Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

26 THE GODS OF THE NATIONSthe absence of the notion of holiness in the gods.And this leads us finally to the remarkable characterwhich defines it as a whole. This worshipwas throughout a corruption,24 the spoiling, thatis, of something good; a turning away from thebetter to the worse. The worship itself had beenoriginally good. The corruption lay in the alterationof the quality and the object of the worship.Worship had been implanted in man, and prescribedto him. It was at once the need of hisnature and the command of Him who gave thatnature. It had for it, first, positive institution,and then tradition and custom, and throughout,the conscience, the reason, and the heart of man.The reason of man ever bore powerful witness tothe unity of the Godhead; the breaking up of thatunity, as exhibited by this idolatrous polytheism,in contradiction to the original prompting andcontinued witness of the reason, is a very strongproof of that moral corruption in the will whichfirst generated it, which continued its existence,and which, while multiplying, degraded its formsfrom age to age. But man was free to declinefrom the good in which he had been placed. Thecorruption which was left in his power he exerted;he changed the quality of the service, and theperson served. The productive cause of idolatryon the part of man was the soul of man turning24 See S. Atlian. con., Gentes, 5-9. In like manner S. Theophilus,lib. i. ad Autolyc. c. 2.