THE worship of images, the bowing down to them, and the introduction of images or pictures into divine worship, is distinctly forbidden by God. Image worship, in its varied forms, is a Pagan practice which has prevailed since the flood, and which still prevails over the greater portion of the earth.
In ancient days, some hero after his death would become revered, and as generations passed away, the story of his acts would become magnified far beyond their real proportions, legends and fables about him would grow up, until at length the hero became a god to the people. His image would be made, and eventually he would be worshipped. In very much the same way, the “Saints” have come to be adored. They are the religious heroes of Christendom, and legends and fables have grown up around these celebrities, till they are recognized as men and women of mystic holiness. Images and pictures of these “saints” are held to be sacred, and people bow themselves before them.
In Pagan countries horridly-shaped idols exist; figures they are of beings supposed to rule the unseen world, and these images suggest to the eye and mind of the worshippers, a being, whose strength and power and whose vindictive spirit have to be appeased. By means of such images men bow down to demons, to unseen powers, to evil spirits, who are enemies of the Lord God Almighty, and who are certainly no friends of man.
Images representing beasts and birds and fishes, the sun and moon and stars, and creatures, part human, part animal, or mystic, are also worshipped, and have been worshipped for centuries by thousands of men, women, and children.
How terribly Satan had hold of the human race before the flood the Bible tells us; how far the idolatry, which after the flood attached men’s minds to demon worship, came from antediluvian days, we can only conjecture; however, we know that amongst the images held sacred by the nations that arose soon after the flood, are those which suggest a connection between men and demons. Some of the images of the gods were creatures with wings, cherubim and dragons; others were partly men, partly fish; others, again, were partly birds and partly men.
The figure here given of half-man half-bull, reminds us, by its horns and hoofs, of the popular notion in England of Satan, yet the original of the illustration is thousands of years old, and comes from Nineveh. So that this strange notion has a history attached to it which can be traced back almost to the flood!
Another very ancient demon was the jackal-headed monster, Anubis. This creature, the ancient Egyptians supposed, conducted the souls of the departed to their destination, and in the Day of Judgment weighed up in the scales of truth, the good and the bad actions of men, whereby their future was determined. A similar belief in a god, or demon, of a kindred character, existed among the Romans, so that for centuries Satan has had control over men’s minds in matters referring to the souls of the departed, and the future state of man. What belongs to God alone, Satan has given men to believe belongs to himself.
The ancient idols, representing a woman and a child, possess intense interest, evidencing that from the earliest ages this kind of image has been worshipped. We place together three illustrations of this class of image—one very ancient, being of Babylonish origin; another, ancient also, but being such as may be seen today in India; a third, modern, and being such as is to be found by tens of thousands in Christendom!
Surely as we look at them we may read a lesson on image worship which should make us run! How alike the three are in idea! A woman and a child! Before them men by millions prostrate themselves. There is no such notion connected with worship in the Bible. Who, then, originated it? As the idea these images present, has existed upon the earth for thousands of years, we may without hesitation declare that one mind invented it. And as it is accepted by tens of thousands of human beings, who have bowed and do bow down themselves before these images, we can but acknowledge that millions of human beings are slaves to the idea this one mind invented!
God has said, “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.” (Ex. 20:55Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; (Exodus 20:5)). We look upon the representations of these three images and we tremble. Such images as the first of our illustrations present to the eye were worshipped by men when God gave His second commandment at Sinai, and such as the second and third present, have been worshipped by men since He gave the Ten Commandments.
How strange it seems that that church which professes to be the true Church of God should not only offer the third image to her people that they may bow down themselves before it, but that that Church should deliberately efface and alter part of God’s word in her catechisms! Let us hear what she teaches as to the Ten Commandments. We quote from Butler’s Catechism, recommended by the four Roman Catholic archbishops of Ireland: “Say the ten commandments of God. 1. I am the Lord thy God; thou shalt has e no other gods but Me. 2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain. 3. Remember that thou keep holy the Sabbath day. 4. Honor thy father and thy mother. 5. Thou shalt not kill. 6. Thou shalt not commit adultery. 7. Thou shalt not steal. 8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. 9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife. 10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods. (Ex. 20).”
The second commandment is effaced, and the tenth is split into two to supply the deficient number, and yet the catechism continues, “Is it necessary to keep all, and every one of the Ten Commandments?”
Thus will Satan influence men to alter even the letter of the word of God in order to maintain the heathen practice of image worship in Christian churches—that awful sin so hateful in the eyes of God. For images to which men bow down, are an outward and visible sign of the power which demons have who control the minds of men.
We would earnestly appeal to our readers to consider the sin of image-worship, for it is creeping even into Protestant churches and homes in our land. Many who would reject the notion of worshipping an image, allow a sort of reverence for it, they think of it as a sacred emblem worthy of pious attention, a representation which aids them in their thoughts of better things. Such thoughts are but the stepping-stones to idolatry. Image worship is a sin so deep and terrible, that in order to perpetuate it in Christian churches men are daring and impious enough to blot out one of the ten commandments of God. And having done so, they endeavor to hide their impiety from the eyes of their fellow men, who have not God’s word in their hands, by pretending to reverence the Scripture; in proof of which we continue to quote from the catechism referred to. Having given us nine commandments instead of ten, this question is attached to the nine, “Is it necessary to keep all and every one of the Ten Commandments of God?” Now, note the answer—a terribly self-condemning one, an answer calling to mind the inspired words, upon the crime of mutilating God’s word, “God shall take away his part out of the book of life” (Rev. 22:1919And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book. (Revelation 22:19)): “Yes; the scripture says: ‘Whoever shall offend in one becomes guilty of all’; that is, the observance of the OTHER commandments will not avail him to salvation.” (James 2:1010For whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. (James 2:10)).
