The principle embodied in the golden calf was early manifested in the church; and is in fact the principle of idolatry. “Neither be ye idolaters as were some of them; as it is written, The people sat down to eat and to drink and rose up to play.” This admonition was given to those who were “called saints.” Is it unneeded now? Are we in no danger of idolatry? We are aware of the fine-drawn distinctions of the Romanist to justify picture and image worship; and we know also that it is not the meaning which they attach to such homage, but the light in which it is regarded by God, which is the truth? Many also most confidently believe, on the authority of the word of God, that the corruption of Christendom will end in open, gross, and palpable idolatry. Neither the progress of civilization nor the emancipation of the mind of man is any safeguard against gross and palpable idolatry. It was the wisdom of man making the Godhead the subject of speculation instead of the object of faith, which originally introduced idolatry. “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations [reasonings] and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.” Surely man will never find his way back to God, but by the very road of his departure from God; and the veneration of ordinances and intellectual rationalism in the end may meet in palpable idolatry. The word of admonition still applies to saints, “Neither be ye idolaters;” for the principle of idolatry is some present palpable object between the soul and God, which effectually hinders dependence on God; and this is the principle embodied in the golden calf.
We find in the days of the apostles, as may be remarked, the original elements of this principle of idolatry under several modifications; and in the progress of declension these elements have received more or less tangible shape. The grossest form of the original sin of the church is found in the Galatian error—an error held up to us as a beacon, but which really has been followed as a pattern, so as to have been in great measure the formative power of the great professing body. It is assuredly a form of the principle of the golden calf, being the natural expression of the feeling of the human heart, as though God was served with man's hands as needing something. It is said of the people when they made the golden calf, “they rejoiced in the work of their own hands,” the same in principle as the Galatian error. But how strongly does the apostle rebuke it! He knew of no middle way between the grace of God in Christ and idolatry. The Galatians had been turned from idolatry to the true God by faith in Christ Jesus. They were now in danger of relapsing in principle into their old idolatry by adding the law to Christ. “Howbeit then, when ye knew not God, ye did service unto them which by nature are no gods; but now, after that ye have known God, or rather are known of God, how turn ye again [back, marg.] to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage?”
In the Epistle to the Hebrews we have the same principle in another form; the virtual setting aside of the perfectness of the work of Christ on the cross, and His present perfect priestly ministry, by recurrence to Jewish ordinances of worship. It is but the golden calf in another form. “As for this Moses, the man that brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we wot not what is become of him.” Even so now: Christ, received into the heavens, is forgotten in His ministry there; and early indeed did the church desire to have some visible and tangible helps to worship, when they took their pattern from the sin of Israel. Stern and solemn is the warning rebuke of the apostle (Heb. 6 and x.), so that scarcely a saint has been unexercised by it; and yet how little has it been aptly applied. These warnings are manifestly against the tendency to relapse into the old form of worship, to go back to the shadow and lose the reality. “It is impossible for those who were once enlightened and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame.” “He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses; of how much sorer punishment shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace? “
Judaism, Christianized, is a large and extensive characteristic of the great professing body. Men have assimilated the very things which God has contrasted, and by putting together such heterogeneous materials Christ has been dishonored; even as the true Jehovah was dishonored by Israel setting up visible gods, which really rivaled Jehovah Himself.
The principle of the golden calf was detected by the watchful eye of the apostle, working among the Colossians in a more subtle form. Such foreign helps as philosophy and asceticism were there intruded; but in reality they hindered the simplicity of the gospel, instead of helping the soul to realized union with Christ. Such helps took it away from dependence on Christ, so that those who esteemed them did not “hold the head.” This form of the original sin of the church has worked its way in the downward course of the church. The fleshly mind has intruded its own conceits into the revelation of God. Under the garb of affected humility, or it may be even under the semblance of spiritual aspirations, we find the glory of Christ in His own person, as well as the glory of His work, virtually superseded. It is the exercise of the human mind on the great facts of revelation, instead of staying the soul by faith on these great facts, which especially marks this principle and it is one which readily insinuates itself. Direct “holding the head” is the only safeguard against it.
