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Updated: June 11, 2025
The moment a man "acts for himself," says Emerson, "tossing the laws, the books, idolatries, and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but thank and revere him." Whitman took the philosopher at his word. "Greatness once and forever has done with opinion," even the opinion of the good Emerson.
I was confounded, for I did not then know that Popery is only a crafty adaptation of pagan idolatries to its own scheme; and while I looked upon the now wildly excited people with their children, and in a figure all their cattle, passing again and again through the fire, I almost questioned in my own mind the lawfulness of the spectacle, considered in the light that the Bible must, even to the natural heart, exhibit it in to those who confess the true God.
"The great God of Heaven," they said, "had caused the undertaking of His holy instrument Mr. Doctor Martin Luther to prosper. Through His unspeakable mercy he has driven away the Papal darkness and caused the sun of righteousness once more to beam upon the world. The old idolatries, blasphemies, errors, and horrors of the benighted Popedom have been exterminated in many kingdoms and countries.
Wars will be no more, for the supreme war-lord is chained in prison. Armies will be unknown, for he who is behind it all has no more power. Idolatries and its degrading immoralities are no longer known, for he who deceived the nations has been arrested.
In this way had the Arabs lived for long ages, unnoticed by the world; a people of great qualities, unconsciously waiting for the day when they should become notable to all the world. Their Idolatries appear to have been in a tottering state; much was getting into confusion and fermentation among them.
Love will die hard, as died the idolatries of our forefathers, the geocentric theory of the universe, and the divine right of kings. So, I say, the rancour and warmth of the established when attacked is sincere. The world is mastered by the convention of love, and when one profanes love's Holy of Holies the world is unutterably shocked and hurt. Love is a thing for lovers only.
Those in the Word are the wars which the children of Israel waged with various nations, Amorites, Moabites, Philistines, Syrians, Egyptians, Chaldeans and Assyrians. For instance, when they profaned the sanctities of the church by foul idolatries they were punished by the Assyrians and Chaldeans because Assyria and Chaldea signify the profanation of what is holy.
He had wished to do so both in defence of his own consistency, and also, if it were possible, so as to maintain the sanctity. The "divinity" which "does hedge a king," had been to him no more than a social idolatry. The special respect in which dukes and such like were held was the same. The judge's ermine and the bishop's apron were idolatries.
Jeroboam had been an industrious, active-minded, strong-natured youth, whom Solomon had promoted and made much of. The prophet Ahijah had privately foretold to him that, on account of the idolatries tolerated by Solomon, ten of the tribes should be rent away from, the royal house and given to him.
To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various history, the many races of man, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts; and then their ways, habits, governments, forms of worship; their enterprises, their aimless courses, their random achievements and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of long-standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken of a superintending design, the blind evolution of what turn out to be great powers or truths, the progress of things, as if from unreasoning elements, not towards final causes, the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race, so fearfully yet exactly described in the Apostle's words, "having no hope and without God in the world," all this is a vision to dizzy and appal; and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery, which is absolutely beyond human solution.
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