67 Sermon Illustrations on Idolatry

Pygmalion was a sculptor of wonderful skill. He carved a statue in ivory, of a maiden, that seemed to be alive. He fell in love with his own beautiful creation. He clothed it in rich apparel, caressed it, decked it with jewels, and brought it such gifts as are prized by girls. He laid it upon a royal couch, and called it his wife. He went to worship at the shrine of Venus, and asked the gods to give him a wife like his ivory virgin. He returned to his house, and began to caress his ideal wife as he used to do, when, lo! he felt the ivory yield to his touch. "It was, indeed, alive. The virgin felt the kisses, and blushed, and, opening her timid eyes to the light, fixed them at the same moment upon her lover."

I once visited the Rajah of Burdwan, and found him sitting in his treasury. Fifty bags of money, containing a thousand rupees (five hundred dollars) each, were placed before him. "What," said I, "are you doing with all that money?" He replied, "It is for my god."—"How do you mean that?" I rejoined. "One part is sent to Benares, where I have two fine temples on the river side, and many priests who pray for me; another part goes to Juggernaut; and a third to Gaya." And thus one native is spending twenty-five thousand dollars annually from his income upon idle Brahmins.

— J. J. Weibrecht

Bacchus once offered Midas his choice of gifts. "He asked that whatever he might touch should be changed into gold. Bacchus consented, though sorry that he had not made a better choice. Midas went his way, rejoicing in his newly acquired power, which he hastened to put to the test. He could scarce believe his eyes, when he found a twig of an oak, which he had plucked, become gold in his hand. He took up a stone; it changed to gold. He touched a sod; it did the same. He took an apple from a tree; you would have thought he had robbed the garden of the Hesperides. His joy knew no bounds; and, when he got home, he ordered the servants to set a splendid repast on the table. Then he found, to his dismay, that, whether he touched bread, it hardened in his hand, or put a morsel to his lips, it defied his teeth. He took a glass of wine; but it flowed down his throat like melted gold." In consternation, fearing starvation, he held up his arms, shining with gold, to Bacchus, and besought him to take back his gift. Bacchus said, "Go to the River Pactolus, trace the stream to its fountain-head, there plunge your head and body in, and wash away your fault and its punishment." Hence Midas learned to hate wealth and splendor.

Gods of. It is not enough to say that the idolatry of the Old and of the New Testament was precisely like that of Hindostan. The idolatry of India is worse. The gods of Greece and Rome had at least human features; they were made from the model of men who were of mingled passions like ourselves; but among the three hundred millions of the gods of India, affecting the character of their worshippers, there is not one which represents a virtue, not one which is not a monster of iniquity. Why do the Hindons scarcely ever worship their chief god Brahma? It is because he is reckoned too bad to be worshipped; and the gods, by consent, determined that he should not. Their god Shiva has for his prevailing characteristics, revenge and malignity; the character of Krishna Is notoriously that of a licentious profligate; their god Juggernaut is represented by an old idol without legs or arms, because the legs and arms of the god were cut off by a sentence of the gods for his incurable iniquity. Now, if these are the principal deities of India, what but impurity and cruelty can be the result of a religion which has such patrons in its gods? Imagine a religion, whose priests generally should be like Pope Alexander VI.—a monster of iniquity, who outdid the emperors of Rome in cruelty and wickedness. Such are the Brahmins of India, the priests that model and form the national character. Lib. Treasury.

During their stay at Coomassie, the English witnessed dreadful scenes, which seem to sink the Ashantee character even below the ordinary level of savage life. The king had lately sacrificed on the grave of his mother three thousand victims; and at the death of the late sovereign, the sacrifice was continued weekly for three months, consisting each time of two hundred slaves. The absurd belief here entertained that the rank of the deceased in the future world is decided by the train which he carries along with him, makes those who survive interested in promoting, by this means, the exaltation of a departed parent or friend. The carelessers and princes, in order to court royal favor, often rush out, seize the first person they meet, and drag him in for sacrifice. While the custom lasts, therefore, it is with trembling steps that any one crosses his threshold; and when compelled to do so, he rushes along with the utmost speed, dreading every instant the murderous grasp which would consign him to death.

