4. What gives this tendency its strength? The Jews were tempted to worship these idols because they saw in the lives of the nations around them that emancipation from shame, from conscience, from restraint, from the stern and awful laws of morality, for which all bad men sigh. They longed for that slavery of sin which would be freedom from righteousness. It was not the revolting image of Molech that allured them ; it was the spirit of hatred, the fierce delight of the natural wild beast which lurks in the human heart. IMolech was but the projection
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into the outward of ghastly fears born of man's own guilt ; the consequent impulse to look on God as a wrathful, avenging Being, to be propitiated only by human agony and human blood ; and as One whom (so whispered to them a terrified selfishness) it was better to propitiate by passing their children through the fire than to let themselves suifer from His rage. It was not any image of Mammon that allured them to worship that abject spirit. It was the love of money, which is a root of all evil; it was covetousness, which is idolatry. And why should they worship the degraded Baal-Peor ? Just because he was degraded ; just because of " those wanton rites which cost them woe."
^ Idolatry, kneeling to a monster. The contrary of Faith — not want of Faith. Idolatry is faith in the wrong thing, and quite distinct from Faith in No thing, the "Dixit Insipiens." Very wise men may be idolaters, but they cannot be atheists.^
^ Do these tendencies not reveal themselves still ? Is it not possible that we form to ourselves false conceptions of God ? We think of Him on the one hand as a self-willed despot, or we think of Him on the other hand as a sentimental father, who has within Him no power of anger or of passion. Again, have we not thought of Him too often as an indifferent proprietor, — forgive the homeliness of the figure of speech, — an absentee landlord, who collects rents on Sundays, and cares nothing about what happens to His property during the week ? How often shall we have to plead guilty to this charge, that we have a god to suit our own convenience ; that we accommodate the doctrine of God which the Bible contains, and which Jesus uttered finally for the world, to our own low level of life ; that we have allowed our selfishness to blur the vision of God, and to make or create a new god according to our own understanding ? ^
II.
Forms of Idolatry.
1. Idolatry manifests itself at times in gross and material forms. — What was the sin of Jeroboam ? That he set up golden images at Dan and Bethel, and in doing so provided for the people a representation of God. When Jeroboam set up those golden images, he had no idea of setting up new gods. That was not the ^ Euskin, The Bible of Amiens ( Works, xxxiii. 154). ' G. Campbell Morgan.
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sin of Jeroboam. In the wilderness, when the men, waiting for Moses, according to the ancient story, made a golden calf, they were not making any new god. When we read the story carefully, we discover that they were making a likeness of Jehovah, and when they had made their golden calf and bowed themselves before it, they observed a feast of Jehovah. That was the sin of Jeroboam also ; not the setting up of a new deity, not the introduction into the national life of a god borrowed from surrounding countries, but an attempt to help Israel to know Jehovah by a likeness, a representation of Him which should be set up at Dan and Bethel. In so doing, Jeroboam was not breaking the first commandment, "Thou shalt have no other gods," but the second, " Thou shalt not make any likeness of God."
We go a little further on in the history of Israel, and we find Ahab. The sin of Ahab was different from Jeroboam's in that he introduced other deities and placed them beside Jehovah. He built temples for Baal and established the worship of Baal. That was not a representation of Jehovah, but another deity. The sin of Ahab was that he broke the first of the words of the Decalogue. The breach of the second word of the Decalogue always precedes the breach of the first in the history of believing peoples. First, something to set up to help us to see and understand God ; and then presently other gods usurping the place of God. First, a false conception of God, and we worship it; secondly, some other deity by the side of God.
^ Dr. Buchanan, who was an eye-witness of the worship of Juggernaut in India, describes what he saw. The Temple of Juggernaut has been standing for eight or nine hundred years. The idol is like a man, with large diamonds for eyes ; with a black face, and a mouth foaming with blood. Well, he says he saw this idol put upon a large carriage, nine or ten times as high as the biggest man one ever saw. And then the men, women and children (tens and hundreds of thousands were there together) began to draw the carriage along. The wheels made deep marks in the ground as it went along. And here there was a man who lay down before it, and the wheels went over him and killed him on the spot. And again there was a woman, who in the same way lay down before the idol, thinking she was sure to get to heaven if she was crushed beneath that idol's carriage wheels. And he saw children there drawing the idol. And he tells about two little children sitting crying beside their dying mother, who