WHAT PEOPLE HAVE BEEN AND DONE WITHOUT THE BIBLE.
Our ancestors complained of the reign of wickedness; we complain of it and our posterity will complain of it. I sometimes think we are all a set of complainers and grumblers.
Of ancient pagans it is said: "They worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator." Of their idols Persius, who was a Roman satirical poet, born A.D. 34, said:
"O, cares of men! O, world all fraught
With vanities! O, minds inclined
Towards earth, all void of heavenly thought!"
Sedulius, an ancient Christian poet, and by nativity a Scotchman, says of the same:
"Ah! wretched they that worship vanities,
And consecrate dumb idols in their heart—
Who their own Maker, God on high, despise,
And fear the works of their own hands and art!
What fury, what great madness doth beguile
Men's minds that man should ugly shapes adore
Of birds, or bulls, or dragons, or the vile
Half-dog, half-man, on knees for aid implore."
One of their own poets jests them thus:
"Even now I was the stock of an old fig tree,
The workman doubting what I then should be,
A bench or god, at last a god made me."
The Romans, for a time, were without images for any religious use, but afterwards they received into their city the idols of all the nations they conquered; and as they became the lords of the whole earth, they became slaves to the idols of all the world. Seneca says: "The images of the gods they worship, those they pray unto with bended knees, those they admire and adore, and contemn the artificers who made them."