Such a state of things is sad and dangerous.  Unless some way be found to read these books without equivocation, they will gradually cease to be used in home instruction, and the coming generations will grow up without their holy influence.  This state of things ought not to have been brought upon us.  The reverent reading of the Bible alone would never have led us into such straits.  It is the old story of all human reverence.  That which we revere, we exaggerate.  Glamor gathers around it.  The symbol is identified with the spiritual reality.  The image becomes an idol.  The wonderful thing becomes a fetish.  So we end in an irrational reverence of that which is worthy of a real and rational reverence.  Then we have a superstition.  Superstition always results in destroying the rightful belief of which it is the exaggeration and distortion.

This is the common story of superstition, from the totemism of savage tribes and the image-worship of semi-civilized peoples on to the heathenism of the Mass.  Men who felt the reality of a mystic communion with Christ, of which the Supper of the Lord was the symbol,—­who felt the strengthening of their characters as their thoughts fed upon the words and life of Jesus,—­naturally came to speak of the sacrament in terms of awe, which magnified the mystery, until at last they bowed down before the veritable body and blood of Christ, and trembled with fear as the tinkling of the silver bell announced that the priest was bringing God down into a wafer!  They had really heard God speaking to them through the sacrament; and this never could have done them harm.  But when they tried to express what they felt, they exaggerated and distorted the simple symbol of the Infinite Presence, identified it with the spiritual reality, and set up a Christian idol, a civilized fetish, which has done incalculable harm to men.  The spiritual truth became an intellectual lie, and in every Catholic country superstition has eaten out faith, and reason refuses to reverence the sacrament.

The Bible has repeated this common story.  The spiritual influence felt forth-flowing from it, the voice of God heard speaking through it, drew man’s natural reverence to it.  In trying to express the reasons for this reverence he has over-stated and mis-stated the nature of these books.  The symbol has been identified with the reality.  The Bible has become an idol, a fetish.

Bibliolatry, the worship of the Bible, is responsible for the lack of the reasonable reverence these sacred writings merit.  This reasonable reverence can be recovered only by frankly putting away the unreasonable reverence.  We must exorcise a superstition to save a faith.  We must part with the unreal Bible if we would hold the real Bible.  Iconoclasm is not pleasant to any but the callow youth.  It may be none the less needful; and then the sober man must not shrink from shivering the most sacred shrine.

As runs the Hindu thought, the Destroyer is one of the forms of the Divine Power.  God is continually destroying worlds and creeds alike; but in order to rebuild.