Philosophers are agreed that even the most primitive races of mankind
reach out beyond the world of matter to a superior Being. It is as
natural for man to feel after God as it is for the ivy to feel after a
support. Hunger and thirst drive him to seek for food, and there is a
hunger of the soul that needs satisfying, too. Man does not need to be
commanded to worship, as there is not a race so high or so low in the
scale of civilization but has some kind of a god. What he needs is to
be directed aright.
This is what the first commandment is for. Before we can worship
intelligently, we must know what or whom to worship. God does not
leave us in ignorance. When Paul vent to Athens, he found an altar
dedicated to "An Unknown God," and he proceeded to tell of Him whom we
worship. When God gave the commandments to Moses, He commenced with a
declaration of His own character, and demanded exclusive recognition.
"I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of
Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods
before me."
The Rev. Dr. Dale says these words have great significance. "The Jews
knew Jehovah as the God who had held back the waves like a wall while
they fled across the sea to escape the vengeance of their enemies;
they knew him as the God who had sent thunder, and lightning, and
hail, plagues on cattle, and plagues on men, to punish the Egyptians
and to compel them to let the children of Israel go; they knew Him as
the God whose angel had slain the firstborn of their oppressors, and
filled the land from end to end with death, and agony, and terror. He
was the same God, so Moses and Aaron told them, who by visions and
voices, in promises and precepts, had revealed Himself long before to
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We learn what men are from what they say
and from what they do. A biography of Luther gives a more vivid and
trustworthy knowledge of the man than the most philosophical essay on
his character and creed. The story of his imprisonment and of his
journey to Worms, his Letters, his Sermons, and his Table-Talk, are
worth more than the most elaborate speculations about him. The Jews
learned what God is, not from theological dissertations on the Divine
attributes, but from the facts of a Divine history. They knew Him for
themselves in His own acts and His own words."
Some one asked an Arab: "How do you know that there is a God?" "How do
I know whether a man or a camel passed my tent last night?" he
replied. God's footprints in nature and in our own experience are the
best evidence of His existence and character.