“Harness now thyself, Jumala, Ruler of the air, thy horses! Bring them forth, thy rapid racers, Drive the sledge with glittering colors, Passing through our bones, our ankles, Through our flesh that shakes and trembles, Through our veins which seem all broken, Knit the flesh and bones together, Fasten vein to vein more firmly, Let our joints be filled with silver, Let our veins with gold be running!” The principal Chinese deities are called Tien-Chi, or Heaven and Earth. Confucius preserved in his writings the ancient worship of these gods. The Mongolians also worshiped the Teng-Ri, or god of the sky. The Chinese have for centuries believed in “celestial spirits,” as they call them, spirits of the sun, and moon, and stars; spirits of clouds, winds, rain and thunder; spirits of mountains, fields, rivers, grains and trees. All these were reverenced as gods. So the Egyptians worshiped natural objects and powers. Indeed, every one of the religions which existed in antiquity, and of which anything is known, possessed nature-worship as their primary element. The ancient religions which continue unto this day, also possess this characteristic, and though covered with the _débris_ and overgrowth of centuries of superstitious teachings, still it is to be distinctly traced. WHERE DID IDOL-WORSHIP COME FROM? Thus far we have no trace of any other than the direct worship either of God; or of the invisible spirits, or _gods_, that were supposed to dwell in the objects of nature; or of those objects themselves. As yet no attempt had been made to represent them by images or idols. When, where and how did the worship of idols take its rise? These are questions difficult to answer. In the Bible the first distinct traces of idolatry are found in Genesis xxxi, 19, where we read that “Rachel had stolen the _images_ that were her father’s.” These images, or _idols_, or _gods_, as both Jacob and Laban term them, were the teraphim or luck-givers. They had a human head and were used in divination or fortune-telling. They were consulted as oracles. But these could hardly have been the first idols, for their idea was too well developed. There must have been a gradual introduction of idols and of the idea of making representations of the gods. The account in Genesis, just referred to, speaks as though it were no unusual thing to have gods; there is no expression of strangeness at the occurrence, nor anything that would indicate that these were the first known idols. What follows is suggested as the probable line of development in the idea of idols, but so far as is now known, there is no way of definitely determining the question. [Illustration: TERAPHIM.]