SERMON II.
THE FIRST COMMANDMENT: THOU SHALT NOT HAVE OTHER GODS.
"I am Jehovah thy God, who brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of servants. Thou shalt not have other gods before my face."—Exodus xx. 2, 3.
The general meaning of this Commandment in its literal sense, is obvious: it forbids the worship of idols. It is to be remembered that at the time this Commandment was given to the Israelites, the whole known world was filled with idolatry. Every nation had its gods, to which it bowed down in worship. That the Israelites themselves were inclined to such worship, is evident from the fact that, within a month after this Commandment had been proclaimed from Mount Sinai, they made to themselves a golden calf and worshiped it. This custom they had learned in Egypt, where calves were worshiped. And at various other periods of their history, afterwards, there were introduced, under their kings, the idols of the nations around them, and these were made objects of worship.
The effect of idolatry was, to separate the mind from conjunction with the Divine Being, and to bind it down to merely natural and material things. Whether the idol was an image, the work of men's hands, or any created thing, as the sun, moon, and stars, or a human being (for men, both dead and living, were made objects of worship), the effect was to draw away the spirit from conjunction with God and heaven, and thus to extinguish all spiritual light in the mind, and to render it grossly natural.
All spirituality in the mind is attained by conjunction with God; for when the mind is in such conjunction, it is open towards God and towards heaven, and thence spiritual light flows in and enlightens the understanding, and spiritual heat, or love, flows in and warms and elevates the will. Now, conjunction is effected by means of thought and love. When the thought is fixed upon the Divine Being in reverence and worship, the understanding is thereby opened to his influx; and when, moreover, the heart is filled with love towards him, not only evinced by feelings of gratitude and trust, but, still more, by the endeavor to please him and do his commandments; then the heart or will is opened to the influx of love—the love of what is good and true and heavenly. And thus man is regenerated and prepared for heaven.
But now, if instead, of thus worshiping the true God, the one Divine Creator, the only Source of love, and light, and happiness,—there is worshiped a lifeless image, or the dead sun and moon, or a mere man like ourselves, then the thought rises no higher than these things: the mind cannot rise higher than the object at which it looks; and as this, in such case, is merely natural and material, the mind remains in merely natural light, and consequently, instead of becoming spiritual, continues gross, earthly, and sensual. Such may be supposed to be the effect of the worship of idols. Nay more:—when, as in ancient times, deceased men were worshiped,—men who, many of them, when on earth, were proud and wicked, such as conquerors and others, and who consequently, after death, became infernal spirits,—then, the worship of them, that is the fixing of the thought and heart upon them, would have the effect of producing a kind of conjunction with them, and thus open an influx from hell instead of heaven. Hence, idolatry of this kind is called in Scripture "worship of devils,"[1] and sacrifice offered to such beings is called "sacrificing to devils." Thus, speaking of the Israelites, when gone astray into idolatry, it is said, "They provoked Him to jealousy with strange gods; with abominations provoked they him to anger. They sacrificed unto devils, not to God."[2] And again, it is written in Leviticus: "This is the thing which the Lord hath commanded, saying, What man soever there be of the house of Israel, that killeth an ox, or lamb, or goat, and bringeth it not to the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, to offer an offering unto the Lord before the tabernacle of the Lord, blood shall be imputed to that man; he hath shed blood; and that man shall be cut off from among his people. To the end that the children of Israel may bring their sacrifices unto the Lord. And they shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils."[3] So, the Apostle Paul, in addressing the early Christians, who being surrounded by idolaters, were in a danger similar to that of the Israelites, says: "What say I then? that the idol is anything? or that that which is sacrificed to idols is anything? But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils."[4]
"We may now perceive why Jehovah, in frequent appeals to the Israelites, as well as in the proclamation of this first Commandment from Mount Sinai, insisted so strenuously on their refraining from idolatry. But there was still another and a more interior reason. The Jewish Church, by means of its representative worship, had communication with heaven. For even though they did not understand the signification of the representative ceremonies enjoined upon them, yet while they performed those ceremonies in a spirit of obedience, and from an externally holy principle, good spirits could thereby be present with them, and thus was maintained a certain degree of conjunction with heaven. And on this conjunction the preservation of the human race depended; for should communication with heaven cease, mankind would perish. Influx comes to man from the Lord through heaven: as the Scripture declares, "A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven."