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He had loved her with a love that was akin to idolatrous he had grudged that the eye of man should rest on his treasure and now he sat beside her dead. If he heard the door open, he neither moved nor stirred. He never once looked up as his aunt came forward; his eyes were riveted upon that ineffably calm face with a vacant, sightless sort of stare that chilled her blood.
The surviving friend, persuaded of the truth, refuses to comply with it, and loves the departed friend more than Christ, or truth and duty; and then, dying, finds that the departed friend is saved, through that very faith, which the other refused from idolatrous attachment to the departed; and now they are separated; whereas, had the survivor forsaken all for Christ and the truth, he would have had a hundred fold in this world, and, in the world to come, would have found that friend whom he would, as it were, have forsaken for Christ's sake and the gospel's.
This sovereign was extremely bigotted to the idolatrous worship, established in his dominions, sacrificing boys every day to his false gods, that they might direct his proceedings. The priests accordingly pretended, that the gods had prohibited the reception of the cross into Mexico, and had forbidden any farther intercourse with the Spaniards.
Jehoahaz, or Shallum, his third son, a wicked young man, only reigned while Necho was fighting a battle with the Babylonians on the Euphrates, and then was carried off in chains to Egypt, while Necho set up Eliakim, or Jehoiakim, another brother, in his stead. Jehoiakim was idolatrous, cruel, and violent; he persecuted the prophets, and did everything to draw on himself the punishment of Heaven.
And thus we see how a pair of lovers, blind with the one object of lovers in view; and a miserly uncle, all on edge to save himself the expense of supporting his niece; and an idolatrous old admiral, on his back with gout; conduced in turn and together to the marriage gradually exciting the world's wonder, till it eclipsed the story of the Old Buccaneer and Countess Fanny, which it caused to be discussed afresh.
And he understood the prodigious vanity of these people, haunted by the glory of their ancestors, spellbound by the past of their city, declaring that she contains everything, that they themselves cannot know her thoroughly, that she is the sphinx who will some day explain the riddle of the universe, that she is so great and noble that all within her acquires increase of greatness and nobility, in such wise that they demand for her the idolatrous respect of the entire world, so vivacious in their minds is the illusive legend which clings to her, so incapable are they of realising that what was once great may be so no longer.
The predictions and warnings of Samuel were realized for the first time in the reign of Solomon, so that wealth, prosperity, and luxury were but a poor exchange for that ancient religious ardor and intense patriotism which had led the Hebrew nation to victory over surrounding idolatrous nations.
At the further end of the structure a sort of temple composed of rough timber with a thatched roof was a hideous idol standing in a shrine raised on an altar, for such it resembled, possibly imitated from the Portuguese who once held sway in the land, and established for a short period what they called Christianity, although it was in reality an idolatrous system, scarcely superior in the effect it produced on the moral and religious sentiments of the people to that which it displaced.
But these distant possessions added more to the reputation than to the power of the Latin emperor; nor did he risk any ecclesiastical foundations to reclaim the Barbarians from their vagrant life and idolatrous worship. Some canals of communication between the rivers, the Saone and the Meuse, the Rhine and the Danube, were faintly attempted.
But, without entirely losing the meekness of his air, the latter was content to answer "Though my soul would rejoice to visit the habitations of Christendom once more, my feet would rather follow the tender spirits intrusted to my keeping, even into the idolatrous province of the Jesuits, than take one step backward, while they pined in captivity and sorrow."
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