, amid those trees of life there lurks no
serpent to destroy,--the country, through whose vast region we shall
traverse with untired footsteps, while every fresh revelation of
beauty will augment our knowledge, and holiness, and joy." [105]
Who will travel on such a pilgrimage of enlarged thought, and not
come to the conclusion that if one course of development has been
followed by all scientific and spiritual truth, then "almost the whole
of the mythology and theology of civilized nations maybe traced,
without arrangement or co-ordination, and in forms that are
undeveloped and original rather than degenerate, in the traditions
and ideas of savages"? [106] Such a conclusion may diminish our
self-esteem, if we have supposed ourselves the sole depositaries of
Divine knowledge; but it will exalt our conception of the generosity
of the Father of all men, who never left a human soul without a
witness of His invisible presence and ineffable love.

MOON WORSHIP.

I. INTRODUCTION.

We have now to show that the moon has been in every age, and
remains still, one of the principal objects of human worship. Even
among certain nations credited with pure monotheism, it will be
manifested that there was the practice of that primitive polytheism
which adored the hosts of heaven. And, however humiliating or
disappointing the disclosure may prove, it will be established that
some of the foremost Christian peoples of the world maintain
luniolatry to this day, notwithstanding that they have the reproving
light of the latest civilization. We are so prone to talk of heathenism
as abroad, that we forget or neglect the gross heathenism which
abounds at home; and while we complacently speak of the march of
the world's progress with which we identify ourselves, we are
oblivious of the fact that much ancient falsehood survives and
blends with the truth in which our superior minds, or minds with
superior facilities, have been trained. How few of us reflect that the
signs and symbols of rejected theories have passed into the
nomenclature of received systems! Nay, we plume ourselves upon
the new translation or revision as if we were the favoured recipients
of some fresh revelation. Not only in the names of our days and
months, but also in some of our most cherished dogmas, we are but
the "liberal-conservatives" in religion, who retain the old, while we
congratulate ourselves upon being the apostles of the new. That the
past must always run i