In the early times of the Church neither images nor pictures were found in Christian worship, and this greatly astonished the heathen. In our own day, in China, the heathen will enter a place where Christians worship, and looking round will express their amazement because no idols are there. The omnipresent God is unknown to the heathen, and they cannot understand the Christian bowing to and worshipping an unseen God. The heathen objected to the early Christians because they had neither temples, altars nor images, and because they worshipped One who had been crucified. And so careful were the early Christians to avoid connection with images, that they would not even make masks, lest by so doing they should form a likeness of anything! Consequently, image worship, as it now exists in Christendom, has grown up in the field of nominal Christianity, in direct opposition to the early practice and faith of the Church. Surrounded, as the early Christians were, with the idols and base and immoral pictures of the Pagans, we can readily understand how they began to have their own emblems in opposition to those of the heathen. For example, they were fond of that of the dove, and that of the shepherd with the sheep upon his shoulder; thus by that which was at first a very simple thing, the introduction of representations into Christian worship occurred, By and by, not the dove and the shepherd only, but pictures of martyrs, and holy men of the Bible, yes, even of Christ Himself, were made and found their way into places of worship.
Fathers and Bishops of the third and fourth centuries protested against these practices. Writing in the fourth century to Constantia, the daughter of Constantine, Eusebius says, “What, and of what kind, is this image which thou hast written about, and which thou callest the image of Christ? Hast thou ever seen such a thing in a church thyself, or heard of it from another?” Later in the same century, the aged Bishop of Salamis, in Cyprus, coming to a church near Jerusalem, and seeing on a curtain a figure either of Christ or of a saint, he declared it an abomination contrary to the Scripture, and tore the curtain down, saying, “The cloth would be better used to bury a poor man in.”
However, as time went on, the faith of the early Christians degenerated more and more, and became further corrupted with heathen influences, till Paganism so affected the Christian faith, that image worship extended in thousands of Christian churches.
Over and over again, in the history of the Church, when God has revived His truth in the souls of men, the heathen practice of image worship has become an abomination in their eyes, and the images have been destroyed and burned. It was so in Israel of old. How the fire and energy of the faithful arose in times of Jehovah’s reviving grace, and how they burned the idols, and destroyed the groves of the idolaters. Just so is it also in our day in heathen countries where the gospel penetrates. The idols are abolished out of the land. Ax and hammer are lifted up, and down tumbles the wooden god. Often do the missionaries to the Chinese record how the wayside images are dashed to pieces by the Christian converts. If we could but imagine ourselves converted to God from idols, we might be able to conceive the horror and indignation of our souls when we looked upon the images to which our knees had bowed, and by which the demons had enslaved our souls.
When, some three hundred and fifty years ago, the truths of the Bible took hold of men in Switzerland, and they became free, the people arose against the images, to which they had formerly bowed down. They saw them in their true character—not mere wood, or metal, or stone, but signs of rebellion against God, and of the slavery of men. How many a Christian has been chained in soul by these images! How many an one has come to the sacred building, where was the representation of the saint of whom he desired to ask good, and has poured out his pence and his prayers kneeling before it! What tears have been shed before the image! What appeals have been made to it in the fancy that an ear to hear was there for pity, and for guidance! Looking at the image, and praying before it, the worshipper has felt a strange influence steal over his soul—maybe, he beheld its smile—certainly, a mystic power held him, and he felt that these things were the proof his prayers were heard. We remember an African, who in the days of his heathen life had fallen down before his gross wooden gods, describe his experience. He related how an influence had fallen over him in the presence of his idols, and how that he had been held by a superior power when before them, constrained and spellbound, and, though he could not find words to describe clearly what he meant, for he had not a good knowledge of the English language, yet his meaning was plain. The terror of the demons he had worshipped through his gods of wood was upon him as he bowed before them.
Now, when God sets a man free—and if the Son shall make you free, then shall you be free indeed—whether he has been a heathen or a Christian worshipper of images, he no longer tolerates their influence; not only does he abhor image worship as a sin against his God, but he repels it from him as slavery to demons.
In Basle—we speak now of the year 529, when the reformation and the power of God’s word laid hold of that city—the people armed themselves and attacked the images they and their fathers had worshipped. Breaking open a side door in the cathedral of St. Peter, one of the townsmen by his ax revealed a number of images hidden away. One of these rolled out, and falling upon the stone floor, broke into pieces! Unable to save themselves these saints and angels were speedily smashed up by the armed citizens, while those who had worshipped before them were amazed that these images “wrought no miracle to save themselves, for if all accounts were true, prodigies had been done on trivial occasions” by them.
As the night fell the cathedral and the churches were emptied of the images, and their broken remains were carried to the open squares, piled up and burned, the citizens standing around and warming their hands in the chill spring air.
The images overturned and destroyed, a flight of monks, and priests followed, and Basle was delivered from its bondage, and, thank God, to this day over a great portion of Switzerland there is freedom to read God’s word.
Let us in conclusion look to our own land! In the house of the Christian, still called Protestant, there is the inner chamber, and therein is the shrine with its images! And lo! before the shrine the worshipper bows himself and prays! “Aids to worship” are these images and pictures! “Let God be true, but every man a liar.” (Rom. 3:44God forbid: yea, let God be true, but every man a liar; as it is written, That thou mightest be justified in thy sayings, and mightest overcome when thou art judged. (Romans 3:4)). They are no aids to the worship of God. Let us obey God— “thou shalt not bow down thyself to them.” That shrine, those images, are but paganism revived. These emotions and these feelings that steal over the spirit as the breaker of the second of God’s Ten Commandments prostrates himself before the image or likeness, are either the effect of a heated imagination or the influences of demons over his soul.