— Biblical Treasury

Idolatry! — you cannot find any more gross, any more cruel, on the broad earth, than within the area of a mile around this pulpit. Dark minds, from which God is obscured; deluded souls, whose fetish is the dice-box or the bottle; apathetic spirits, steeped in sensual abomination, unmoved by a moral ripple, soaking in the swamp of animal vitality; false gods, more hideous, more awful, than Moloch or Baal, worshipped with shrieks, worshipped with curses, with the hearthstone for the bloody altar, and the drunken husband for the immolating priest, and women and children for the victims.

— Dr. Chapin

A singular phenomenon, known as the Spectre of the Brocken, is seen on a certain mountain in Germany. The traveller who at dawn stands on the top-most ridge beholds a colossal shadowy spectre, moving on the summits of the distant hills. But, in fact, it is only his own shadow projected upon the morning mists by the rising sun; and it imitates, of course, every movement of its creator. So heathen nations have mistaken their own image for Deity. Their gods display human frailties and passions and scanty virtues, projected and magnified upon the heavens, just as the small figures on the slide of a magic-lantern are projected, magnified, and illuminated upon a white sheet.

A remarkable instance of reptile idolatry is found in Western Africa. Near a large town stands a big house composed of stone walls and thatched roof, and kept in repair for the sacred snakes. Across the upper part of the house is fixed a number of poles for the special accommodation of the serpents; and here are hundreds of them, of various sorts and sizes, asleep, looking like a mass of ropes in a sailmaker's shop. Every day they are carefully fed by the natives with live fowls and milk. They have become perfectly tame. If they choose to leave the building, and crawl about, no one must molest them: he would do it at his peril. On walking along the road, one was seen in motion, making for the town. All the people at once stopped, and implored it in the humblest manner to let them go past. Sometimes, when pressed by hunger, they go into the rooms of their worshippers. Not long since, a huge boa entered a kitchen, and seized an infant which was playing on the floor. The mother rushed in at its very, and beheld it wrapped in the fatal coil. But she durst not interfere to get it away: it was her god; and she could only beseech him not to eat her child till it was quite dead.

A man's idol is not necessarily an image of gold: it may be a child of clay, the fruit of his own loins, or the wife of his bosom; it may be wealth, fame, position, success, or business, any thing which absorbs unduly the affections and attention. Against all such the Almighty pronounces the decree, "Thou shalt have no other gods before me," and hurls his resistless missiles of destruction. Either ourselves or our idols must be destroyed.

A little boy, who lived in the house of a heathen, one day took a stick, and broke all his images except the largest, into the hands of which he put the stick. When the man discovered it, he was furious, and exclaimed, "Who has done this?"—"Perhaps," said the boy, "the big idol has been beating his little brothers."—"Non-renew!" said the man. "Don't talk such stuff as that! Do you think I'm a fool? You know as well as I do that the thing cannot even raise its hand. It was you, you little rascal! It was you! And, to pay you for your labor of wickedness, I'll beat you to death with the same stick." And, seizing the stick, he approached him. "But," said the boy gently, "how can you trust to a god so weak that a child's hand can destroy him? Do you suppose, that, if he can't take care of himself or his companions, he can of you and the world, let alone making you?" The heathen stopped to think; for it was a new idea. Then he broke his great idol, and went and kneeled down to pray to the true God, and called him "my Father."

The Roman soldiers at the sacking of Jerusalem entered the temple, and went into the sanctum sanctorum; but seeing no images there, as they used to have in their own idolatrous temples, gave out, in a jeer, that the Jews worshipped the clouds. So the worldling can see no pleasure in religion.

