and
reptiles, and dung beetles, were devoutly adored by the learned
Egyptians. A Roman soldier, who had accidentally killed one of their
gods, a cat, was put to death for sacrilege.[52] Whenever a dog died,
every person in the house went into mourning, and fasted till night. So
low had the "great, the mighty and transcendent soul," been degraded
that there is a picture extant of one of the kings of Egypt worshiping
his own coffin! Such is man's knowledge of God without a revelation from
him.

The Greeks, from their early intercourse with Egypt, borrowed from them
most of their religion; but by later connections with the Hebrews, about
the time of Aristotle and Alexander, they gathered a few grains of truth
to throw into the heap of error. After the translation of the Scriptures
into Greek, in the reign of Ptolemy Philadelphus, any of their
philosophers who desired might easily have learned the knowledge of the
true God. But before this period we find little or no sense or truth in
their religion. And the same remarks will apply to the Romans. Their
gods were as detestable as they were numerous. Hesiod tells us they had
thirty thousand. Temples were erected to all the passions, fears, and
diseases to which humanity is subject. Their supreme god, Jupiter, was
an adulterer, Mars a murderer, Mercury a thief, Bacchus a drunkard,
Venus a harlot; and they attributed other crimes to their gods too
horrible to be mentioned. Such gods were worshiped, with appropriate
ceremonies, of lust, drunkenness, and bloodshed. Their most sacred
mysteries, carried on under the patronage of these licentious deities,
were so abominable and infamous, that it was found necessary, for the
preservation of any remnant of good order, to prohibit them.

It may be supposed that the human race is grown wiser now than in the
days of Socrates and Cicero, and that such abominations are no longer
possible. Turn your eyes, then, to India, and behold one hundred and
fifty millions of rational beings, possessed of "spiritual faculties,"
"insight," and "the religious sentiment," worshiping three hundred and
thirty millions of gods, in the forms of hills, and trees, and rivers,
and rocks, elephants, tigers, monkeys, and rats, crocodiles, serpents,
beetles, and ants, and monsters like to nothing in heaven or earth, or
under the earth. Take one specimen of all. There is "the lord of the
world," Juggernath. "When you think of the monster block of the idol,
with i