As we have already said, the goal of religion is likeness, and the
truest worship is imitation. It is proved by the universal experience of
humanity that the level of morality will never rise above the type
enshrined in their gods; or if it does, in consequence of contact with a
higher type in a higher religion, the old gods will be flung to the
moles and the bats. 'They that make them are like unto them; so is every
one that trusteth in them.' That is a universal truth. The worshippers
were in the Prophet's thought as dumb and dead as the idols. They who
'worship vanity' inevitably 'become vain.' A Venus or a Jupiter, a Baal
or an Ashtoreth, sets the tone of morals.
This truth is abundantly enforced by observation of the characters of
the men amongst us who are practical idolaters. They are narrowed and
lowered to correspond with their gods. Low ideals can never lead to
lofty lives. The worship of money makes the complexion yellow, like
jaundice. A man who concentrates his life's effort upon some earthly
good, the attainment of which seems to be, so long as it is unattained,
his passport to bliss, thereby blunts many a finer aspiration, and makes
himself blind to many a nobler vision. Men who are always hunting after
some paltry and perishable earthly good, become like dogs who follow
scent with their noses at the ground, and are unconscious of everything
a yard above their heads. We who live amidst the rush of a great
commercial community see many instances of lives stiffened, narrowed,
impoverished, and hardened by the fierce effort to become rich. And
wherever we look with adequate knowledge over the many idolatries of
English life, we see similar processes at work on character. Everywhere
around us 'the peoples are walking every one in the name of his god.'
That character constitutes the worshipper's ideal; it is a pattern to
which he aims to be assimilated; it is a good the possession of which he
thinks will make him blessed; it is that for which he willingly
sacrifices much which a clearer vision would teach him is far more
precious than that for which he is content to barter it.
The idolaters walking in the name of their god is a rebuke to the
Christian men who with faltering steps and many an aberration are
seeking to walk in the name of the Lord their God. If He is in any real
and deep sense 'our God,' we shall see in Him the realised ideal of all
excellence, the fountain of all our blessedness, the supreme good for
our seeking hearts, the sovereign authority to sway our wills; the
measure of our conscious possession of Him will be the measure of our
glad imitation of Him, and our joyful spirits, enfranchised by the
assurance of our loving possession of Him who is love, will hear Him
ever whisper to us, 'Be ye perfect as your Father which is in heaven is
perfect.' The desire to reproduce in the narrow bounds of our human
spirits the infinite beauties of the Lord our God will give elevation to
our lives, and dignity to our actions attainable from no other source.
If we hallow His name, we shall do His will, and earth will become a
foretaste of heaven.