'Hath a nation changed their gods, which are yet no gods? but My people
have changed their glory for that which doth not profit.'--JER. ii. 11.
The obstinacy of the adherents of idolatry is in striking contrast with
Israel's continual tendency to forsake Jehovah. It reads a scarcely
less forcible lesson to many nominal and even to some real Christians.
I. That contrast carries with it a disclosure of the respective origins
of the two kinds of Religion.
The strangeness of the contrasted conduct is intensified when we take
into account the tremendous contrast between the two Objects of
worship. Israel's God was Israel's 'Glory'; the idol-worshipper bowed
down before 'that which doth not profit,' and yet no experience of God
could bind His fickle worshippers to Him, and no experience of the
impotence of the idol could shake its votaries' devotion. They cried
and were not heard. They toiled and had no results. They broke their
teeth on 'that which is not bread,' and filled their mouths with gritty
ashes that mocked them with a semblance of nourishment and left them
with empty stomachs and excoriated gums, yet by some strange
hallucination they clung to 'vanities,' while Israel was always
hankering after opportunity to desert Jehovah. The stage of
civilisation partly accounts for the strange fascination of idolatry
over the Israelites. But the deeper solution lies in the fact that the
one religion rises from the hearts of men, corresponds to their moral
condition, and is largely moulded by their lower nature; while the
other is from above, corresponds, indeed, with the best and deepest
longings and needs of souls, but contravenes many of their most clamant
wishes, and necessarily sets before them a standard high and difficult
to reach. Men make their gods in their own image, and are conscious of
no rebuke nor stimulus to loftier living when they gaze on them. The
God of Revelation bids men remake themselves in His image, and that
command requires endless effort. The average man has to put a strain on
his intellect in order to rise to the apprehension of God, and a still
more unwelcome strain on his moral nature to rise to the imitation of
God. No wonder, then, if the dwellers on the low levels should cleave
to them, and the pilgrims to the heights should often weary of their
toil and be distressed with the difficulty of breathing the thin air up
there, and should give up climbing and drop down to the flats once more.