But by far the most subtle form of the idolatry of the golden calf is that which we find in the Corinthian church. It is “glorying in men” or idolatry of man; not of man as man, but of man as the minister of Christ. How nice the line between esteeming such very highly in love for their works' sake, and putting them between the soul and Christ, according to the desire of Israel to have gods to go before them, when Moses who brought them out of Egypt was lost to their sight! It is very possible to find this principle lurking where priestcraft is loudly abjured. The desire is deeply rooted in the human heart to have some tangible medium between itself and God; which, while it may be the medium of communicating the truth of God to the soul, is nevertheless used by the soul to hinder its coming into immediate contact with Christ Himself, and to keep it in measured distance from God. Paul, Apollos, or Cephas, the gracious gifts of Christ Himself to the church, the moment each severally became regarded as the minister of so many persons, were by this very means put between the soul and Christ. They were gloried in as men. This was to their own dishonor, and at the same time to the deep damage of the souls of those who thus set them up over themselves. For by thus misplacing the channel of His grace, Christ Himself as the fountain of all grace is lost sight of. “All are yours.” The infinite fullness of Him in Whom dwelleth all fullness is little known; because men only regard one, instead of the many channels; by which that fullness is communicated. “All are yours” (1 Cor. 3). And thus, virtually, it is not the truth itself which is so much regarded, as the person who testifies to it. The truth is accredited by the person, and not the person by the truth. “And,” said “the Truth” Himself, “because I tell you the truth, ye believe Me not.” Any dogma of an accredited teacher would have been received; but the truth was unpalatable in itself and not received because of Him Who spoke it. In what little power is the truth which we do know held, because doctrines are received on the credit of man rather than of God!
The revealed order of God's dealings with His accredited people shows that, notwithstanding Hits long-suffering, He allows things to take their course and to work out their legitimate end; and not only is it positively stated in scripture, but it is confirmed by analogy, that the end will be idolatry. The long-suffering of God affords indeed the occasion for separating that which is essential, and cannot fail from that which, by being entrusted to man's responsibility, has failed; but it does not hinder evil principles introduced at the outset of the church working out to their necessary result.
The perversion of the gospel, as among the Galatians, is the almost accredited order. Rituals, forms of Judaism, prove that the church has fallen into the very form of error against which the apostle so solemnly warns in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Religious sentimentalism, mysticism (and asceticism in measure), the Colossian danger, have well nigh supplanted “the head;” and the glorying in men, ministers of Christ though they be, tends to eclipse the glory of Christ Himself, and to nullify the great doctrine of the present Comforter, “the Spirit of truth to guide into all truth.”
“Neither be ye idolaters as were some of them.” It is a standing and not a temporary warning. Let us give it a due place in our souls. There is but one safeguard—the occupation of the soul immediately with Him “Who is the image of the invisible God.” Has the person of Christ its due place in our hearts? Has He no rival there? Is there a holy craving to know Him? Is the thought of everlasting blessedness associated in our souls with being “ever with the Lord?” What is there lacking which we do not find in Him? Are we lost in the immensity of contemplating the Godhead? “In Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” Do we find the need of a medium of communication between our souls and God? “There is one God, and one Mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.” Only let us be alive to our danger—our own hearts—our own reasonings—the reasonings of others who combine with Satan himself to intercept the immediate intercourse of our souls with Christ. Even service, apparently done to Him, may distract our souls from Him. We need the exhortation “to continue in the grace of God,” and “with purpose of heart to cleave onto the Lord.” We need awakened jealousy for His honor. The duty of upholding the dignity of His person and the perfectness of His work is as incumbent on us as on the apostles. May the unction from the Holy One deeply teach us the words of the beloved disciple— “We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding that we may know Him that is true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus Christ. LITTLE CHILDREN, KEEP YOURSELVES FROM IDOLS. Amen.” J. L. H.
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