DELITY

NE

INFI

TEXT to pride and selfishness, there is no principle of our nature more universal than faith. There is none so necessary to our peace as a faith well founded. Man lives by faith from the cradle to the grave. Alas! how often he finds that it has been misplaced. The husbandman buries his seed with faith; the sailor has faith in his vessel, in his compass, and in his charts. What would society be, if suddenly every man should lose all faith? If each should at once distrust his neighbor: if children should lose confidence in their parents-husbands in their wives-men in their friends if there should be no faith in ministers, or physicians, or in the protection of the laws and above all, if every one should at once lose all hope of the mercy of God? Remove faith from the earth, and it would become at once a hell and all men would at once become demons; fearing, hating, and endeavoring to destroy one another.

Faith is a necessity of our nature, springing from our relations to God for in Him we live, and move, and have our being. Every man at times realizes his utter helplessness, and his need of help from some superior power: he also is conscious that he is to render an account of his thoughts and his deeds. All, excepting the children of God, dread an uncertain future. Man therefore must have a religion. When created, the faith of man was placed in God, and he had perfect peace. Satan tempted him to doubt; fear and hatred

of God followed; man's faith became like a vessel adrift: and here we have the origin of all false religions. To fix the faith of man again on its proper object is the aim of all revelation. The Gospel call is, " Believe." He who believes the revelation God has made of His Son, receives the sealing of the Holy Spirit :' there is no more condemnation for him : and the word of God assures him of having an eternal life.2

In following the progress of the false religions that have been in the world, we notice several remarkable features in which they all agree with one another and differ from that which God has instituted.

There is a striking resemblance between the marvelous in the Bible and the marvelous in the religious history and systems of the ancient heathen world. Some of this resemblance is to be seen among the heathen even at the present day.

All the religions of the earth show traces of having a common origin. All false religions point to early facts common to them all and, for the most part, all have retained the same rites and sacrifices of which we read in Scripture, as appointed and used in the service of Jehovah : all obviously derived from the original truth, though greatly corrupted and perverted. They "turned the truth of God into a lie.”

Not only are the leading historical facts recorded by Moses in the first chapter of Genesis, such as the creation, the primeval happiness of man, the fall, the deluge, etc., to be found in the traditions and the religions of all the ancient heathen nations; but likewise, the shadows of nearly all the great doctrines of revealed truth. Ideas of a Supreme God -of God manifesting himself in the flesh-of an atonement -of a future state of rewards and punishment of a heavenly deliverer to come, etc., may be traced, floating down through all ages, and in all religions, until "the Desire of all nations"

came.

1 Eph. i. 13.

21 Johu v. 13; Rom. v. 1; Gal. v. 22; Rom. iv. 7.

In all ages the assertion has been true, that "there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved," but that of the Lord Jesus Christ. ligions have aids: the Christian alone has a Saviour.

1

False re

While having so much in common, there are several other characteristics in which the false religions have always been entirely in opposition to the true.

The religion which God has instituted is founded in love;2 its "God is love;"3 its motive power is "the love of Christ constraining;" while every other religion that has ever existed, whether Paganism or a corrupted Christianity, has been founded in fear; and its motive power is fear.

Having lost the knowledge of God through the Fall, man, in his natural state, never has conceived a true idea of the nature, holiness, and perfections of God. Being impure himself, he cannot imagine a pure God. "Unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure." For the same reason, such a character as the Lord Jesus Christ never could have been conceived by man.

In all false systems of religion, salvation and peace are sought by a reliance on works, or human merits; in God's plan, we are "justified by faith without the deeds of the law;" and "being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.""

In all ages, Faith in Christ, working by love, has purified the heart and enabled its possessor to overcome the world. On the contrary, unbelief and false religions have always tended to moral and physical degradation. This result is inevitable from the difference of the gods worshipped. What force could such injunctions as, "Be ye holy, for I am holy," have, coming from such characters as Jupiter or Venus: or from infidels, such as Voltaire or Thomas Paine?

As we have already noticed, the Deluge did not wash out the depraved nature of man. The judgments of God never do this. In the history of the Church, we see that even great deliverances, stringent laws, and the separation of the Church from the rest of the world, could not keep them from idolatry. Man must be born again. Immediately after the flood the corruption of the truth, therefore, grew naturally, and spread with the rapid increase of the population of the earth. Noah lived, after that event, three hundred and fifty years, and Shem, five hundred years; before the death of Shem, almost the whole world had become idolaters.

The corruption of religion being gradual, however, some knowledge of the true God was retained; and, also, some of the forms of worship required by him. Bishop Horseley compares the early ages of incipient idolatry, when the worship of idols was connected with the worship of the true God, to the Romanists, who pay such adoration to the virgin Mary and other saints, though still worshipping the Trinity. Amid the general idolatry which prevailed almost everywhere, some persons were found from time to time, in different lands, who still acknowledged God. In Canaan Abraham met Melchizedec, who was so great a priest of the Most High God that even Abraham gave tithes to him. In Gerar, it is said, king Abimelech feared God. In later days we read of Job and his friends, who probably lived in Arabia, and also, of the prophet Balaam, who lived in Moab. Centuries after, Nebuchadnezzar aud Belshazzar, Darius and Cyrus, by decrees made public recognition of Jehovah, as the true God. The first to welcome the Redeemer into the world were the magi or wise men from the East. The revelations which God made of himself to our first parents and to the patriarchs; and the history of creation and of the first occurrences in the earth which He gave by the hand of Moses; and fragments of some of the prophecies, especially that of a great Deliverer to come, found their way, and were

retained, though in a corrupted form, in almost all nations.

The only account of the religion adopted by those who forsook the worship of the true God before the flood, is that of Cain. No reference is made to idols or graven images during that period. From the first, Satan has continued to tempt mankind, as he did Jesus, by perverting sacred truths. The sacrifice, appointed by God to direct the faith and hope of men to the Saviour, was first perverted by Cain. The Lord's Supper, instituted as a commemoration,' not as a sacrifice, for" Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many," has since been perverted into an idolatrous worship by the Papists and other nominal Christians. Rejecting the sacrifice ordained and provided by God, the followers of Cain, if they offered at all, like him offered of their own works. Unitarianism was the first false religion.

Shortly after the flood idolatry appeared in different forms. In Babylon, the sun and moon, and afterwards the other heavenly bodies, were first worshipped. The influence which the heavenly bodies exert on the earth, giving light and heat, causing vegetation, affecting the winds and the tides, etc., led men first to regard them as ministers of God, and then to worship them, as the dispensers of benefits. In Babylon was the great temple of Belus, or the sun. It was afterwards connected with the worship of Nimrod under the name of Bel or Baal, ruler. Sanchoniathon, the Chaldean historian, gives the following account of its establishment: "In the second generation of men, during a great drought, Genus and Genia (supposed by Bishop Cumberland to be Cain and Caina) stretched forth their hands to heaven, in adoration of the sun, for they supposed him to be Beel Jamin, or the Lord of the heavens. Afterwards in the fifth generation, two pillars were consecrated to the elements of fire and wind." He also says, that after the flood, the first dei

1 Luke xxii. 19.

2 Heb. ix. 25, 28.