later kings regarded them as idolatrous, the priests were much
less averse to such images, and their cult was not considered in
any way repugnant to the pious worship of Elohim, nay, even to
the worship of him "under the awful title of Jehovah." In fact,
they involved a monotheistic idolatry very different indeed
from polytheism; and the tolerance of them by priests, as
compared with the denunciation of them by the prophets, offers a
close analogy to the views of the Roman Catholics respecting
pictures and images as compared with the views of Protestants.
It was against this use of idolatrous symbols and emblems in a
monotheistic worship that the second commandment was
directed, whereas the first is aimed against the graver sin of
direct polytheism. But the whole history of Israel shows how
utterly and how early the law must have fallen into desuetude.
The worship of the golden calf and of the calves at Dan and
Bethel, against which, so far as we know, neither Elijah nor
Elisha said a single word; the tolerance of high places,
teraphim and betylia; the offering of incense for centuries to
the brazen serpent destroyed by Hezekiah; the occasional
glimpses of the most startling irregularities sanctioned
apparently even in the temple worship itself, prove most
decisively that a pure monotheism and an independence of symbols
was the result of a slow and painful course of God's disciplinal
dealings among the noblest thinkers of a single nation, and not,
as is so constantly and erroneously urged, the instinct of the
whole Semitic race; in other words, one single branch of the
Semites was under God's providence educated into pure
monotheism only by centuries of misfortune and series of
inspired men (vol. iii. p. 986).