Some have been so wedded to their riches, that they have used all the means they could to take them with them. Athenaeus reporteth of one, that, at the hour of his death, he devoured many pieces of gold, and sewed the rest in his coat, commanding that they should be all buried with him. Hermocrates, being loath that any man should enjoy his goods after him, made himself, by his will, heir of his own goods. Grey.

He that will not submit himself to nor comply with the eternal and uncreated will, but, instead of it, endeavors to set up his own will, makes himself the most real idol in the world, and exalts himself against all that is called God, and ought to be worshipped. To worship a graven image, or to make cakes and burn incense to the queen of heaven, is not a worse idolatry than it is for a man to set up self-will, to devote himself to the serving of it, and to give up himself to a compliance with his own will as contrary to the Divine and Eternal Will.

— John Smith

His place in society is aptly illustrated by certain books in a Boston library, which are lettered "Succedaneum" on their backs. "Succedaneum!" exclaims the visitor, "what sort of a book is that?" Down it comes; when, lo! a wooden block, shaped just like a book, is in their hands. Then he understands the meaning of the title to be "In the place of another;" and that the wooden book is used to fill vacant places, and to keep genuine volumes from falling into confusion. Such is an idler in society; a man in form, but a block in fact; living for no high end, giving out no instruction; a dumb, despised "succedaneum" among mankind.

— Dr. Wise

This good man was once addressed by a lady, who expressed the great pleasure she had enjoyed under his preaching, and added, that she could comply with his requirements, with the exception of one thing. "And what is that, madam?" asked Mr. R. "Cards, sir." "You think you could not be happy without them?" "No, sir, I know I could not." "Then, madam, they are your God, and they must save you." This pointed admonition led to serious reflection, and finally to the abandonment of such unworthy pleasures.

A Bechuana man, says a missionary, once came into my house and sat himself down. He took up one of our missionary sketches that was lying near him; having looked at it, he concluded that the figures upon it—ugly ones—represented living animals. It never entered into his mind that man would make a thing that never existed. He asked my little daughter Mary, "What game is this?" She said, "They are not game; there are nations that worship these things." "Oh!" said he, "how you tell fibs." She replied, "I am not telling fibs. I heard mamma say so, and my mamma does not tell fibs." He asked her again what game they were, and she again told him that they were things that were worshipped, for they have no name for idols. He burst out into an exclamation of wonder, questioned her again, but received the same answer—that people worshipped these things the same as her papa wished them to worship Jehovah and Jesus. The man was full of amazement, and repeated that she was telling fibs; but she maintained the truth of what she said, and told him to go to her papa. He came to me and said, "Look at that; your daughter solitary cell and repaired to the apartment of the Abbot. "Father," says he, "do not the brethren eat to-day?" "Oh yes," replied the Abbot, "they have eaten plentifully." "Then how is it, Father," said the monk, "that you did not call me to partake with them?" "Because, brother," replied the Abbot, "you are a spiritual man, and have no need of carnal food. For our part, we are obliged to eat, and on that account we work; but you, brother, who have chosen 'the good part,' you sit and read all the day long, and are above the want of the meat that perisheth." "Pardon me, Father," said the monk, "I perceive my mistake."

# Y, FOLLY OF.

says so and so. Is it true?" I said, "It is." Having looked at me with astonishment, he said, "I know you do not tell lies;" and laying the paper down upon a piece of timber that I was planing, he looked at it, put his hands to both sides of his head, and waving it backwards and forwards, said, "The people that make these things of wood and stone,—have they got heads like Bechuanas?" "Yes," I replied, "they have heads." "Have they got legs?" "Yes, they have legs." "Have they got a pair of bellows to breathe through?" (he meant lungs.) "Yes." The man's wonder continued to increase, and he then asked, "Can they talk, and think, and speak? Can they reason? Can they explain a difficult thing? Can they speak in a public meeting like our senators?" On being told that they could do all these things, he said, "After this, never say that the Bechuanas are either foolish or ignorant." Taking from his neck a whistle made of ivory, and carved with some device, perhaps a man's head, or a buffalo, or a giraffe, he looked at the whistle with great reverence, and nodding his head in a very solemn way, he said, "What would my people think if I were to worship that?" Just at that moment, while he was talking with much animation, his staff dropped from his hand. He grasped it, and pointing to the picture, he held up his staff and said, "This looks as well as this monster, and I might as well worship my staff just as you worship Jehovah. What would my people think if I were to do so? They would think I was a madman, and would throw me over a precipice, and cover me with stones."

