Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Error's Chains
The story of the world's worship is a story of absorbing interest. The odd and the curious, the enchanting and the revolting are each factors of heathen devotion. We well remember with what exhaustless interest we looked in childhood at strange pictures of idols and temples, and listened to the reading of tales about the heathen. When the celebrated Dr. Alexander Duff was a little boy, his father was accustomed on Sabbath afternoons to show him pictures of idols, and to explain their histories. So vividly did the pictures and their stories impress the boy, that when he became a man he left Scotland and went to labor for the heathen of India.
The subject is indeed intensely interesting. Every nation has its God, or gods, and its corresponding forms of worship. Nothing lies so close to the heart of mankind as its religious faith. Religion in some form is interwoven with the entire fabric of human history. It concerns man's dearest pleasures, his fondest hopes, and his highest aspirations. Man must worship. It is part of his nature to worship. Hence, from the most civilized European to the half-civilized Chinaman, and even down to the degraded Hottentot; in all stages of man's existence, among all races and classes, some form of worship is found. Nothing surely can interest us more than the story of that faith in which our fellow-creatures have lived and died.
It is because the author believes that the subject of false gods and idol worship is so interesting, and because he hopes to furnish some much-needed information on this topic, that he has undertaken the present work. There is no one book that covers this ground. There are many volumes covering various phases of the religious systems of heathendom, but there is not one that deals comprehensively with all religions, extinct or existing, except indeed it be those suited only to students and to learned men.
The aim in this volume is to present the subject in a popular style, suited to the average reader of our land.
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