view of ascertaining what one object more than any other,
subordinate to the great end of preparing the world for the advent of
Messiah, seemed to be proposed by the wisdom of the Almighty in
imparting to mankind that revelation; could he fix upon any other point
as the one paramount and pervading principle with so much reason, as
upon this, the preservation in the world of a practical belief in the
perfect unity of God, and the fencing of his worship against the
admixture of any other, of whatever character or form; The announcement
that the Creator and Governor of the universe is the sole Giver of every
temporal and spiritual blessing; the one only Being to whom, his
rational creatures on earth should pay any religious service whatever;
the one only Being to whom mortals must seek by prayer and invocation
for the supply of any of their wants? Through the entire volume the
inquirer would find that the unity of God is announced in every variety
of expression; and that the exclusive worship {18} of HIM alone is
insisted upon and guarded with the utmost jealousy by assurances, by
threats, and by promises, as the God who heareth prayer, alone to be
called upon, alone to be invoked, alone to be adored. So to speak, he
would find that recourse was had to every expedient for the express
purpose of protecting God's people from the fatal error of embracing in
their worship any other being or name whatever; not reserving supreme
adoration for the Supreme Being, and admitting a sort of secondary
honour and inferior mode of invocation to his exalted saints and
servants; but banishing at once and for ever the most distant
approximation towards religious honour--the veriest shadow of spiritual
invocation to any other Being than Jehovah HIMSELF ALONE.

In process of time, the heathen began to deify those mortals who had
conferred signal benefits on the human race, or had distinguished
themselves by their power and skill above their fellow-countrymen. Male
and female divinities were multiplying on every side. Together with
Jupiter, the fabled father of gods and men, worshipped under different
names among the various tribes, were associated those "gods many and
lords many," which ignorance and superstition, or policy and craft, had
invented; and which shared some a greater, some a less portion of
popular veneration and religious worship. To the people of God, the
worshippers of Jehovah, it was again and again most solemnly and awfully