38. AN IDOLATROUS GENERATION

that these are days of gross superstition and flagrant idolatry.

Here are some of the admonitions of the New Testament with reference to idolatry:—

"Wherefore, my dearly beloved, flee idolatry" (1 Cor. x. 14).

"Ye know that ye were Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols" (1 Cor. xii. 2).

"The works of the flesh are manifest, which are these . . . idolatry" (Gal. v. 19, 20).

"Nor covetous man, who is an idolater" (Eph. v. 5).

"Mortify, therefore, your members which are upon the earth . . . covetousness, which is idolatry" (Col. iii. 5).

"Little children, keep yourselves from idols" (1 John v. 21).

Let it be particularly noted that these admonitions are addressed, not to the heathen, but to the Lord's people; and they are much needed.

Of God's redeemed people of old, it is written, for our admonition, that they "mingled among the heathen and learned their works. And they served their idols; which were a snare unto them" (Ps. cvi. 35, 36). This danger is just as great and imminent to-day as it ever was.

It is not generally supposed that people in the centres of twentieth century civilization are living in the midst of gross idolatry; yet such is the fact. Idolatry flourishes vigorously, not in heathen lands only, but in civilized lands. The difference is one of form. In one locality we have idolatry adapted to the degraded and ignorant. In the other, it takes on forms suitable to the cultivated and refined.

In the scale of civilization the difference between those human beings who are at the bottom and those at the top is a difference of degree only. In nature there is "no difference" (Rom. iii. 22). Culture changes man outwardly, but not inwardly. It changes his behaviour, but not his nature. It is God only Who can work within a man to do "that which is well pleasing in His sight" (Heb. xiii. 21, Phil. ii. 13). Man looks only on "the outward appearance," and is satisfied if the surface be seemingly clean and respectable. But God sees the inside as well as the outside; and, judging from His created works, He is far more particular as to the state of that which is within than of that which lies on the surface.

Man, as he becomes more educated, may change his idols, but he does not turn from idolatry until he turns to God. "Ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God and to wait for His Son from heaven" (1 Thess. i. 9, 10).

Worship or service directed to another than the living and true God, or trust reposed in another (person

DANGERS OF THE WILDERNESS or thing) than in Him, is idolatry. God's people of old, who were delivered by Him out of Egypt, were constantly falling into idolatry. And God's people of to-day, who have been delivered out of the moral Egypt under the blood of Christ, the true Paschal Lamb, and who have crossed in Him the Red Sea of His death and resurrection, are not safe from the snare of idolatry. The repeated warnings of Scripture clearly show this. The danger to the Israelites was from the idolatrous practices of the surrounding nations. So God's people to-day need to be specially warned regarding the idolatries of "this present evil world" in which they are sojourning.

The particular example of idolatry, to which our attention is expressly directed by the New Testament, is one whose lessons have not become by any means obsolete. In 1 Cor. x. 7 we read: "Neither be ye idolaters, as were some of them; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play." How many lives, even of those who profess to be, as to their earthly experience, in the wilderness with Christ, would be aptly summarized by this brief description? The episode to which the Apostle referred in this passage occurred while the redeemed people of Jehovah were journeying with Him through the wilderness; and these wilderness experiences have a special application to Christians, for whom this world has been made, by the cross of Christ, a wilderness, through which they are passing with Him to the glory which they are to share when He shall appear. In the same chapter we are explicitly told that the people of Israel in the wilderness "did all drink the same spiritual drink, for they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them: And that Rock was Christ" (ver. 4); and it was subsequent to this that they fell into idolatry. We also read in that chapter that "all these things happened unto them for types: and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world (or ages) are come" (ver. 11, marg.).

What, then, is an idol?

It is safe to say that every man has a god; and that most men have more than one. A man's god is that to which he looks for help, support, deliverance from trouble; that in which he trusts for the transformation or improvement of the world, and the elimination of its evils; that which he voluntarily serves, praises, and glorifies.

All men recognize that humanity as a whole is in great distress at the present time; that it is compassed by invisible dangers, exposed to diseases which strike their unsuspecting victims out of the air, food, and water; that it is struggling onward upon the path in which it finds itself, and is progressing with difficulty because weighed down by a great load of misery. Whatever difference of opinion there may be as to how

THE NEED OF A GOD mankind got into this path, and as to where it will eventually lead, there can be no question as to its sorrows and dangers, and as to the nature of the experiences which it furnishes to those who tread it. It is clear to all that the world, however bright in spots, abounds with many and great evils and perils.

It is probable, too, that all men cherish a hope of coming deliverance; though possibly there may be some who utterly despair of better things for humanity. Ignoring such possible exceptions, we may say that all men put their trust in some thing or things, external to themselves, to bring about more favourable conditions for humanity. Those who do not trust for this in the God of the Bible, and in His revealed purposes in Christ, must necessarily put their trust in idols. God is "living and true." Idols are non-living and false. Hence, when it is written of the Thessalonian converts, that they "turned to God from idols," it was "TO SERVE THE LIVING AND TRUE GOD."

In whatever part of the earth man may be found, his state is always such as to make him deeply conscious of the need of a god; and since, in the unbelieving heart, the need usually creates that which answers to it, man everywhere makes for himself gods. Advance in civilization does not remove or even diminish the consciousness of the need of a god. If anything, it increases that need by enlarging man's horizon of the attainable. Hence progress in culture does not check the creation of idols. It only modifies their characteristics. There is, therefore, but one escape from the condition of idolatry, and that is to turn to God,—the God of Revelation.

An idol, then, has no real existence. "We know that an idol is nothing in the world" (1 Cor. viii. 4). It is an imaginary thing, an idea or ideal, as the word in the original (eidōlon) signifies. The idol of the heathen is not the device of wood or stone which his fingers have fashioned. That figure is only a representation of the idol which his mind has conceived. The idol is the product, not of man's fingers, but of his mind. The image which man sets up as his god, is the product of his imagination. It is in the making of images—unrealities vested with the garb and qualities of reality—that the imagination really exercises itself, and from which that faculty derives its appropriate name.

The faculty of imagination, in its incessant activity, turns out many products which the consciousness of man recognizes as unreal, and which serve only for his entertainment. But the very highest exercise of the imagination is in first creating imaginary beings, which become real beings to their creator, and to which are attributed powers far transcending those of the individual man; and in then disposing these imaginary beings propitiously towards mankind, so that they exert their powers on its behalf. When man comes to believe and trust in such beings or images, they are his idols.