and shells behind them and rise into the atmosphere, as flies in a summer
day. When man measures the works of the Divine Mind by his own feeble
combinations, he must wander in gross error; the infinite can never be
understood by the finite.

_Onu_.--As far as I can comprehend your reasoning, the priests of
Juggernaut might make the same defence for their idol, and find in such
views a fair apology for the destruction of thousands of voluntary
victims crushed to pieces by the feet of the sacred elephant.

_Amb_.--Undoubtedly they might, and I should allow the justness of their
defence if I saw in their religion any germs of a divine institution
fitted to become, like the religion of Jehovah, the faith of the whole
civilised world, embracing the most perfect form of theism and the most
refined and exalted morality. I consider the early acts of the Jewish
nation as the lowest and rudest steps of a temple raised by the Supreme
Being to contain the altar of sacrifice to His glory. In the early
periods of society rude and uncultivated men could only be acted upon by
gross and temporal rewards and punishments; severe rites and heavy
discipline were required to keep the mind in order, and the punishment of
the idolatrous nation served as an example for the Jews. When
Christianity took the place of Judaism the ideas of the Supreme Being
became more pure and abstracted, and the visible attributes of Jehovah
and His angels appear to have been less frequently presented to the mind;
yet even for many ages it seemed as if the grossness of our material
senses required some assistance from the eye in fixing or perpetuating
the character of religious instinct, and the Church to which I belong,
and I may say the whole Christian Church in early times, allowed visible
images, pictures, statues, and relics as the means of awakening the
stronger devotional feelings. We have been accused of worshipping merely