Page:The spirit of the Hebrew poetry 1861.djvu/83

 How is it that they should have been thus abstinent—should thus have held off from ground which tempts every aspiring mind? We shall find no admissible answer to this question, except this, that this series of writers followed, not the impulses of their individual genius, but each of them wrote as he was inspired from above. Nothing in any degree approaching to a worshipping of man—nothing of that sort which elsewhere has been so common—nothing which could have given a warrant to the unwise extravagances of the saint-and-martyr worship of the Church in the third century, anywhere makes its appearance within the Canonical Scriptures of the Old Testament. On the contrary—as well by solemn injunction, as by their uniform example—the Inspired writers, historians, prophets, poets, repeat the warning—as to the rendering of worship to man, or to any creature—"See thou do it not: worship God."