If we look into the sacred scriptures, we shall find overwhelming evidence that the heathen nations of antiquity did not limit themselves to one object of religious worship; insomuch that they are most frequently designated by a reference to the plurality, and sometimes to the multitude, of their gods. In announcing to the Israelites his determination to effect their deliverance from Egyptian bondage, Jehovah declares, “Against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment." In giving them directions in respect to the course they should adopt after their arrival in Canaan, he says, "Ye shall utterly destroy all the places wherein the nations which ye shall possess served their gods, upon the high mountains and upon the hills, and under every green tree;--and ye shall hew down the graven images of their gods, and destroy the names of them out of that place." Even the Jewish nation themselves gradually fell into gross idolatry; insomuch that, during the administration of the judges, the sacred historian informs us that "they served Baalim and Ashteroth, and the gods of Syria, and the gods of Zidon, and the gods of Moab, and the gods of the children of Ammon, and the gods of the Phillistines, and forsook the Lord and served not him." I do not here inquire what were the particular properties or provinces of these gods: I only adduce these passages to prove that the scriptures recognise the heathen religion as having its foundation in polytheism.

If we turn to profane history, we shall find it rendering a most decisive testimony in perfect accordance with the scriptural statements on this subject. Every ancient nation of which it has transmitted to us any account, it represents as having its plurality of gods. The Chaldeans, the Egyptians, the Phenicians, the Carthaginians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Medes and

Persians, the Greeks and Romans, are all represented as Polytheists. In the time of Hesiod, who is supposed to have flourished about nine hundred years before Christ, Greece had her thirty thousand gods, who were considered as in a sense domesticated; and in addition to these, according to Arch-bishop Potter, there was a custom which obliged them to entertain many strange deities.

The nations of whose Polytheism history has given us a more full account than any other, are the Greeks and Romans. And while their historians have been abundantly explicit, their poets have also added a most important testimony. For though it be conceded that the productions of this latter class are, to a great extent, works of imagination, yet it must also be conceded that their machinery was constructed from the popular mythology; and who does not know that they abound with allusions to the gods; and that if the agency of Jupiter and Juno, Mars and Minerva, Æolus and Neptune, Venus and Apollo, were withdrawn from the most splendid poetical productions of Greece and Rome, they would not only at once become frigid and uninteresting, but well nigh cease to have an existence? The philosophers too, while they corroborate the historical fact that Polytheism existed, sanction its existence in their grave instructions. Socrates and Plato, Cicero and Seneca, Epictetus and Marcus Antoninus,-men whose names constitute the brightest galaxy of the heathen worldhave all, in one way or another, appeared as the advocates of Polytheism; and even Aristotle, atheistical as he was in some of his opinions, still recommended the worship of the gods, as a service due from the citizen to the magistrate.

I have spoken of the past; but if we look abroad upon the Pagan nations of the present day, we shall see nothing to vary our conclusion. Wherever man has lost sight of the true God, and has not plunged into absolute Atheism, there he has multiplied the objects of idol worship. Hindostan alone is said to contain no less than three hundred and thirty millions of gods; all in some form or other receiving the homage of immortal beings. Indeed you may go into any country you please where Paganism reigns, and you will find it thickly peopled with deities.

In opposition to all this, Christianity asserts that there is but one God; and in doing so she only echoes the testimony of uncorrupted reason. One God, such as she recognises, seems to her adequate to every purpose; while millions of gods of any other character, would be inadequate to any end for which divine agency is needed. In all the forms of existence by which she is surrounded, and to which she can gain access; in the laws which regulate the natural world, and in the laws which regulate the moral world, she perceives a perfect unity of design; and she cannot believe that this could have been the result of separate, much less of conflicting, agencies. In the belief of the divine unity she has a principle that not only approves itself to reason the moment it is proposed, but accounts for all the harmony that pervades the creation. Though she borrows this principle from natural religion, yet she holds it as the basis of all her own peculiar discoveries.

2. Paganism erects into deities objects that are senseless, imperfect, unworthy: Christianity exhibits a God of infinite perfection.

It is true indeed that Paganism recognises the existence of one Supreme Deity, who is uncreated and eter

nal. But it is also true that she attributes to him a character which renders a belief in his existence a mere unimportant speculation. She supposes him to be unchangeable and omnipotent, but without affections and without happiness. She regards him as having had no direct agency in the work of creation, and as exercising no superintendence or controul over the course of events. Mean while the creation and government of the world are attributed to inferior deities, who are chiefly the objects of religious worship, and who are supposed to reside in almost all the forms of animate and inanimate existence.

It is not easy to fasten upon any object except the true God himself, or any quality apart from his infinite perfections, on which Paganism has not, at some time or other, bestowed the honours of Divinity. The objects which she seems first to have deified were the sun, moon, and stars; owing no doubt to the extensive and propitious influence which these heavenly bodies were perceived to exert upon the world. Next in order probably were the spirits of the illustrious dead ;-men who had been regarded during their lives as public benefactors. And when the principle of Polytheism once became established, it was natural that men should select their deities according to the dictates of hope, or fear, or fancy, or any other feeling which might happen to predominate. Hence we find that divine honours were rendered to whatever was found to be of great utility; to various qualities and conditions of human beings,-such as Fidelity, Safety, Liberty, Concord, and Victory; to the bad passions and vices, on the ground that these exert a powerful influence on human conduct; and finally to the prowling beast, to the ravenous bird, to the venomous reptile, and even to the contemptible insect. Indeed it

has been conceded by an eminent writer whose object was to compliment Paganism at the expense of Revelation, that "the Gentiles not only worshipped the whole world taken together, but its parts, yea, even its particles or small parts; thinking it unbecoming that some of the most minute parts of him, whom they regarded as God, should be worshipped, and other parts neglected."

Most of their celestial deities, which were the principal objects of their worship, had once been men; and to many of them, not excepting Jupiter himself, are attributed the most degrading vices. They are represented, sometimes in the most trifling and ridiculous attitude; sometimes as yielding to excessive anger and engaged in desperate quarrels ; sometimes as corroded by envy or jealousy, and laying plans to defeat each other's purposes; and even the best of them are exhibited with failings which may well lead us to wonder, not only that they should have been worshipped as gods, but that they should have been more than tolerated as men.

Nor has Paganism improved in respect to the character of her gods, in modern times. The Indians of our own wilderness are perhaps less debased in respect to the objects of their worship than any other portion of the · Pagan world; and yet it has been asserted on good authority, that even they not only worship the great Spirit of evil, and the luminaries of heaven, but that many of them imagine the deity to have his residence in animals, and even in reptiles. But the Eastern nations exceed even the ancient Pagans in respect to the disgusting character of their idols. There is no combination of matter so loathsome, no form of vice so degrading, nothing within the range of the human imagination so monstrous, but that it is enthroned, in some form or other, as an object of homage.