^ H. M. Gwatkin, TIlc Eye for Spiritual Things, 94. 2 Hugh Price Hughes, The Philanthropy of God, 229. ' H. Scott Holland, Personal Stiulies, 18.
I JOHN V. 21 415
women had almost to go out of the world, in order to be free from complicity in the all-pervading idol-worship. Now, although the form has changed, and the fascinations of old idolatry belong only to a certain stage in the world's culture and history, the temptation to idolatry remains just as subtle, just as all-pervasive, and the yielding to it just as absurd.
^ Just consider what your feelings would be, were a heathen king to conquer this land, and to set up the images of his gods in the beautiful cathedral at Salisbury, where so many generations have been accustomed to worship God and His Son. Yet the heart of a Christian is far more beautiful, and far more precious, and far dearer to God, than that cathedral. The cathedral at Salisbury will not last for ever ; Christ did not die for it, He did not purchase it with His own blood. But us He has bought; for us He has paid a price, that we might be His for all eternity. What, then, must be His feelings, to see His own hearts defiled and polluted by being given up to idols ? ^
Hear, Father ! hear and aid !
If I have loved too well, if I have shed,
In my vain fondness, o'er a mortal head Gifts, on Thy shrine, my God, more fitly laid^
If I have sought to live
But in one light, and made a mortal eye
The lonely star of my idolatry, Thou that art Love, oh ! pity and forgive ! ^
^ Many people spend their life as some African tribes do, — constructing idols, finding they are not the oracles they fancied, and breaking them in pieces to seek others. They have an uninteresting succession of perfect friends and infallible teachers. How many need the angel's word, " See thou do it not." ^
*[| I went out into the garden to walk before dinner, and with difficulty refrained my tears to think how oft and with what sweet delight I had borne my dear, dear boy along that walk, with my dear wife at my side ; but had faith given me to see his imiiiortality in another world, and rest satisfied with my Maker's will. Sir Peter Lawrie called after dinner, and besought me, as indeed have many, to go and live with him; but nothing shall tempt me from this sweet solitude of retirement, and activity of consolation, and ministry to the afflicted. . . . When he was gone
' A. W. Hare, The Alton Sermons, 493. ^ Mrs. Henians,
' John Ker, TJionc/htafor JTeart and Life, 3,
4i6 THE PERIL OF IDOLATRY
I went forth upon my outdoor ministry, and as I walked to j\Ir. Wliyte's, along the terraces overlooking those fields where we used to walk, three in one, I was sore, sore distressed, and found the temptation to " idolatry of the memory " ; which the Lord delivered me from — at the same time giving the clue to the subject which has been taking form in my mind lately, to be treated as arising out of my trial ; and the form in which it presented itself is "the idolatry of the affections," which will embrace the whole evil, the whole remedy, and the sound condition of all relations.^
4 But we must not imagine that God calls upon, us to hide every sign of affection. — It is true that Jesus said " He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me " ; but He also denounced those Pharisees who refused to help their parents under the pretence that they gave so liberally to the Temple treasury.
^ William Black, in his story In Far Lochaber, describes a household " where every natural instinct was repressed as being in itself something lawless ; where the father held that he could not love God truly if he showed any demonstrative affection for his children." In his own early home in Glasgow, Black had been brought up in that way. There was genuine family affection but no outward token of it. He revolted from that afterwards, very naturally, and the training of his own three children was very different. But that was the r!d Scottish idea, having its root in religion — " Keep yourselves from idols." Mothers, losing a child, have sometimes said, " I liiade too much of an idol of my child, and God has punished me by taking it away." No, no. Do not hide, do not limit natural affection in the name of religion. You make an idol of your child if you would do anything dishonour- able for the child's sake ; if you say, as it were, my love for the child justifies me ; or if you spoil the child by over-indulgence, or by want of rebuke when it does wrong. But do not in the name of religion hide or diminish the tokens of affection. There cannot be too much of that in the home life.
I took the poker, a few minutes before writing this, to break a piece of coal on the fire, and got a painful shock. I struck again, and struck harder, without feeling anything. I had struck the second time in the right place, about a third from the end of the poker. And human love may be more manifested, instead of less, when the love of God is at the root of it. The tokens of