1. The God of this world. The God of this world takes various forms.
(1) Here is one form. We do not cast him into the form of a graven, or a molten image ; we may not set him up in the "plains of Dura, in the province of Babylon," but we set "him up in London, at the Stock Exchange. We have little images of him in our own houses, and we worship him with the " sound of the cornet, flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, and dulcimer, and all kinds of music," and we call him Money ! We are great at the worship of Mammon. People never seem tired of burning incense to wealth. To-day, a man may be so despicable a creature that we would not demean ourselves by touching him with the extreme tip of our little finger. He suddenly becomes heir to ten thousand a year, and to-morrow we are only too glad to get into our carriage and call upon him. What has made the difference? He has become a successful "worshipper of the golden image," and we, as other high priests of this idolatry, are boimd to fraternize with this excellent person ! Who is he ? " The God of this World." The Baal of our day !
(2) Here is another " God of this world " ; we set him up on a lofty tower of ivory, or we put him into one of our superb
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equipages, and roll him through the street, with a four-in-hand, and we call him Rank ! And everybody bows down and worships this God, as he passes along. Look at him there, as he goes along in all his splendour, and the votaries of this world bow down with profound obeisance, and do him honour !
(3) Here is another "God of this world"! We deck him with all kinds of silks, satins, and load him with jewellery, and we call him Fashion. We put him in our drawing-rooms; our rou6s are skilful in his worship, and women are specially devoted to him. If he makes us ridiculous it is no matter. Any kind of eccentricity is pardoned, even though our own tastes condemn us for the form our worship assumes, though our own reason may rise up against it, and we may sometimes say, as we look into our glass, '•' What a ridiculous, empty-headed, wax doll I have made of myself ! " Yet in the very same moment we none the less eagerly offer our incense to the worship of the God that we have made.
(4) Here is another God. We beat drums, and we blow trumpets ; we deck him in scarlet regimentals ; and we write the name Amhition upon his brow, and fall down and worship him. What deity so great as this God ? We honour him supremely ; we are never tired of speaking about him ; poets write of him ; and philosophers go out of their way to make themselves ridiculous about him; even ministers of the gospel of peace can become eloquent in sounding forth the praises of what they are pleased to call " glory."
(5) Or it may be we call him Pleasure. He puts on the fool's mask, and wherever he goes eager crowd? of admirers follow him. "There goes the God of this world." "Have you heard So-and-so ? Go and hear him : why, you would die of laughing ! " As though it were worthy of the dignity of humanity to lay itself out for levity ; as though we were not frivolous enough by nature, but must needs pay our fellow-travellers on the broad road to make us more frivolous than w were before ! ^
^ Very powerfully has Watts embodied his idea of Mammon as the god of this world, in that telling picture which exhibits him to us as a king, sitting on a scarlet throne ornamented at the top with two skulls. His head, Midas-like, is encircled with a crown fashioned of a broad baud of gold — with round golden ^ Canon Hay Aitken. DEUT.-ESTH. — 2^
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4i8 HALTING BETWEEN TWO OPINIONS
coins standing up from it in imitation of the balls or strawberry leaves of a coronet. There is something indescribably mean and repulsive in his face, with square massive jaws — sordid, selfish mouth — flat nose, and bleared dead-blue eyes, full of cunning and deceit and all hardness, rising above a neck that wrinkles into gross folds like the skin of a rhinoceros. On each side above his head his hair rises up like a pair of asinine ears; and he is clothed with a gold tunic embroidered with patterns taken from the pursuits of wealth. One hand is grovelling among the money bags in his lap, and the other grasps the long tresses of a beautiful woman who has sold herself for gain, and whose green robe of freshness falls away from her. His foot, covered with blood-red hose, rests on the body of a naked youth who has been a devoted slave, and has been stamped into the mire by his bondage. In the background of the picture a crimson curtain falls down concealing the distant view, but disclosing immediately under- neath it a smoking fire, emblematic of the fiery danger to which the lust of wealth exposes the soul that cherishes it. The commercial world is only too full of illustrations of the destructive flame which this spark of inward fire kindles, for no one can be covetous at heart without his covetousness finding outward expression in his life.^