PART VI.

MARIOLATRY AND IMAGE WORSHIP.

[Illustration: OUR LADY OF GUADALOUPE. Many legacies are left to this image.]

CHAPTER XIV.

MARIOLATRY AND IMAGE WORSHIP.

Before the light of Christianity dawned on ancient Rome, the Pantheon contained goddesses many and gods many. Chief of these deities to receive the worship of the people seems to have been Diana of the Ephesians, a goddess whose image fell down from Jupiter; the celestial Venus of Corinth, and Isis, sister to Osiris, the god of Egypt. These popular images, so universally worshipped, were naturally the aversion of the early followers of Christ. "The primitive Christians were possessed with an unconquerable repugnance to the use and abuse of images. The Jewish disciples were especially bitter against any but the triune God receiving homage, but, by a slow, though inevitable, progression, the honors of the original were transferred to the copy, the devout Christian prayed before the image of a saint, and the pagan rites of genuflexion, luminaries, and incense stole into the Christian Church." [Footnote: Gibbons' "Rome."]

Having Paul's masterly epistle to the Romans, in the first chapter of which he so distinctly portrays man's tendency to change "the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man," and worship and serve the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever, they were careful to remember that "God is a spirit," and to be worshipped only in spirit. Peter, in his epistle to them, also wrote of the One "whom having not seen ye love." As time wore on, however, the original inclination of man to worship a god he could see and feel (a trait seen all down the pages of history) asserted itself, and Mary, the mother of Christ, took the place in the eye and the heart previously occupied by her predecessors.

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