67 Sermon Illustrations on Idolatry

In the imperial city, after allowing more than one half for natural deaths, the number of exposed infants is, according to Barrow, about four thousand a year. Some of the scenes he witnessed while at Pekin, were almost incredible. Before the carts go around in the morning to pick up the bodies of infants thrown in the streets—amounting to about four and twenty every night—dogs and swine are let loose upon them. The bodies of those found are carried to a common pit without the city walls, in which the living and the dead are thrown together. This, however, is a small proportion, compared with other places. In some provinces not one out of three is suffered to live.

In Sevel, a large and populous village in Southern India, the gospel, says the Rev. Mr. Dent, has publicly triumphed over heathenism. There were a few families there under instruction, of the Shanar tribe. All of them, with three exceptions, joined the congregation; and they then agreed among themselves to demolish their peicoil (or devil temple), and convert it into a place of worship. Soon after, I visited the village, and the people informed me of their intention: I rejoiced exceedingly, that they had come to this determination; and encouraged them to it, by citing a few passages of Scripture that related to the destruction of idolatry. They asked me to come to the spot; and I did so, in order to witness the spectacle. The most forward among our people entered the temple first; and one of them, with an axe in his hand, and with this sentence, "O Christ, help!" in his mouth, gave the chief idol a blow, and severed the head from the body: then came others, and threw down the idols and altars that were therein, demolished the inner courts and walls, and leveled them all to the ground. The idols, broken to pieces, they threw out for public exhibition; saying, "Such are the gods we have ignorantly worshiped and believed all this time! They cannot help themselves; how can they help us?" There was a great crowd of spectators collected together at this place. The heathen of the village were quite angry at this outrage and injustice, as they termed it; and would have made some attempts to recover the gods, but my presence tended considerably to still them. The heathen cried out, "O ye fools, ye madmen! what have ye been doing? Have ye cut down and destroyed the tutelar gods and goddesses of your village? Be sure that you and your families will ere long be visited. Ammen will revenge herself upon you all, shortly." Our people replied: "These are sand and clay, made by our own hands: they can never do us any injury! The Lord Jesus alone is God: Him we all worship, and he will protect us." I had a good opportunity of addressing the crowd on the folly and absurdity of their religion, and of directing them to the Lord Jesus, the Savior of poor lost creatures. The sight was overpowering to me, having never witnessed any thing of the kind before; and I thanked God for this public triumph of Christianity over idols and idolatry in the village. We went afterwards, and had a prayer in that place, which but a little before was a devil-temple, and a nest of all unclean things!

About ten years after what the Spaniards call "The Conquest," the celebrated apparition of the Virgin de Gaudaloupe, made its appearance in the following manner. Adjacent to the city of Mexico is a hill entirely barren; an Indian accidentally passing heard sounds of music, and, at the same time, saw an aerial female figure in a praying attitude. The Indian, alarmed at the vision, fled; but passing near the hill a few days afterwards, the same strange occurrence again took place. The figure called him by name, and told him to repair to the spot on a certain day, and he would find her picture buried under a heap of roses;—he did so, and met with it as directed. The Indian carried this mysterious figure to the Bishop of Mexico, who was, of course, in the secret. A solemn conclave of the clergy took place, and the Bishop, with the most profound reverence, knelt before the picture and named it Neuestra Senora de Gaudaloupe. A magnificent church was built for her reception, and she received the exalted title of "Patroness of Mexico," which she enjoys to the present day. This is the origin of the Virgin de Gaudaloupe, conformably to the records of the church now existing at Mexico. The original picture is still exhibited in the Virgin's Church; it is painted on a cloth of linen manufacture, called "Uangochi," composed of coarse threads spun from the fibres of the aloe (Agava Americana) and woven very wide apart. The Indians and the Creoles say, that the picture is miraculous, because, as you approach it, the painting becomes less visible, and when quite close all traces of the picture disappear; their blind superstition not permitting them to discover that the open texture of the material upon which it is painted, is the cause of this disappearance.

A priest told the writer of the above, another circumstance respecting the Virgin, respecting another part of the miracle, viz., that the picture was found under a heap of roses in the winter season, and on a spot where those flowers had never bloomed. It never occurred to the priest that, a few leagues from this barren hill the climate was quite different and where roses grow throughout the year. Consequently the persons who painted the picture of the Virgin did not require any celestial aid to procure a bed of roses.

