The first great difficulty in the way of earnest prayer is realization. The natural man cannot realize unseen spirits. There is a height and glory in them beyond his reach. But yet there is no peace unless he does realize. So what must he do? Me must invent some representation, whereby to lead on his mind; some image, figure, or effigy, which may stand before him, in order to bring the object of his worship to his view, and which may stand as a hallowed emblem, through which he pays God his honour; he invents for himself just such a system as is described in the decree of the Council of Trent, when it says, Sess. xxv., “The honour which is given to the images is given to the prototypes which they represent, so that through the images which we kiss, and before which we uncover the head and make prostration, we adore Christ, and venerate those saints of whom they are the likeness.” Through the image they adore the Saviour, and the image is employed as an accommodated help to assist the process of realization in the worship of an unseen God. If there were any doubt that this is the true history of image-worship, it would be removed by the fact that the sin has appeared under the same form, under all circumstances, and in all ages. Aaron made the calf as a representation of God, and said, “These be thy Gods, O Israel, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt;” and the Hindoo of the present day regards his idol as a representative of his deity. A Jesuit priest was in conversation the other day with a learned Hindoo in the neighbourhood of Madras, and urged him to embrace what he termed the Catholic faith. “What is the good,” said the heathen, “of my exchanging one system of idolatry for another?” “Idolatry!” said the priest, “you do not mean to say that ours is idolatry. We do not worship our images; we merely set them before us, and adore our Saviour and the saints in them.” “And do you suppose,” replied the heathen, “that we actually worship the images? No; we merely set them before us as a representation of our gods. No, Sir; a Christian I may become, but I shall never be a Roman Catholic.” There was not a shade of difference between the two systems, both having sprung from the natural tendencies of the human heart. This identity was on one occasion curiously illustrated by the Church of Rome itself, for when they obtained possession of a magnificent statue of Jupiter Tonans, they removed the thunderbolt out of his hand, and gave him two large keys in its place. By this slight alteration, they changed Jupiter into Peter, and transferred him from a Pagan temple to a Christian Church. Could anything shew more clearly that Paganism and Romanism were nothing more than different accommodations to the idolatrous tendencies of the human heart? There was no opposition in principle, and the only difference was between the thunderbolt and the keys.