It teaches further, that GOD is too great and too sublime to occupy Himself directly with the affairs of this world; that its government He has therefore entrusted to other gods, and that it is only to the highest things of destiny He Himself devotes His attention,--an attribution of cold superiority and intellectual indifference in striking contrast to the idea of GOD _the Father_ developed by Christianity, that all-loving, as well as all-powerful GOD, Who watches over the fall of a sparrow, and listens with tender ear to the prayer of even the meanest of His creatures. Moreover, Zabism inculcates the chilling doctrine that man is too feeble to offer his homage directly to the Supreme, and must therefore address the inferior deities to whom the regimen of the world has been handed. In this way we see that the veneration shown to the planets and the worship of idols are only a symbolism resulting from the humiliating doctrines just defined. Zabism is a polytheistic system,--it absolutely revels in gods and goddesses. There are the spirits that direct and guide the planets, the spirits that originate or represent every action in this world,--not a natural effect, great or little, which does not emanate from a deity. Whatever appears in the air, whatever is formed near the sky or springs from the earth, must be traced to certain gods that govern these manifestations, so that every flake of snow, every drop of rain has its presiding spirit. These spirits also “mould and shape everything bodily from one form into the other, and gradually bring all created things to the state of their highest possible perfection, and communicate their powers to all substances, beings, and things. By the movement and guidance of these spiritual beings, the different elements and natural compositions are influenced in such a way that the tenderest plant may pierce the hardest cliff. He who guides this world is called the first spirit. These gods know our most secret thoughts, and all our future is open to them. The female deities seem to have been conceived as the feeling or passive principle. These gods or intelligences emanate directly from GOD without His will, as rays do from the sun. They are, further, of abstract forms, free of all matter, and neither made of any substance or material. They consist chiefly of a light in which there is no darkness, which the senses cannot conceive by reason of its immense clearness, which the understanding cannot comprehend by reason of its extreme delicacy, and which fancy and imagination cannot fathom.”