WHEN a man conceives within his own mind an image of God with the
intent to worship it, he does not, in worshipping it, really worship
a God who is alive; he does not worship a God who made him and all
mankind. That which he worships is only an image of God which he
himself has created.
Let any man think of this fact for a little moment and he will see that
it is true.
Suppose, for an instance, that, instead of an idea of God, you form in
your mind an idea, say, of Cromwell, or of Washington, or of Napoleon,
or of Lincoln. Is it not perfectly clear that that image is not the
real living Cromwell, Washington, Napoleon, Lincoln, but only a mental
picture of one of those men? You may cause that image--that mental
picture--to seem to move and to speak and to assume different aspects;
you may cause it apparently to will and to act, but it is not the
real hero-man who so moves and speaks, wills and acts. It is only an
imaginary speech and action of an imagined hero.
The real man is exactly a different thing. He is of real flesh and
blood, and his speech and action depend upon his own volition and not
upon your imagination. You may, if you choose, decorate the image in
your mind with the laurel wreath of hero-worship, and you may cause the
most noble and exalted thoughts to seem to pass through the imagined
hero's mind. But it is not the living man whom you crown, nor do those
thoughts really pass through the brain of the living man. That which
you crown is only your own idea--your own created image of the man; and
the thoughts which seem to pass through his mind are, in reality, only
your own thoughts which you cause to pass through your own mind.
So it is exactly with the worship of God.
For let the mind form ever so exalted an image of God, that image is,
after all, only the creation of the mind; it is only a dead thing, and
not the living fact.
When a man prays to such an image of God, he prays not to the actual
living Heavenly Father who created him, but to an image of God which he
himself has created.
For that image of God is no more really alive than the imagined hero is
really a living man.
And as it is in the case of an imagined hero, so it is with that
image of God. For let that image seem to move and to act ever so
gigantically, it is, after all, only an idea in your own mind--a thing
thinner and more unsubstantial than the thinnest ether--a thought
without any real potency or any real life.
The actual and living God is exactly and perfectly different from such
an ideal image. He is infinite, the idea in the mind is definite; He
is omnipotent, the idea in the mind is impotent to create so much as
a single grain of dust; He is omniscient, the idea in the mind knows
nothing and thinks nothing excepting such knowledges and thoughts that
the man's imagination is pleased to place within its empty skull. He,
the Ancient of Days, exists forever and forever; the idea in the mind
continues to live only so long as we kneel to pray, and it vanishes
instantly we arise from our knees and go about our earthly business. He
is the fountain-head of all human intelligence, and has Himself created
the rationality of man; that idea of Him--it crumbles and dissolves
away before a five-minute argument with any clever sceptic or agnostic
who chooses to assault it with the hard, round stones of reasoning and
of fact. He, the Heavenly Father, is the fountain of all life; that
idea of Him--what power has it to give life to anything? Can it--such
an ethereal nothing, the creation of the mind itself--lift up the soul
into a resurrection of life when the body of flesh shall grow cold and
die? Can it illuminate that black and empty abyss of death with any
radiance of life? What power has it to turn aside those floods of doubt
which, now and then, bursting their bonds, sweep down upon and overflow
the soul, drowning out even the faint little spark of hope which we
all so carefully cherish. That image, like the image of the man-hero,
is dead and impotent excepting as the man's own imagination makes it
living and potential. Pray to your imaginary God in such times of black
terror, and see how little that empty image can help and aid you. It
is as powerless to save you from that flood of doubt as the African's
fetich of wood is impotent to save him from the deluge of water that
bursts upon and overflows the world about him. When that black and
awful torrent--the fear of annihilation--sweeps down upon the man, it,
the image, is torn away from his grasp like a dead fragment of wood and
is swept away and gone, leaving him to struggle alone and unaided in
the overwhelming flood.
And yet man continues to worship this dead, self-created image. He says
that God has this imagined attribute and that imagined attribute; that
He thinks and feels thus and so, and does this and the other thing,
now being angry and now pleased. But, after all, these things belong
only to the image in the mind. What God really thinks and feels and
intends is beyond the understanding of the man whom He has created.
Why does man worship an image instead of the reality? It is easy to
see why he does so. He worships that image, because in worshipping
it he worships himself, it being a part of himself. He loves that
image because he himself has made it, and because he loves all the
things of his own creation. He is willing to do the supposed mandates
of that self-created fetich (provided they are not too difficult of
performance), because those mandates spring fundamentally from his own
imagination, and because he likes to do as he himself wills to do.
Just so we worship, not the real Christ, but an imagined Christ that is
not alive.
Christ entered into the city upon Palm Sunday.
This is the way we love to imagine that vast and tremendous fact--the
final entrance of divinely human truth into the citadel of life.
We love to think of Him as a white-robed, majestic figure crowned with
glory, with smooth hair and shining face--mild, benignant, exalted.
