, ”The Philistines took Saul's head and his armor, and sent into the land of the Philistines round about, to carry tidings unto their idols and to the people. And they put his armor in the house of their G.o.ds, and fastened his head in the temple of Dagon.” 1 Chron.
x. 9, 10.
Mr. Layard, in his recent account of ”Nineveh and its Remains,”
observes, that the sculptured walls which he explored continually exhibited forms corresponding to the description of the living creatures seen in vision by Ezekiel, (chap. i.;) and also what he supposes may have represented the wheel spoken of in that description--the former showing the face of a man, a lion, an ox, and an eagle; and the latter, a winged circle or globe, hovering above the head of the king, as an emblem of the supreme deity of the a.s.syrian nation; with a winged figure in the middle, representing the sun. The king, he adds, may, as in Egypt, have been regarded as the representative on earth of the deity, of whom the emblem is exhibited as above his head in battle, during his triumphs, and when he celebrates the sacred ceremonies. The author, who supposes the station of Ezekiel by the river of Chebar to have been in the immediate vicinity of Nineveh, absurdly indicates that, ”As the prophet had beheld the a.s.syrian palaces, with their mysterious images and gorgeous decorations, it is highly probable that, when seeking to typify certain Divine attributes and to describe the Divine glory, he chose forms that were not only familiar to him, but to the people whom he addressed, captives like himself in the land of a.s.syria.
He chose the four living creatures, with four faces, four wings,” &c.
The forms which the prophet _saw_ in vision a.s.suredly did not depend upon his choice; and if they had, he would not have represented the true G.o.d by forms borrowed from idolatry. Nor is it likely that the captives were admitted to the palaces of their a.s.syrian conquerors. These forms, on the contrary, having been familiar in the patriarchal system of revealed religion, had been simulated by the earliest idolaters.
But the most comprehensive and striking ill.u.s.trations of idolatry, as a studied, rival, antagonistic counterfeit of the revealed system and true wors.h.i.+p, are to be derived from those symbols of the Apocalypse which relate to Antichrist; to the two-horned wild beast and the image--the great Antagonist, and his Papal agents under that character; to his arrogation of the attributes, prerogatives, rights, throne, dominion and homage of G.o.d the Mediator, a.s.sumption of his t.i.tles and office, and exercise of authority as lawgiver over his people; and from those symbols which relate to the fall and destruction of Great Babylon, and the imprisonment of ”the ancient Serpent, who is the Devil and Satan;”
as those symbols are explained and rendered intelligible in ”An Exposition of the Apocalypse, by David N. Lord;” a work distinguished by its discovery of and adherence to scriptural interpretations of symbols, and by its originality in every respect. (See note A at the end.)
The great fabric of pagan idolatry, as a rival system to the true religion, and a counterfeit Theocracy, combining the civil with the religious administration, was the organism through which the Arch-usurper carried on his rivals.h.i.+p in all the heathen nations down to the age of Constantine. Then, to meet the exigences of his case, in opposition to Christianity in the Roman Empire, he made the ecclesiastical hierarchies in union with the civil government the medium of his rule. When the empire was divided, the eastern from the western portion, leaving the eastern under the dragon sway of preceding ages, he a.s.sumed for the western that of the wild beast and false prophet--the civil rulers of the ten kingdoms and the Papal hierarchy. Under these organizations he has, in both divisions of that empire, continued to exhibit more boldly and arrogantly even than in the regions of ancient paganism, his usurpations of the Divine prerogatives; warring against the Lamb, corrupting and opposing the propagation of the gospel, persecuting and slaughtering the saints; and will continue that career till finally vanquished and imprisoned. The issue at the advent of the incarnate Word with the armies of heaven, the incarceration of the great Usurper, and the dejection of his followers into the lake of fire, strikingly indicate the nature and purpose of his previous antagonism and rivals.h.i.+p. Prolonged and desperate as his rebellion and usurpation had been, extended and arrogant as were his pretensions and sway as G.o.d of this world, the mystery of his iniquity is at length terminated by the exercise, through visible agencies, of Divine power over his person. (See note B.)
CHAPTER XXII.
On the question, How it has happened, since the origin of the Nicene Creed, that the Old Testament has been understood to ascribe the Creation, not to the Christ, but to the Father.
Since the New Testament distinctly ascribes the work of creation to the official Person called the Logos and the Christ, and, in harmony with the Old, demonstrates his ident.i.ty with Jehovah, Elohim, and the Messenger Jehovah, it may justly occasion surprise and deserve inquiry, how it has happened that the Old Testament has, both by Jews and Christians, so long and so generally been construed, as in our own and other modern translations, to ascribe those works, not to Him, personally or officially, but to the Father, or to the Deity irrespective of any personal distinctions or official relations.