Shall We Follow Strange Gods?
By W. A. S.
Present-Day Revivals of Ancient Errors—No. 3 Shall We Follow Strange Gods?
As with the mind men serve the law of God (Rom. 7:25), so with the mind begins the worship of false gods. The strange and grotesque ideas of deity found in heathenism came all by natural descent from philosophic conceptions of God. Professing themselves to be wise, and endeavoring to apply to the things of the Spirit the methods of scientific research, men were switched off from the only way of divine knowledge. The men who did these things were not children. They were scientists and philosophers, as keen as any in our day. But they sought God by methods that can never apprehend him. The late Dr. Krishna Banerjee, Sanskrit examiner to the Calcutta University, thus pointed out the mistake of the early science students who sought for the explanation of life and a rational conception of God:— They propounded many theories on the origin of the world, the nature of God, the properties of matter and mind. . . . Sciences, distinct in themselves, were blended together. Objects which surpassed the limits of the human understanding were pursued with the same confidence and eagerness with which the easiest questions were investigated. The philosophers professed to have solved problems really out of the range of our knowledge, while they threw doubts on matters which everybody believed, and which none could deny without belying his nature. The result was that their hearts were5darkened, and the baleful systems of heathenism were developed. Instead of finding God, human reason found Satan, who ever since the fall has been setting himself forth as God. The modern effort to find what is called a rational basis for faith is pursuing the path of the ancient philosophy. Old controversies which raged round the question of a philosophy of God have been revived in the new-thought movement that is sweeping the world. Western modes of religious thought are being “replenished from the leaves of the East.” Isa. 2:6. Truly came the word of God twelve years ago:— “New and old will commingle, and verily, this will take place right early. . . . A crisis is to be revealed in the great and prolonged controversy in the government of God on earth. Something great and decisive is to take place, and that right early. If any delay, the character of God and his throne will be compromised.” In the last great conflict Satan will make his supreme effort to usurp the place of God in the minds of men. Yet it is not by the clever mind and the learning of the schools that we shall be kept. The simple, childlike faith in God and his Word is the protection. The child’s thought of God is truer and more reverent than the highest effort of minds blinded by a false science and philosophy. Many a good old mother, in those sad days when the Alexandrian controversies raged, could have told the learned disputants more of God than ever dawned on their critical minds. They were trying to put God into a formula, and to subject Deity to the scientific methods of the laboratory. It was the method of the East. Professor Gwatkin shows that Oriental thought, the philosophy of Indian heathenism, was— The groundwork of all the Gnostic systems, and almost dominated the theology of Neoplatonism [the ruin of the early church]. . . . Its conception of the Divinity as pure Being . . . remained an axiom of all philosophy. It is the new-thought conception, the Unitarian idea, carried to its logical end. Indeed, I have heard in India one of the leading Unitarian preachers of the world declaring to an audience of Brahmo-Samaj followers, that the ancient Rishis, or wise men, of the Brahman philosophy were right in their conception of Deity. As against this idea, we have the thought of God that any child must get from Bible statements, or from the extracts quoted last week from “Early Writings.” These presented the view of the person of Jesus, in humanity’s form upon the throne, and beside him the Father, in form like unto himself, but so glorious that to mortal eyes in vision his person was veiled in a cloud of light. We have heard the suggestion that it savors of idolatry to think of God as having bodily form. This argument has been illustrated by the case of one asked to describe his thought of God’s person, and who, evidently betrayed by the question, thoughtlessly began to answer, and was pressed on to describe in detail the anatomy of the human form. Of course the result was repugnant to every sense of spiritual propriety. But wherein did the sin begin?—In the question that demanded an image. It was wrong and irreverent to ask for it; it was wrong to give it. The reverent faith of a little child leaves it just where Inspiration leaves it—in the very thought a cloud of glorious light veils the form of Deity. Faith does not seek impiously to lift the veil or to penetrate the glory. It does not attempt to describe in human language the indescribable glory of his person. The reverent thought seeks not to picture it. The spiritual mind does not think of describing; it worships. The heart knows that the bodily form and presence is there. That is sufficient for the eye of faith, and with Job we cry:— “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not a stranger.” Job 19:25-27, margin. To this blessed hope the heart clings, and the Word of God tells us that one day we in redeemed flesh, if faithful, shall see his face. It will not be the strange and awful specter of refined philosophic fancy, but a loving Father whose bodily form we may approach unto. Over against faith’s reverent thought of God, there is set forth what is called the larger, more glorious, more philosophic view. If he has form, we have been told, it must be as large as the universe. And this view seeks support in the figures of speech by which Inspiration has sought to convey a faint idea of his almighty power. We have heard it stated in public assembly that what many Seventh-day Adventists need is a new God; that many are serving a God too small for the larger and true idea. Such a conception of God is set forth in a tract circulating among us:— Then if only his hand is so great that all the waters lie in the hollow of it, how large is he himself? It is simply impossible for any human mind to conceive of the size that such a hand would have to be. . . . “Meted out heaven with the span.” The span is the measure from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the second finger. What is the compass of the heaven? Conceive it if you can. Yet the whole compass of