ceeded
from the political power which secured to itself, for the future, an
absolute influence upon the religious affairs, by subjecting to its
control the ecclesiastical power, which had hitherto been independent
of it. Those Levites who, having no regard to the miserable sophisms
invented by the king as an excuse, declared against the worship of
calves, were expelled, and, in their stead, creatures of the king
[Pg 176] were made ministers of the sanctuary. This became now the
king's sanctuary (compare the remarkable passage, Amos vii. 13), and
all the ecclesiastical affairs were, in strict contradiction to the
Mosaic law, submitted to his arbitrary power. The consequences of this
must necessarily have been all the sadder, the worse the kings were;
and they must inevitably have become so, because of the bad foundation
on which the royal power rested.

Image-worship was very speedily followed by idolatry,--which is,
however, in like manner, not to be looked upon in the light of an
undisguised opposition to the true God. Such an opposition took place
during the reign of only one king--Ahab--under whom the matter was
carried to an extreme. Holy Scripture, however, with a total disregard
of the whole multitude of miserable excuses ordinarily made, designates
as _direct_ apostasy from God, everything which was substantially such,
although it did not outwardly manifest itself as such. Externally, they
remained faithful to Jehovah; they celebrated His feasts,--they offered
the sacrifices prescribed in the Pentateuch,--they regulated, in
general, all the religious institutions according to the requirements
there laid down, as may be proved from the Books of Kings, and, still
more plainly, from Amos and Hosea. But in all this they discovered a
method by which light and darkness, the worship of idols with that of
the Lord, might be combined. Nor was this discovery so very difficult,
since their eye was not single. They had before them the examples of
heathen nations, who were quite prepared reciprocally to acknowledge
their deities, in all of whom they recognised only different forms of
manifestation of one and the same divine being; and they were quite
willing to extend this acknowledgment even to the God of Israel also,
as long as they did not meet with intolerance on the part of those who
professed to worship Him, and were therefore not roused to the practice
of intolerance in return. This reciprocal recognition of their deit