In such veneration do the Indians and lower order of Creoles (and indeed many of the middling and higher classes,) hold their patroness, that they have paintings of her in all their houses, invoke her in all their prayers, and implore her assistance in all their difficulties.

I have seen people, says a traveler, of all ranks and ages prostrate themselves before the statue of St. Peter at Rome, and after saying a short prayer most humbly kiss his toe. To such an extent is this carried, that the great toe of the image (it is so wretched a thing I can hardly call it a statue) is from time to time worn away, and the brazier is called in to supply another, that the toe-worshipers may not miss the object of their adoration. But a letter would not suffice to tell of half the instances that I have seen acted before my eyes of the most degrading superstition and image worship.

The following is a translation of a proclamation for the coronation of an image of the Virgin:—

"The most reverend chapter of St. Peter's at Rome, in compliance with the will of the count Alexander Sforza Pallavicini, is accustomed to distribute every year certain crowns of gold, to decorate the brows of those images of the blessed Virgin, the most celebrated either for their antiquity, their wondrous works, (query, prodigies or miracles?) or for their popularity, in order to increase ever more and more the worship of such images, and to excite the piety and devotion of the faithful towards the great mother of God.

"Now the above-mentioned most reverend chapter, having listened to the claims urged in favor of the image of the immaculate conception, which is adored in the church of Jesu Vecchio, in Naples, represented by a little wooden statue, three feet high, with an infant Jesus in its arms; and having found these claims to be supported by satisfactory evidence and solid documents, have judged it right to award a golden crown, not only to the image of the Virgin, but also to that of the infant Jesus in her arms. With this decision the supreme pontiff, Leo XII, has signified his approbation in his apostolic brief, (query, bull?) issued on the 2nd of December, 1826; and he has not only signified his approval of this act, but has been pleased to grant an abundant portion of grace and indulgence to all who shall assist in the ceremony of the coronation, or be present in the church on that great day. Then follow the order to the archbishop to do it, and the approbation of the king of Naples, as well as all the prayers and hymns that are to be said or sung to this little wooden image, before and after the coronation, etc. etc.

At Dijon, as I walked along, wrote the Rev. Dr. Wilson, bishop of Calcutta, in 1823, I observed on all the churches an immense placard. I stopped, from mere curiosity, to see what it was. It was an advertisement of a new edition of the History of the Miraculous Image of Notre Dame, at Dijon. I hurried to the church, and looked all around: I saw a gaudily embellished building, filled with altars, and pictures, and statues, but no image that I could discover. I went out and inquired of an elderly woman. She took me up to an altar on which was the statue of the Virgin, resembling that of a blackamoor, and decked out with tawdry ornaments. I afterwards bought the book; it positively asserts that various miracles have been performed by this wretched figure! Nay more, indulgenees are granted to all who worship this image, and a society is formed to celebrate feasts to her honor. As the image is black, the author attempts to prove, very gravely, that the Virgin Mary was of a swarthy complexion!

### 302. Confession and Absolution.

Halle, in Saxony, so remarkable for the hospital erected by the celebrated Francke, seems to have been, in the dark ages of Popery, like Athens of old, a "city full of idols," Acts xvii. 16, (marginal reading.) The churches contained forty-two entire bodies of Romish saints, and more than 8,000 smaller relics! A work, published by the authority of the archbishop, contains engravings of more than 200 vases in which these relics were kept. Some of them are particularly specified, as earth from a field at Damascus, where Adam was formed from the dust of the ground! Several bones and part of the standard of St. George; pieces of Noah's ark; portions of the bodies of several patriarchs and prophets; the rods of Moses and Aaron; clothing which had belonged to the Virgin; and a piece of the skin of Bartholomew! Among the entire bodies was one of the infants slain by Herod; also seventeen bodies of the companions of St. Ursula, who were, by mistake, said to have been 11,000 in number, instead of one named Undecimilla; also the glass or mirror used by these virgin martyrs, with much more of the like trumpety. On the Sunday next after the eighth of September, in every year, these relics were carried in solemn procession, and exhibited to the people. To all such as beheld them with devotion upon this occasion, offering prayers, and giving money to the collegiate church, indulgences, or pardon of sins, were promised, for 29,245,- 120 years, and 220 days. We are not told by what process of calculation this extraordinary number was ascertained; but the authorized writer might well boast that a great treasure was to be obtained at a small price, had not the treasure, even if obtained, been utterly worthless. There was, however, a qualifying clause; the indulgences were only to be obtained by those who were "suited to deserve them;" an expression which, as Sockendorf observes, would be as unintelligible to the people, as the millions and hundreds of thousands spoken of in the calculation. Into what fearful delusions do mankind fall, when they forsake the simple truths of the Bible!

