_Image Worship_.--We may be met here with the answer that "it is not the making of images, but the worship of images, in lieu of the worship of God, that constitutes idolatry." To this we reply, we have no proof that any nation or people reported in history were ever obnoxious to the charge. True, the people of many countries have been in the habit of prostrating themselves before idols in their daily worship. Yet in no case which we have examined do we find that those idols were worshiped with the thought of their being the true and living God, or of their being endowed with divine attributes, but only as types or representations of God. It is possible that some of the lower stratum of society--some of the debased and ignorant--may have been deluded into the idea that God had taken up his abode in those lifeless images. In fact we are assured that the priest, in some cases, labored to instill this belief into their minds. Some of them may have been ignorant and pliable enough to be misled by his artful misrepresentation. But, by a large proportion of the idol-worshipers of every nation, we have the highest authority for asserting that these artificial images were not regarded as any thing more than the mere representation, or outward type, of the Deity, and were venerated with the same religious conviction which Christians experience in part aking of the body and blood of Christ with the images of bread and wine, and without the suspicion of incurring the charge of idolatry. The two acts are precisely the same in spirit and essence. But the untutored denizens of the Pacific isles do not conceive that the dumb and lifeless sylvan figure before which they prostrate themselves in worship is the omnipotent, self-existent God, the Creator of heaven and earth, more truly than the Christians believe they are really eating and drinking "the body and blood of Christ" when partaking of the sacrament. They are both mere symbols, or representations, of something higher. It is irrational to suppose that beings endowed with minds believe that inanimate figures of gold, silver, iron, &c., possess omnipotent thought, power, and feeling. That able, pious Mahomedan writer, Abel Fezzel, declares (in his "Aren Akberry") that "the opinion that the Hindoos (who make many idols) are idolaters has no foundation in fact; but they are worshipers of God, and only one God." "This," says the modern traveler, Mr. Ditson of New York, "I know to be true; for I had it from the lips of the Hindoos themselves." And this will apply with undiminished force to other nations habitually styled idolaters. "Even the most savage nations," says Mr. Parker, "regard their idols only as types of God." And we might quote whole pages from heathen writers to that effect. The ancient Grecian poet Ovid says, "It is Jove we adore in the image of God." "The Gods inhabit our minds and bodies," says Statius, a Latin writer, "and not the images made to represent them."