"Some Roman senators examined the Jews in this manner: 'If God had no delight in the worship of idols, why did he not destroy them?' The Jews made answer, 'If men had worshipped only things of which the world had had no need, he would have destroyed the objects of their worship; but they also worship the sun and moon, stars and planets; and then he must have destroyed his worlds for the sake of these deluded men.' 'But still,' said the Romans, 'why does not God destroy the things which the world does not want, and leave those things which the world cannot be without?' 'Because,' replied the Jews, 'this would strengthen the hands of such as worship these necessary things, who would say, Ye allow now that these are gods, since they are not destroyed.'

On the 13th of May, 1818, a storm suddenly arose at Pekin, which darkened the heavens, and filled the air with sand and dust. The Emperor was excessively alarmed, conceiving it to be a divine judgment. Anxious to know the meaning of the portentous event, he required of his ministers of state to endeavor to ascertain the cause. In a public document, he reprimanded his astronomers for not having previously informed him when the hurricane was to take place: they had but three days before stated to him, that felicitous stars shed their happy influence around his person, and indicated long life and prosperity.

The Mathematical Board presented their opinion, and affirmed that if this kind of hurricane, accompanied by a descent of dust, continued a whole day, it indicated perverse behavior and discordant counsels between the sovereign and his ministers; and also a great drought and dearness of grain. If the wind should blow up the sand, move the stones, and be accompanied with noise, inundations were to be expected. If the descent of dust should continue but an hour, pestilence may be expected in the southwest regions, and half the population will be diseased in the southeast.

At Baitenzorg, a village of Java, Messrs. Tyerman and Bennet observed a street occupied exclusively by Chinese. They called at several of the houses and noticed an idol in each. In one, they observed an engraving of the French Emperor Napoleon, in a gilt frame, before which incense was burning. The old man, to whom the picture belonged, in their presence, paid it divine honors, bowing himself in various antic attitudes, and offering a prayer for blessings upon himself and family. When we asked him why he worshiped an European engraving, he replied, "O, we worship any thing."

"I was much affected," says the Rev. Mr. French, a missionary among the Mahraitas, in India, "by the following incident which occurred in the temple at Pimpulwundee. A little boy, about ten years of age, accompanied by two girls smaller than himself, his sisters probably, came to pay their devotions. The little boy, in a state of almost entire nudity, first washed the idol with water, and then put a little red paint on its forehead, shoulders, and breasts. This being done, he took from the little girl some small flowers, which he laid in various places on the idol; and, to crown all, he threw, after several ineffectual attempts, the idol being taller than himself, a string of flowers over its head. Having finished this part of the ceremony, the three pitiable little creatures commenced circumambulating and bowing to the senseless object which they had thus early been taught to regard as their god. I was much affected, I say, in witnessing this scene, and was led to reflect how different are the circumstances and prospects of the dear children of my native land. There the infant mind is trained in the principles of virtue and salvation. Here it is initiated into the mysteries of iniquity, and swallowed up in the darkness and superstition of idolatry. But it is a blessed thought, to be apprehended only by faith, however, that the infants of India, shall one day speak forth the praises of Immanuel. The Lord hasten that day in his own good time."

Heathen parents take their very young children to the temple of one idol and teach them how to bow and kneel, and wash, and paint, and perform the other ceremonies which are required in the worship of that idol. At another time they take them to the temple of another idol and teach them how to worship that, and so on through all the multitude of their idols; and thus they train their children up to all the wickedness and folly of idol worship.