the heaven is by him measured simply with the span. Then again, what is the size of that hand? . . . And when no human mind could possibly conceive only the size of the hand, the reach of the span with which he meted out heaven, how infinitely beyond all reach of human thought is any true conception of the form of God. The mistake is in assuming that the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 40) is endeavoring to impress us with the greatness of God’s form. It is “the greatness of his might” that he desires us to know. Just here comes in the conception of infinitely colossal form that can never be harmonized with the view which Inspiration gives of the Father on his throne beside “the man Christ Jesus.” It is truly the setting forth of a new god, which our fathers knew not. It is, in fact, the Universe-God of heathen philosophy, sometimes given members and parts, and again considered as an ether-like presence; for consistency is not a characteristic of philosophic views of Deity. Pike says of a Persian view: “It was thought the universe should be deemed an immense being.” In Egyptian and other views,— The universe was a living and animated being, like man and the other animals; or rather, they were so only because the universe was essentially so. . . . This was the Universe-God, which the ancients adored as supreme Cause and God of gods. . . . God, in the view of Pythagoras, was One, a single substance, whose continuous parts extend through all the universe. The world or universe was thus compared to man. . . . Thus he made the universe a great intelligent being, like man—an immense deity. The ancient philosophers of the East, by a study of nature, from the atom to the universe, sought a philosophic view of God. The new philosophy, religious and professedly Christian, is pursuing the same path. Dr. Stockwell gives the theory of God in the atom:— That innate element in all organic life which science has termed “the tendency to differentiate,” and which other modes of thought have called “that which aspires,” or “the God-element within” . . . is indeed the “God Immanent,” and it is to be found alike in the atom, in the planet, and in man, varying only in degree. In this view the word “personality” finds a deeper meaning. (In passing, let us note that the controversy does not center round the word “personality.” Any instructed Hindu would allow the personality of God.) Our author says that the student of the new philosophy is not content with Spencer’s theory that beyond the atom is a wall that can not be breached. We read:— And so we find him in search of a bridge that shall span the chasm between the atom and that which lies beyond. For, in other words, he feels that if he can understand the atom fully, it may be known what God, man, and the universe is. Shall I say that some of these men are beginning to entertain the tremendous conception that they have found the hither end of such a bridge—that they are reverently pushing out upon it, and, with daily confirmations of the solidity and soundness of the conclusion are peering with profound awe and wonder into the unspeakable glory that is6seen to envelop like a great cloud its thitherward course? The new Babel builders have almost reached heaven—they think: “And now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.” Gen. 11:6. The new discoveries in light rays, of radium, and hitherto unknown properties of matter encourage men to think they are close to the secret of life. And now the writer—who fairly represents the new movement—follows the theory to the conclusion of the ancients:— Professor Hemstreet, writing of the views of Tesla, says: “Now call this energy God’s mind, and the ether God’s body, then we have the secret of eternal life and the process of cosmic evolution. . . . God in the ether is no more strange than a soul in the body. . . . Gravitation, attraction, and all energy and mind are qualities of the ether. Mind in the ether is no more unnatural than mind in the flesh and blood.” This is the new mode of expressing the Universal Mind, the Universe-God of heathen philosophy. An older mode of expression is that of the Upanishads, or secret inner philosophy of the ancient Hindus:— He who dwelling in the ether, is within the ether, whom the ether does not know, whose body is the ether, who from within rules the ether, is thy soul, the Inner Ruler, immortal. From this very philosophy of God have come the frightful corruptions of heathenism. The idea of magnifying the form of God, until he must necessarily fill the universe with his bodily presence, comes from the false assumption that great power implies a correspondingly colossal frame. It was thought that God must be great in form in order to be great in power. The error is due to the failure to apprehend that which is the only hope of our salvation. God’s power is manifested by his word. He need not be infinitely great in bodily form, in order to be infinite in power. He speaks the word of life from his throne, “upholding all things by the word of his power.” The sinner, redeemed, has not to search the universe to view, a little at a time, a form that the logic of the philosophy must necessarily picture as greater than the universe, one whose smallest measurements—it is an awful suggestion—must be beyond all human conception. He will find a God whom he can approach upon his throne in the heavenly temple, and he shall stand before his face. In his flesh shall he see God, and by his side “the man Christ Jesus,” in form like unto the Father. The false philosophic view takes the thought away from the infinite power, which is our hope of salvation, to fasten it upon the mind-staggering conception of infinite form that has led to the grossest idolatry. This view, as we shall see, leads logically into pantheism, with all its mixture of light and darkness, of poetical fancies and vulgar crudities. We know well why the enemy makes his last attack upon the all-powerful Word of the living God. It is our only foundation. In the warning as to the commingling of new and old controversies, we have the instruction: “The only rock that is sure and steadfast is the Rock of Ages. Those only who build on this Rock are secure.” And in taking our stand upon the Word of God we are standing on the Rock of Ages. It has been the stay and support of the saints of God through all the long dark millenniums of apostasy. Still it brings to our hearts assurance of the infinite power and protection of our God, the God of our fathers, in the trying hour upon which we have entered. W. A. S.