Dr. Raffles, in his tour through Europe in 1817, visited the church of the Minorites, in Aix La Chapelle. After describing sundry antiquities, among which were "the remains of one of the children whom Herod killed in the hope of destroying Christ," he proceeds:

"All this was interesting, but the cream of the antiquities yet remained. We were conducted to the vestry, or robing place of the priest, where a young man whose province it is to expose these wonders to the gaze of the credulous, threw open the curiously painted doors of an immense recess, where in an instant we were dazzled with a profusion of gold and precious stones, wrought into various forms, to contain or emblazon the precious and sacred relics.

* * * * We were shown, 1. The girdle of Jesus Christ, brought from Jerusalem, by Charlemagne, and with that monarch's seal annexed to it. 2. Girdle of the Virgin Mary, derived from the same quarter. 3. A bone of the Virgin Mary's father. 4. A bit of the cord with which Jesus was bound when he was scourged. 5. A prickle from the crown of thorns. 6. A bit of the sponge with which they supplied the vinegar. 7. A bit of one of the nails by which he was fastened to the cross. 8. And lastly, some sweat which fell from him in the garden of Gethsemane. To this may be added a link of the chain with which Peter was chained at Rome! a bit of the bone of Simeon's arm, with which he embraced the infant Jesus!! a rib of St. Stephen!!! and a tooth of St. Thomas!!!!

I thought of the sailor, who, after his messmates had told some wonderful stories of what had been found in the bellies of whales and sharks, and such monsters, determining to outstrip them all, said he had once been present at the catching of a fish, out of whose belly, when opened, there came a ship, with all its masts and rigging, and the whole of the crew.

We were present to-day, say the author of "Rome in the Nineteenth Century," written in 1818, at one of the most ridiculous scenes I ever witnessed, even in this country. It was St. Anthony's blessing of the horses; which began on that saint's day, and, I understand, lasts for a week. We drove to the church of the saint, near Santa Maria Maggiore, and could scarcely make our way through the streets, from the multitude of horses, mules, asses, cows, sheep, goats, and dogs, which were journeying along to the place of benediction; their tails, heads, and necks, decorated with bits of colored ribbon and other finery, on this—their unconscious gala day. The saint's benediction, though nominally confined to horses, is equally efficacious, and equally bestowed upon all quadrupeds; and I believe there is scarcely a brute in Rome, or in the neighborhood, that has not participated in it. An immense crowd were assembled in the wide open space in front of the church: and from the number of beasts and men, it looked exactly like a cattle fair. At the door stood the blessing priest, dressed in his robes, and wielding a brush in his hand, which he continually dipped into a huge bucket of holy water that stood near him, and spirited at the animals as they came up, in unremitting succession, taking off his little skull-cap, and muttering every time in Latin, "By the intercession of blessed Anthony the abbot, these animals are freed from evil, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen." The poor priest had such hard work in blessing, that he was quite exhausted and panting, and his round face looked fiery red with his exertions. The rider, or driver of the creature, always gave some piece of money, larger or smaller, in proportion to his means or generosity; and received an engraving of the saint, and a little metallic cross; however, all animals might be blessed gratis. Several well-dressed people, in very handsome equipages, attended with out-riders, in splendid liveries, drove up while we were there; and sat uncovered till the benediction was given. Then, having paid what they thought fit, they drove off, and made way for others. One adventure happened, which afforded some amusement. A countryman having got a blessing on his beast, and therefore putting his whole trust in its power, set off from the church-door at full gallop; and had scarcely gone a hundred yards, before the ungainly animal tumbled down with him, and he rolled over his

# 311 PA