October 23

of heavenly things.

I S not all worship whatsoever a worship of Symbols, by eidola, or things seen? Whether seen, rendered visible as an image or picture to the bodily eye; or visible only to the inward eye, to the imagination, to the intellect; this makes a superficial, but no substantial difference. It is still a Thing Seen, significant of Godhead; an Idol. The most rigorous Puritan has his Confession of Faith, and intellectual Representation of Divine things, and worships thereby; thereby is worship first made possible for him. All creeds, liturgies, religious forms, conceptions that fitly invest religious feelings, are in this sense eidola, things seen. All worship whatsoever must proceed by Symbols, and the worst Idolatry is only more idolatrous. . . . But here enters the fatal circumstance of Idolatry, that, in the era of the Prophets, no man's mind is any longer honestly filled with his Idol or Symbol. Before the Prophet can arise who, seeing through it, knows it to be mere wood, many men have begun dimly to doubt that it was little more. Condemnable Idolatry is insincere Idolatry. . . . It is the property of every Hero, in every time, that he come back to reality; that he stand upon things, and not the shows of things. According as he loves, and venerates, articulately or with deep speechless thought, the awful realities of things, so will the hollow shows of things, however regular, decorous, accredited by . . . conclaves, be intolerable and detestable to him. Protestantism too is the work of a Prophet: the prophetwork of that sixteenth century. The first stroke of honest demolition to an ancient thing grown false and idolatrous; preparatory afar off to a new thing, which shall be true, and authentically divine!

THOMAS CARLYLE

IDOLS