United States or Palestine ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Then, years and years before, some people from India had brought over their religion, Buddhism, which had become a system of idol-worship. These three religions were so mixed up that the people themselves were not able to distinguish between them. The names of their idols would cover pages, and an account of their religion would fill volumes.

Fire- worship, Phoenician or African horrors, the rankest idol-worship, even human sacrifices of the most revolting nature, were, according to them, of almost daily occurrence in Ireland.

Another part of its practice consists in the maintenance of idol-worship in the most literal meaning of the word; in the veneration of holy relics, and of ikons, the offering of sacrifices to them, and the expectation of their answers to prayer. I am not going to speak of what is preached and what is written by clergy of scientific or liberal tendencies in the theological journals.

The whole stirred a vague feeling of uneasiness in my soul, a strange intoxication crept gradually over me, and in this enchanting place the idol-worship of these passionate, poetical souls, sunk in dark ignorance, seemed more intelligible and less repulsive. A Hindu is a born mystic, and the luxuriant nature of his country has made of him a zealous pantheist.

Under local advantages, insulated cases of Oracles suddenly silenced, of temples and their idol-worship overthrown, as by a rupture of new-born zeal, were not less certain to arise as rare accidents from rare privileges, or from rare coincidences of unanimity in the leaders of the place, than on the other hand they were certain not to arise in that unconditional universality pretended by the fathers.

Billy Brent lounged on the hard earth beside the step, his fair head shining in the afterglow, his grey eyes upon the girl's face in a sort of idol-worship. The curve of her cheek, golden with tan and red with the hue of youth, was more to him than all the sunsets the world had ever seen. A deep light shone in his young eyes which, had the girl been wise, she might have seen.

Not last among them was Coifi, chief priest of the idol-worship, whose ardent soul was stirred by the words of the old thane. "None of your people, King Edwin, have worshipped the gods more busily than I," he said, "yet there are many who have been more favored and are more fortunate. Were these gods good for anything they would help their worshippers."

Men did not pause to remember that Mahomedanism is the great exception, being as it is a protest against all idol-worship whatsoever; so that it was a signal injustice to call an idol a 'mawmet' or a Mahomet, and idolatry 'mammetry. A misnomer such as this may remind us of the immense importance of possessing such names for things as shall not involve or suggest an error.

Not of course, that the religion suddenly disappeared or ceased to have votaries, but that, from a dominant system, supported by all the resources of the state, and enforced by the civil power over a wide extent of territory, it became simply one of many tolerated beliefs, exposed to frequent rebuffs and insults, and at all times overshadowed by a new and rival system the comparatively pure creed of Zoroastrianism, The conquest of Babylon by Persia was, practically, if not a death-blow, at least a severe wound, to that sensuous idol-worship which had for more than twenty centuries been the almost universal religion in the countries between the Mediterranean and the Zagros mountain range.

On account of these gifts he was received into the Brahmo Samaj of Debendra Babu, the zemindar of Debipur, and reckoned as one of that Babu's retinue. Tara Charan wrote many essays on widow-marriage, on the education of women, and against idol-worship; read them weekly in the Samaj, and delivered many discourses beginning with "Oh, most merciful God!"