Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

WHEN CHRIST APPEARED.25but in neither ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^|^H case beings who looked for a moralservice from rational creatures.One other turpitude the Asiatic idolatry addedto the Greek and Koman forms. By consecratingthe sexual relations themselves in one male andone female god, they effected this crowning connectionof idolatry with immorality that unchasteacts became themselves acts of sacrifice, and soof worship.23 This is the strange perversion bornewitness to by Herodotus, and corroborated by theprophet Jeremiah. A great seat of this worshipwas the city of Hierapolis, in Syria, where wasone of the most magnificentemples of the ancientworld, dedicated to Derketo, and rich with the offeringsof Arabians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Phoenicians,Cilicians, Cappadocians, and all nations ofthe Semitic tongue. Nor was this worship i confinedto the East, for hence, as from a centre, theadherents of the Syrian goddesspread themselvesin begging troops over the provinces of the empire..And the worship of Venus at Eryx, andother places in the West, with the thousands offemale priestesses dedicated to it, reproduced thesame abomination.As the great result of all that we have said,we find the notion of sanctifying the human wi'om the religious rites of the polytheistlatry in all its forms. To this corresponded23 See Heidenthum und Judenthum, p. 398. Herodotus, i. 199. Baruch,vi. 42-3.