Maurice, in his "Indian Antiquities," refers thus to the worship practised by the British Druids.

The pen of history trembles to relate the baleful orgies which their frantic superstition celebrated, when, inclosing men, women and children in one vast wicker image, in the form of a man, and filling it with every kind of combustibles, they set fire to the huge colossus. While the dreadful holocaust was offering to their sanguinary gods, the groans and shrieks of the consuming victims were drowned amidst shouts of barbarous triumph, and the air was rent, as in the Syrian temple of old, with martial music. Religion shudders at such a perversion of its names and rites, humanity turns with horror from the guilty scene. Such were our ancestors. To us much has been given, and of us much will be required.

Says Mr. Campbell, for twelve years a missionary in India—

"The human sacrifices which Hindooism demands, are frightful and appalling. Whatever may be the character of the people, and however quiet, and passive, and submissive they appear, their superstition is the most cruel and barbarous that has ever been established. In Goomsoor, a province which has lately fallen into the hands of the British, the horrid scenes which have been discovered, are almost beyond credibility. Whenever a disease raged in the family of the monarch, a human sacrifice was demanded to appease the offended deity, and nothing less precious than the life of an only son would gratify the demon. Immured in houses and in dungeons, there were found hundreds of poor children who had been stolen from the adjoining territories; and for what purpose were they concealed and preserved? that they might be fattened like so many sheep and oxen for the slaughter, and might, at a suitable season, be offered up to the Moloch of the country.

"At the seed-time, the farmers of a district would assemble together; a human victim was selected, was bound as a sacrifice to the altar, and was devoted to the most barbarous death. While the priests proclaim the omens to be propitious, one farmer would come, and with a large knife, would take a slice from the victim, would carry it away to his field, and would press the blood out of it while it was yet warm, and then bury it in the earth. A second, and a third, and a fourth, would come and act a similar part, till the wretched man was sliced in pieces while he was yet alive, and was consigned to various parts of the ground. But why this barbarity? That the favor of Maree might be obtained, and that no curse, nor blight might rest upon their land; and that a richer harvest might arise from fields watered by the blood of sacrifices. Oh! these dark places of the earth are still full of the habitations of cruelty.

"Deeds of blood and atrocity are mixed up with the habits and customs of the people, and fail to produce any great sensation. In England, if a mother strangles her infant, if a father murders his son, if a brother puts a sister to death, a thrill of horror passes through the community, the public voice is lifted up, in loud and terrible denunciations, against such a diabolical act; and the wonder is expressed how such a monster is permitted to live. But in India, such deeds are so common that they have failed to make any impression upon the community, and are often regarded by their authors as actions of merit rather than of infamy."

The facts below are gleaned from Dr. Duff's work on India, and from the organs of missionary societies.

Many of the pilgrims to Juggernaut, from the most distant parts of India, measure the whole distance of their weary pilgrimage with their own bodies on the ground. Some remain all day with their heads on the ground and their feet in the air, some cram their eyes with mud and their mouths with straw. One man may be seen lying with his foot tied to his neck, another with a pot of fire on his breast, and a third enveloped in a net of ropes. At the festival of Charak Pujah, so called, because then is endured the torture of hook swinging so well known, many of the devotees throw themselves down from the top of a high wall, or a scaffold twenty feet high, on iron spikes or knives, that are so thickly stuck in a large bag of straw. At night, numbers of the devotees sit down in the open air, pierce the skin of their foreheads, insert a small rod of iron, to which is suspended a lamp, which is kept burning until the morning dawn. Some have their breasts and arms stuck entirely full of pins, about the thickness of packing needles. Others tie themselves to a wheel, thirty feet in diameter, and raised considerably above the ground—when the wheel turns round, their heads point alternately to the zenith and the nadir—others cover their under lip with a layer of mud, and deposit upon it some small grains, usually of mustard seed, then stretch themselves flat on their backs, exposed to the dripping dews by night and the blazing sun by day. Their vow is, that they will not stir from that position, nor turn, nor move, nor eat nor drink, till the seeds planted begin to sprout; this generally takes place on the third or fourth day. On the day of the great Charak festival, several blacksmiths are stationed in the court of the temple, with sharp instruments in their hands. When the procession reaches the temple, a class of devotees, holding in their hands rods, canes, iron spits, or tubes, approach the blacksmiths. One extends his side, it is instantly pierced through, and in passes one of his rods or canes; another extends his arm, this is perforated, and in passes his iron spit; a third protrudes his tongue, and getting it bored through, he passes in a cord or serpent! These devotees may be seen, in the midst of loud, discordant sounds and frantic dances, pulling backward and forward, through their wounded members, the rods and the canes, the spits and the tubes, the cords and the writhing serpents, till their bodies seem streaming with their own blood!

