The heroism fostered by idolatry was its least injurious influence. Pope's couplet, had he thrown a ray or two of light across the background of the dark picture, would have been a correct delineation of the character of pagan idols-- 'Gods partial, changeful, passionate, unjust; Whose attributes were rage, revenge, and lust.' In some cases the most corrupt attributes of human nature, and even of brute nature, were attributed to objects of worship, and while men bowed down to them, they sank themselves to the lowest depths of vice. The Egyptians might be named as an instance. The first patrons of the arts and sciences were brute-worshippers; and it is testified of them that bestiality, the lowest vice to which human nature can descend, was common amongst them. The paintings and sculpture of their divinities, in the mummy catacombs, are for the most part clusters of beasts, birds, reptiles, and flies, grouped together in the most disgusting and unnatural relations; a true indication that the minds of the worshippers were filled with ideas the most vile and unnatural. The ancient Venus, as worshipped by almost all the elder nations of antiquity, was a personification of lust. The deeds required to be done at her polluting fane, as acts of homage, ought not to be named. In the best days of Corinth--'Corinth, the eye of Greece'--the most sacred persons in the city were prostitutes, consecrated to the worship of Venus. From this source she derived a large portion of her revenues. The consequence was, that her inhabitants became proverbial for dissoluteness and treachery. To the heathen divinities, especially those placed at the head of the catalogue as the superior gods, what theologians have called the physical attributes of deity--omnipotent and omnipresent power--were generally ascribed; but their moral character was always defective, and generally criminal. As one of the best instances in the whole mythology of the ancients, the Roman Jupiter might be cited. Had a medal been struck delineating the character of this best of the gods, on one side might have been engraved _Almightiness_, _Omnipresence_, _Justice_; and on the reverse, _Caprice_, _Vengeance_, _Lust_. Thus men clothed depraved or bestial deities with almighty power, and they became cruel, or corrupt, or bestial in their affections, by the reaction of the character worshipped upon the character of the worshipper. In the strong language of a recent writer, 'They clothed beasts and depraved beings with the attribute of almightiness, and in effect they worshipped almighty beasts and devils.' And the more they worshipped, the more they resembled them.