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THE IMAGE OF GOD.

(Continued.)

Who is the image of the invisible God.-COLOSSIANS i. 15.

DESCRIBING a tribe of pagan Africans, Dr. Livingstone says, Like most others, they listen with respect and attention, but when we kneel down and worship an unseen Being, the act and position appear to them so ridiculous, that they cannot refrain from bursting into uncontrollable laughter. Accustomed from our earliest childhood to worship the unseen, we wonder at these merry savages; and yet, by nature like them, we are all creatures of sight and sense. Hence our desire to see any remarkable person; hence the pleasure we take in the portrait that embellishes the biography of a great or good man, or in the statue which preserves his features and adorns his tomb. Some may call the publican's a childish curiosity. But we sympathise with Zaccheus, when, having heard that Jesus was passing, he left the receipt of custom to join the throng; but, lost there, shot a-head of the multitude, and climbed a friendly sycamore, to catch a passing glance at the wonder-working man. We esteem it not the least of the blessings which shall be enjoyed

in heaven, that we shall see Jesus there; see him as he is; gaze with fond, adoring love on the very face and form which our faith has so often tried to fancy, and painters of the greatest genius have utterly failed to express.

Con

A sense of guilt makes man afraid of God. science makes cowards of us all; so that, as Adam fled from his presence to the bushes of the garden, many fly even from the thought of him, in whom, but for sin, they would have lovingly confided. But for the fears of guilt, the contemplation of God's works would kindle a devout curiosity to see the hand they sprung from. And when, so rapt in admiration as for the time to forget that we are sinners, we gaze on the spangled firmament, or look out on the blue rolling ocean, or, from the peak of some lofty mountain, look over a tumbling sea of hills, or down on the glorious landscape, as in the mingled beauty of dark green-wood, and golden fields, and silver streams, and castle-crowned summits, and scattered villages, and busy towns, it stretches away to the distant shore, the soul has some longing for a view of God more palpable than it gets. We almost wish that he were not invisible, and enter, in some measure, into the feelings of Moses on Mount Sinai. The everlasting thunderings were grand, vividly the lightning flashed and flickered, awfully sublime were the dark cloud and voices of the mount, but they were not God. The heart craved for some view of himself. And so, highest example of perfect love casting out fear, with the lightnings playing around him, and the earth shaking

beneath his feet, bold man! he bowed his head, and bent his knee, and said, Show me thy glory.

Being, as we have already shown, so much creatures of sight and sense, this incident leads me to remark—

I. That God, as revealed visibly in Jesus Christ, meets and satisfies one of our strongest wants.

Our Lord's divinity, which is to some like his death, to the Jew "a stumbling-block," like his resurrection to the Greek, foolishness, does not stagger my faith in the Bible. On the contrary, Christ's divine nature strengthens my belief in its divine authority; and, in the light of that doctrine, the sacred volume appears all the more plainly to be both the power of God and the wisdom of God. That doctrine, as I hope to show you, goes to establish, not shake its claims to be devoutly received as a revelation from heaven.

"Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water. under the earth; thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them." So runs the second commandment; and, if I am to judge from the universal practice of mankind, there is not one of the ten commandments which runs more counter to our nature. That remark

may surprise you. But in proof of it

1. Look at the heathen world.

For long dark ages the whole earth was given up

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to idolatry, with the exception of a single nation. Hebrews stood alone. They worshipped in a temple without an idol, and rejected the use of images in the services of religion. Go back to remotest time. Start from the age either of those old Assyrians, whose gods we have been digging from the ruins of Nineveh, or of those older Egyptians whose mummy forms, with their dog and hawk-headed divinities, lie entombed on the banks of the Nile; and, coming down the course of time to the last-discovered tribe of savages, we find that all nations, with scarcely an exception, have been idola

ters.

All have clung to the visible, and employed sensible representations of the divinity; theirs a sensuous worship, whether they adored one or ten thousand gods. Nor is this wonderful. To fix the mind and affections on an invisible Being seemed like attempting to anchor a vessel on a flowing tide or rolling billows. These offer nothing to hold by. And, as a climbing plant, for lack of a better stay, will throw its arms around a ruined wall or rotting tree, rather than want something palpable to which their thoughts might cling, men have worshipped the Divine Being through images of the basest character and most hideous forms. We gaze with blank astonishment on the gods of many heathen races. We ask, is it possible that rational beings have bent the knee to this painted stick, that, with a bunch of feathers stuck on its head, and two bits of inlaid pearl-shell for eyes, presents but the rudest resemblance to the form of humanity? Not only possible but certain. Talk of "the dignity of our nature!" How that ugly idol, with

man supplicating its help and trembling before its wrath, refutes the notion, and proclaims the fall! Contrast Adam, erect in his innocence, and lifting up an open countenance to the heavens, with that dark, crouching, miserable savage, who kneels to this stick. What a fall is there! How is the gold become dim? how is the most fine gold changed? Then,

If

2. Look at the evidence of this proneness to sensuous worship as it appears in the history of the Jews. Even among God's chosen people, how did this propensity to idolatry constantly manifest itself, just as I have seen broom, and furze, and heath, and such other wild plants as were natural to the soil, spring up in cultivated pastures-ready to resume possession, should the husbandman relax his efforts to keep them down and root them out? There could be no greater folly on the part of the Israelites than to venerate the gods of Egypt. the gods whose aid the Egyptians invoked had been else than "vanity," the Hebrews had still been slaves; and yet so prone were they to idolatry, that they set up a golden calf at the very foot of Sinai. Again, the grass was hardly green on David's grave, when his son, forfeiting his title of the wisest of men, allowed himself to be seduced by heathen women to lend his countenance to idolatry; the abomination of Moab stood in front of the temple, and Ashtaroth, enthroned on Olivet, looked down with haughty contempt on the courts of Zion. Again, when the kingdom was broken up through the insane folly of Rehoboam, see how the ten tribes, like a bark parted from her anchors and borne by a strong

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