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Excerpt from Elijah the Prophet Now, these two deities, Baal, the male, and Ashtaroth, the female, represented the fertilizing and productive principle in nature, and their worship was that of power. To the more cultivated and refined, it was simply a species of Pan theism; to the multitude, it was what one has called the worship of deified abundance, under a splendid and sensu ous ceremonial or, as Maurice has put it, The worship of Baal was the worship of power as distinguished from right eousness.t Hence, the apostasy of Ahab in giving up the personal Jehovah, the covenant God of Israel, and the cre ator and preserver of all things, and preferring Baal, was analogous to, if not, indeed, precisely identical with, the mod ern heresy of those who discard a personal God, and refuse to believe in him who is a loving father, while they deify nat ure under the name of law. Thus this old history has a special appropriateness to the present time, and we may prof itably ponder for a little the record of the manner in which the efforts of Ahab were counteracted and neutralized. The introduction of Baal-worship into Israel was part of a deliberate plan on the part of Ahab. He wished to strength en himself to the fullest extent against his Syrian enemies, while, at the same time, he developed the material resources of his country by an alliance with the Zidonians, who held the sea-board. If he could only succeed in welding Israel and Zidon together, he felt that he could defy the dynasty of Damascus, and look forward to a time of great prosperity from a participation in the unrivaled commerce of the Phoe nicians. But there is no unifying influence so strong as that of religion. Hence he determined to carry the nation over bodily into the Zidonian worship; and, as the first step in that direction, he allied himself to the royal house of Zidon. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.