Page:Logic Taught by Love.djvu/20

16 true enlightenment; the masses ever plunging back into idolatry and carnalism.

There was in old times one practical difficulty connected with the conflict, which may well account for the eagerness of ancient Prophets to put an end to idolatrous conceptions. To every genuine philosopher the symbols of certain physical functions are among the most sacred of all objects, as being the perennial witness that the Logos is with man; and not with man only, but with all Creation. But the masses can see nothing in these objects except the symbols of certain pleasurable sensations; and if they are taught to think intently of them, they make their religion consist in the stimulation of mere sensation. This has been the cause of numberless disorders, and excuses much Prophetic injustice and bigotry on the subject of Idolatry.

The Founders of Judaism desired that the People should be taught, as far as possible, by symbols possessing in a very marked manner the property of evanescence. The Sun and Moon, the symbols of pure Light, had been degraded to idolatrous purposes; Moses seems to have tried to make his people feel that some phosphorescent material, which shone only rarely, was more truly sacred than the Sun and moon. In fact, the Mosaic religion may be described as one which abjures, as far as possible, the consecration of colour-and-form manifestations which are either partial or permanent; it takes, for its principal symbols, manifestations which are essentially evanescent; and it keeps permanently enshrined nothing but revealed Laws. The writer of Genesis asserts that the true symbol of God's covenant with Man is the Rainbow; which no man can capture or embalm or