We advert to this form of the theory only in so far as it stands related to our great theme,--the existence, perfections, and prerogatives of the one only, the living and the true God; and it can scarcely be questioned, we think, that it has already introduced doctrines and practices into the Church which have a manifest tendency to obscure the lustre and impair the evidence of some of the most fundamental articles of Natural Religion. Let it still advance in the same direction, and who shall assure us that it may not develop into still grosser idolatry, or even into Pantheism? Why should it not develop, for example, into Sun worship? "On the new system," says Professor Butler, "a modern growth of Christian Guebres might make out no feeble case; the public religious recognition of this great visible type of the True Light is but a fair development of 'the typical principle;' the justifiable imitation of the guilt of heathens in its adoration is but an instance of the transforming powers of 'the sacramental principle;' while it requires but the most moderate use of the great instrument of orthodoxy, 'mystical interpretation,' to find the duty hinted (clearly enough for watchful faith, though obscurely to the blinded or undevout) in those passages that speak of a 'tabernacle for the Sun,' or Deity itself being 'a Sun,' or the rising of 'the Sun of righteousness.'... Indeed, the whole body of the righteous are promised to 'shine as the Sun' in the heavenly kingdom,--an expression which, though it appear superficially to refer to a period not yet arrived, the Church has correctively developed into an assurance of their present beatification, and consequent right to worship; while it must be at once manifest that, if any representative emblem of the Deity may demand religious prostration in our Churches, the analogous emblem of the 'deified,' in the great temple of the Material Universe, may fairly expect a participation in that honor. It is true there is an express command, 'Take heed lest, when thou seest the Sun, ... thou shouldst be driven to worship them;' but so there is a command, at least as distinct and imperative, against the worship of _Images_, which, Mr. Newman instructs us, has been repealed under the Gospel, and was never more than a mere Judaic prohibition, 'intended for mere temporary observance in the letter.'"[97]