Two stages in the idolatry of Israel appear to be distinguished in this part of the chapter. The first is the naïve, half‐conscious heathenism which crept in insensibly through contact with Phœnician and Canaanite neighbours (vv. 15‐25). The tokens of Jerusalem’s implication in this sin were everywhere. The “high places” with their tents and clothed images (ver. 17), and the offerings set forth before these objects of adoration, were undoubtedly of Canaanitish origin, and their preservation to the fall of the kingdom was a standing witness to the source to which Israel owed her earliest and dearest “abominations.” We learn that this phase of idolatry culminated in the atrocious rite of human sacrifice (vv. 20, 21). The immolation of children to Baal or Molech was a common practice amongst the nations surrounding Israel, and when introduced there seems to have been regarded as part of the worship of Jehovah.(42) What Ezekiel here asserts is that the practice came through Israel’s illicit commerce with the gods of Canaan, and there is no question that this is historically true. The allegory exhibits the sin in its unnatural heinousness. The idealised city is the mother of her citizens, the children are Jehovah’s children and her own, yet she has taken them and offered them up to the false lovers she so madly pursued. Such was her feverish passion for idolatry that the dearest and most sacred ties of nature were ruthlessly severed at the bidding of a perverted religious sense. The second form of idolatry in Israel was of a more deliberate and politic kind (vv. 23‐34). It consisted in the introduction of the deities and religious practices of the great world‐powers—Egypt, Assyria, and Chaldæa. The attraction of these foreign rites did not lie in the fascination of a sensuous type of religion, but rather in the impression of power produced by the gods of the conquering peoples. The foreign gods came in mostly in consequence of a political alliance with the nations whose patrons they were; in other cases a god was worshipped simply because he had shown himself able to do great things for his servants. Jerusalem as Ezekiel knew it was full of monuments of this comparatively recent type of idolatry. In every street and at the head of every way there were erections (here called “arches” or “heights”) which, from the connection in which they are mentioned, must have been shrines devoted to the strange gods from abroad. It is characteristic of the political idolatry here referred to that its monuments were found in the capital, while the more ancient and rustic worship was typified by the “high places” throughout the provinces. It is probable that the description applies mainly to the later period of the monarchy, when Israel, and especially Judah, began to lean for support on one or other of the great empires on either side of her. At the same time it must be remembered that Ezekiel elsewhere teaches