While this was the theory, the first person in the Godhead was
practically overlooked. As the Great Invisible, taking no immediate
concern in human affairs, he was "to be worshipped through
silence alone," * that is, in point of fact, he was not
worshipped by the multitude at all. The same thing is strikingly
illustrated in India at this day. Though Brahma, according to the sacred
books, is the first person of the Hindoo Triad, and the religion of
Hindostan is called by his name, yet he is never worshipped, and there
is scarcely a single Temple in all India now in existence of those that
were formerly erected to his honour. * So also is it in those countries
of Europe where the Papal system is most completely developed. In Papal
Italy, as travellers universally admit (except where the Gospel has
recently entered), all appearance of worshipping the King Eternal and
Invisible is almost extinct, while the Mother and the Child are the
grand objects of worship. Exactly so, in this latter respect, also was
it in ancient Babylon. The Babylonians, in their popular religion,
supremely worshipped a Goddess Mother and a Son, who was represented in
pictures and in images as an infant or child in his mother's arms . From
Babylon, this worship of the Mother and the Child spread to the ends of
the earth. In Egypt, the Mother and the Child were worshipped under the
names of Isis and Osiris. * In India, even to this day, as Isi and
Iswara; * in Asia, as Cybele and Deoius; * in Pagan Rome, as Fortuna and
Jupiter-puer, or Jupiter, the boy; * in Greece, as Ceres, the Great
Mother, with the babe at her breast, * or as Irene, the goddess of
Peace, with the boy Plutus in her arms; * and even in Thibet, in China,
and Japan, the Jesuit missionaries were astonished to find the
counterpart of Madonna * and her child as devoutly worshipped as in
Papal Rome itself; Shing Moo, the Holy Mother in China, being
represented with a child in her arms, and a glory around her, exactly as
if a Roman Catholic artist had been employed to set her up.
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