At Chinsurah, in the East Indies, there is a famous place of resort, called Suraishortollah, or the residence of the Bullgod. This is a square area, on which, beneath the shade of one vast banyan tree, several temples stand, dedicated to several popular idols, to accommodate all classes of comers. Here many self-inflicted or self-chosen cruelties are practised by those who thus hope to merit a place in the Hindoo heaven. A favorite penance is to have the tongue bored through with a large iron spike. A blacksmith is the operator, who is said to be very skillful both in driving a nail and driving a bargain. It sometimes happens that the candidates for this piece of service at his hands are so numerous and impatient, that they are obliged to submit to be arranged in order as they arrive, and wait till each in his turn can be gratified with a wound in the unruly member, which they use, meanwhile, with no small eloquence, to induce him to hasten to their relief, and when he is come, to get the business done as cheaply as they can. The shrewd knave, however, is wise enough to take his time, and extort a larger or a smaller fee, according to the number, rank, or fanaticism of his customers.

The following account of a Hindoo Fakeer, named Purrum Soatuntro, is given by Mr. Duncan, an English gentleman, who saw him at Benares, a large city in India.

When only ten years of age, this man began a life of self-mortification, and used to lie on thorns and pebbles. He went on thus for ten years, and then began to wander about as a fakeer (religious beggar), going from one of their pretended holy places to another. At one place he shut himself up in a cell, where he vowed to do penance for twelve years. There he stayed till vermin gnawed his flesh, and left marks which remained when Mr. Duncan saw him. At the end of a year, the Rajah, or chief of that country, taking pity on him, opened the door of his cell, hoping to persuade him to leave off tormenting himself; but the poor wretch was full of fury to be thus interrupted; and told the Rajah that he should have his curse on his head, (and all the Hindoos dread the curses of these men,) for breaking in upon him. What! Did he think that he was not above such sufferings as these! They were nothing to him! Let the Rajah get him a bed of spikes, that he might lie on it night and day, and show him what he was able to do, and then perhaps he might forgive him. Rajah, frightened at the thought of the curse of this ferocious man lighting on him, got him a bed of spikes; and this bed of spikes became a sort of triumphal car for the wretcher man. He set out immediately to take very long journeys; and was drawn on this horrid bed all round the country for thousands of miles, the poor people every where worshiping him as a sort of god. He traveled about in this manner for thirty-five years! Having no longer, as he said, any inclination to roam, he wished to spend the rest of his days in Benares.

But this poor man was so blinded by the prince of the power of darkness, that he was not contented with the supposed merit of his self-torture on the bed of spikes, but he tried to put himself to greater pain. He boasted to Mr. Duncan, that he had caused water to fall on his head, night and day, in the cold season, from a pot with holes in it, placed over him, drop by drop, so that he might be constantly uneasy; and, when the hot weather came, he mortified himself in an opposite manner, by causing logs of wood to be kept burning around him, to make his sufferings from the heat greater!

# 52. Infanticide.