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Then he had restored Capital Punishment, with as much serene gravity as that with which he had made himself the derision of the civilised world in other matters, saying that though human life was holy, human virtue was more holy still; and he had added to the crime of murder, the crimes of adultery, idolatry and apostasy, for which this punishment was theoretically sanctioned.
His fiery zeal and his naturally stern character broke out in the bitter irony with which he imagines a variety of undignified positions for Baal. Sarcasm is not the highest weapon, and the 'spirit of Elijah' is not the spirit of Jesus; but the exposure of the absurdity of idolatry is legitimate, and even ridicule may have its place in pricking wind- distended bladders.
The gallant figure of her youthful admirer and the splendor of his military attire might at first have charmed her eye, but it was not these that had captivated her heart. Her attachment had something in it of idolatry. She looked up to him as to a being of a superior order.
She had set up upon his altar in the midst of his beautiful temple the idol of self-pleasing, and never in her whole seventeen years had she acted from any other motive than to please herself. It was sacrilege, it was idolatry, it was dishonesty; and so were all the actions which had come from such a corrupt source.
He has also demonstrated this in all history, as the Scriptures abundantly show and daily experience still teaches. For from the beginning He has utterly extirpated all idolatry, and, on account of it, both heathen and Jews; even as at the present day He overthrows all false worship, so that all who remain therein must finally perish.
So these poor people got some confused notion of the one true God: but they mixed it up sadly with their old heathen idolatry, and made gods of their own, and some of them even burnt their children in the fire, to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim, from which town they had come.
On the one hand it has broken up the spiritual unity of Medieval Christendom and the political unity of the Holy German Empire into two thousand four hundred petty principalities. It has set up a tribal religion and the pagan idolatry of the State; and, on the other hand, it has broken up the human soul into two water-tight compartments.
It escaped lightly during the Reformation and civil war, though Becket's shrine was despoiled as savoring of idolatry and Cromwell's men desecrated its sanctity by stabling their horses in the great church.
"'I shall always have money, she said; 'and with money we can always inspire such sentiments as are necessary for our comfort in those about us. "I went away confounded by the arguments of luxury, by the reasoning of this woman of the world in which she lived; and blamed myself for my infatuated idolatry.
"Nothing was too costly or elegant for your petted darling; her slightest wish was your law, while for me you had scarcely a word or a look of affection; you were like ice upon which not even the lava-tide of my idolatry could make the slightest impression. Is it any wonder that I hated her for having absorbed all that I craved?
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