Now, is this not a form of idolatry more degrading, more insulting to the infinite Majesty of God than the worship of the golden calf? Where is the difference between the idolatry of Aaron and the Israelites adoring the golden calf in the wilderness and the idolatry of Dr. Newman adoring the wafer in his temple? The only difference is, that Aaron worshipped a god infinitely more respectable and powerful, in melted gold, than Dr. Newman worshipping his baked dough.
The idolatry of Dr. Newman is more degrading than the idolatry of the worshippers of the sun.
When the Persians adore the sun, they give their homage to the greatest, the most glorious being which is before us. That magnificent fiery orb, millions of miles in circumference, which rises as a giant, every morning, from behind the horizon, to march over the world and pour everywhere its floods of heat, light and life, cannot be contemplated without feelings of respect, admiration and awe. Man must raise his eyes up to see that glorious sun—he must take the eagle’s wings to follow his giant strides throughout the myriads of worlds which are there, to speak to us of the wisdom, the power, and love of our God. It is easy to understand that poor, fallen, blind men may take that great being for their god. Would not every one perish and die, if the sun would forget to come every day, that we may bathe and swim in his ocean of light and life?
Then, when I see the Persian priests of the sun, in their magnificent temple, with censers in their hands, waiting for the appearance of its first rays, to intone their melodious hymns and sing their sublime canticles, I know their error and I understand it; I was about to say, I almost excuse it. I feel an immense compassion for these deluded idolaters. However, I feel they are raised above the dust of the earth: their intelligence, their souls cannot but receive some sparks of light and life from the contemplation of that inexhaustible focus of light and life. But is not Dr. Newman with his Roman Catholic people a thousand times more worthy of our compassion and our tears, when they are abjectly prostrated before this ignoble wafer—to adore it as their Saviour, their Creator, their God? Is it possible to imagine a spectacle more humiliating, blasphemous and sacrilegious, than a multitude of men and women prostrating their faces to the dust to adore a god whom the rats and mice have, thousands of times, dragged and eaten in their dark holes? Where are the rays of light and life coming from that wafer? Instead of being enlarged and elevated at the approach of this ridiculous modern divinity, is not the human intelligence contracted, diminished paralyzed, chilled and struck with idiocy and death at its feet?
Can we be surprised that the Roman Catholic nations are so fast falling into the abyss of infidelity and atheism, when they hear their priests telling them that more than 200,000 times, every day, this contemptible wafer is changed by them into the great God who has created heaven and earth at the beginning, and who has saved this perishing world by sacrificing the body and the blood which He has taken as His tabernacle to show us His eternal love!
Come with me and see those multitudes of people with their faces prostrated in the dust, adoring their white elephant of Siam.
Oh! what ignorance and superstition! what blindness and folly! you will exclaim. To adore a white elephant as God!
But there is a spectacle more humiliating and more deplorable: There is a superstition, an idolatry below that of the Siamese. It is the idolatry practiced by Dr. Newman and his millions of co-religionists to-day. Yes! The elephant-god of the Asiatic people, is infinitely more respectable than the wafer-god of Dr. Newman. That elephant may be taken as the symbol of strength, magnanimity, patience, etc. There is life, motion in that noble animal—he sees with his eyes, he walks with his feet. Let some one attack him, he will protect himself—with his mighty trunk he will throw his enemy high in the air—he will crush him under his feet.
But look at this modern divinity of Rome. It has eyes, but does not see; feet, but does not move; a mouth, but does not speak. There is neither life nor strength in the wafer god of Rome.
But if the fall of Dr. Newman into the bottomless abyss of the idolatry of Rome is a deplorable fact, there is another fact still more deplorable.