We love to picture to ourselves how young men and maidens and little
children ran before His coming and spread their garments or fragrant
branches of trees in His triumphal way, shouting with multitudinous
cadence, "Hosannah in the highest!" How splendid it is to think thus
of the King of Glory coming into His city of holiness. Thus imagined,
it is a grand and beautiful picture, and we wonder how those scribes
and pharisees, those priests and Levites, blinded with their own
wickedness, should not have seen the splendor of it all--should have
denied and crucified One who came thus gloriously into their city.
But in so depicting that divine coming we bow in submission, not to
the living fact, but to a picture of that fact which we ourselves have
created in the imagination. That is how we would have liked to see the
Messiah of Jehovah-God come into His glory. That is how we would have
arranged it if we had had the shaping of events, and we can bow before
that image easily enough. But, alas! for us it is not the way in which
He really comes. For God does not shape His events as we would have
them shaped; He shapes them exactly different.
Read for yourself the truth as it stands written in the Divine Word of
Jehovah-God, and then ask your own heart whether you would not have
rejected Him as the scribes and pharisees of that day rejected Him.
For in the actuality of fact there could have been and there was no
such glory of coming. That which the intelligent, thoughtful men of
that day saw was, apparently, a common man, a journeyman carpenter,
travel-stained, weary, footsore, riding upon a shaggy little ass,
surrounded by a knot of rough fishermen and followed by a turbulent
multitude gathered from the highways and the byways. For He had chosen
for His associates, not the good and the virtuous, the reputable and
the law-abiding citizen; He had chosen the harlot, the publican, the
sinner, the outcast. For He proclaimed with His own lips that He was
the Saviour of the sinners and not of the righteous. Read for yourself
of the multitude that followed Him! How they stripped the clothes
from their backs to throw in His path; how they rent and tore the
branches from the trees, mutilating and dismembering God's created,
shady things, they knew not why. That mob believed that He was coming
to overthrow existing law and order, so that the rich and the powerful
might be cast down, and that they, the poor and the destitute, might
be set up in their stead. They believed (for He had demonstrated it to
them) that He possessed a supernatural power to perform miracles, and
that He could and would use that power to overturn existing order. For
did He Himself not say with His own very lips that He could overturn
the Temple of the Lord and could build it up again in three days. Such
was the ignorant mob that shouted and raved when He entered the city
riding on an ass. They expected to see something supernatural done,
and, when He showed no miracles, they presently, in a day or two,
turned against Him like wild beasts and gave Him over to mortal agony
and death. Such as that was the crowd that really followed Him, and it
was not beautiful and exalted.
There the story stands written in the Book of Books--a Gospel so divine
that every single word--yea, every jot and tittle written within it--is
holy. There it stands terrible and stern for us scribes and pharisees
of intelligent respectability to read. We cannot accept it in its
reality; for even now we would deny it as we, scribes and pharisees,
priests and Levites, did of old. For, alas! we cannot accept Him in His
reality.
We pharisees of old preferred to see their Messiah come according to
their idea of order and of righteousness, and when He did not come
thus, we could not acknowledge Him. We of to-day build up a beautiful
picture of Him, but, in reality, we would deny and revile the living
fact as we did before. It could not be otherwise, for God has made us
as we are.
You of to-day ought not to blame us because we were afraid when we
beheld that Christ of publicans and sinners bursting into our Temple,
and, with fury in His voice and in His aspect, thrash those who sat
there upon business doing no harm. What wonder when we heard Him say He
could tear down our beautiful Temple (the fruit of so much reverential
labor) and build it up again in three days--what wonder that we should
have been afraid lest the mob, taking Him at His word, should rend and
tear down all our sacred things with an insane fury. What wonder that
Bishop Caiaphas, seeing all the terrors of violence that threatened the
peace of the community, should have said: "It is better that this one
Man should perish rather than all of us should die."
We scribes and pharisees--we are the bulwarks of law and order and of
existing religion. Let Christ come to-day and we would crucify Him--if
the law allowed us to do so--just as we scribes and pharisees did
nineteen hundred years ago. For is it not better, indeed, that one man
should die rather than that all existing order should be overturned,
and that law and religion should perish?
* * * * *
Go ye down, scribes and pharisees, into the secret, hidden places of
your city where the immortal and living image of God lies with its face
in the dust of humility. There alone you will find the living Christ,
and if you, finding Him in His rags and poverty, can truly take Him by
the hand and lift Him up, then will He also raise you up into a life
that shall be everlasting. For there is no other God of humanity than
that poor and lowly image--no, not in heaven or on the earth or in the
abyss beneath the earth.
For out of the dust of misery and of sin He lifts the lowly up and
makes him new so that in a life hereafter he shall shine with a glory
that is of God's creating, and not of man's.
He who has ears to hear let him hear, let him hear; only God be
merciful to us poor hypocrites and sinners, who deny His living
presence. Happy, indeed, is it for us that His mercy is infinite and
endures forever, else we would perish in our own pride of lawfulness
and virtue, and be forever lost to any hope of salvation.