The first step in our proposed inquiry is to ascertain what evidence on the doctrine and practice of the Invocation of Saints and Angels can be fairly drawn from the revealed word of God in the Old Testament.

Now, let us suppose that a person of a cultivated and enlightened mind, and of a sound and clear judgment, but hitherto a stranger to revelation, were required to study the ancient Scriptures with the single view of ascertaining what one object more than any other, subordinate to the great end of preparing the world for the advent of Messiah, seemed to be proposed by the wisdom of the Almighty in imparting to mankind that revelation; could he fix upon any other point as the one paramount and pervading principle with so much reason, as upon this, the preservation in the world of a practical belief in the perfect unity of God, and the fencing of his worship against the admixture of any other, of whatever character or form; The announcement that the Creator and Governor of the universe is the sole Giver of every temporal and spiritual blessing; the one only Being to whom, his rational creatures on earth should pay any religious service whatever; the one only Being to whom mortals must seek by prayer and invocation for the supply of any of their wants?  Through the entire volume the inquirer would find that the unity of God is announced in every variety of expression; and that the exclusive worship {18} of him alone is insisted upon and guarded with the utmost jealousy by assurances, by threats, and by promises, as the God who heareth prayer, alone to be called upon, alone to be invoked, alone to be adored.  So to speak, he would find that recourse was had to every expedient for the express purpose of protecting God’s people from the fatal error of embracing in their worship any other being or name whatever; not reserving supreme adoration for the Supreme Being, and admitting a sort of secondary honour and inferior mode of invocation to his exalted saints and servants; but banishing at once and for ever the most distant approximation towards religious honour—­the veriest shadow of spiritual invocation to any other Being than Jehovah himself alone.

In process of time, the heathen began to deify those mortals who had conferred signal benefits on the human race, or had distinguished themselves by their power and skill above their fellow-countrymen.  Male and female divinities were multiplying on every side.  Together with Jupiter, the fabled father of gods and men, worshipped under different names among the various tribes, were associated those “gods many and lords many,” which ignorance and superstition, or policy and craft, had invented; and which shared some a greater, some a less portion of popular veneration and religious worship.  To the people of God, the worshippers of Jehovah, it was again and again most solemnly and awfully denounced, that no such thing should be.  “Thou shalt worship the Lord