[5] This, then, was the chief reason why the Israelites were so earnestly commanded and warned to keep the laws and ordinances laid down for them, all of which were representative of holy and heavenly things. And first of all, and above all, they were warned to abstain from the worship of idols; for such worship was representative of everything evil and false: idols made of gold, silver, wood, and stone, representing, in a bad sense, the direst evils and falses; and the worship of such idols represented the love of evils and falses—and such love is hell, and not heaven; and consequently the angels could not be present where such worship existed. A similar representation had the worship of the sun and moon; for the sun, in a bad or perverted sense, signifies self-love; and the moon signifies a false faith: hence such worship, also, represented what was infernal. And in general, the worship of anything except the one Jehovah, represented the loving of self and the world more than of God; which is a principle the very opposite to that of heaven, where love to God is the supreme affection of the soul. Consequently, the tendency of idolatry in any form was to cut off communication with heaven, the effect of which, as before said, would have been to cause the human race to perish. Says the Doctrine of the New Church, "Idolatry was so severely forbidden to the Israelitish nation, because the adoration of other gods, of graven things and images, destroyed everything representative of the church amongst them. For in heaven, Jehovah, that is, the Lord, is the universal reigning principle; his Divine fills all things therein, and constitutes the life of all; so that if anything had been worshiped instead of the Divine, everything representative would have perished, and thus, also, communication with heaven."[6]
We may now understand why Jehovah terms himself a "jealous God," that is, one who could not brook the worship of any other being than himself. It was not for his own sake that he required worship, but for man's, for only thereby could man have conjunction with heaven and with the Lord, and be saved.
Such, then, is the first and most obvious meaning of this Commandment: it forbids the worship of idols. But now, having heard this explanation, we may feel that in this sense, at least, the Commandment has little reference to us; for we are in no danger of any such worship. True: we are in little danger of breaking the commandment in this its most external sense; but there is a sense, closely allied to this, considered in which, we are in the greatest danger of breaking the Commandment. There are idols of the heart, the worship of which is more deadly than that of wood and stone. And such idols the whole Christian world is in the daily worship of; and it may be that some of us are sharing in such worship. Let us examine these idols, and see what they are.
Oovetousness, says the Apostle, is idolatry:[7] the love of the world, the love of pleasure, the love of any earthly thing, when it is made a supreme object of regard, is idolatry. For 'worship does not consist merely in bowing down on the knees, or in uttering prayers: these are acts of the body: the essence of worship is to be sought in the heart. Worship means essentially a supreme love for a thing; that, therefore, which man supremely loves, he in fact and in heart worships, though he may not pay it any formal adoration: hence, such a thing is truly an idol. To the miser, for instance, gold is an idol; he in heart worships it; for it is the object of his strongest love, and it occupies the first place in his thoughts. "He who, or that which, is loved above all things," says the doctrine of the New Church, "is to him that thus loves, a god and divine. As, for instance, whoever loves himself above all things, or the world above all things, to such a person himself or the world is his god. Hence, such persons do not in heart acknowledge any God: they therefore are conjoined with their like in hell, where are collected all who have loved themselves and the world above all things."[8]
Under the light of this truth, look now at the Christian world! How many thousands who little think they are idolaters, are yet truly such in heart! how many, who have little idea that they are breaking this first Commandment, are doing so daily and hourly! "Ye cannot," said the Lord, "serve God and Mammon."[9] Here the same truth is expressed by the Divine Savior himself, who was Jehovah manifest in the flesh. He who from Mount Sinai, amid thunders and lightnings, uttered the words, "Thou shalt have no other gods before my face"—the same Jehovah, clothed with Humanity, and standing in the streets of Jerusalem, declared that those who worshiped Mammon broke this commandment, for they could not do that and serve God at the same time. Yet was Mammon never worshiped more ardently than at this day. The supreme love and pursuit of wealth is the great crying sin of this age, and carrying, perhaps, greater numbers down to the pit, than all other evils combined. For, cheating, lying, fraud, deception, cunning, envy, jealousy, meanness, and a host of other evils, follow in its train; and these drag the soul down to destruction. They deprive it of everything spiritual, and of all love for what is spiritual: they shut the ears against preaching and the Word of God; they render the mind indifferent to everything but what is earthly and temporal: they make religion a mere form, and worship a mockery: they harden the heart against the entrance of every noble aspiration. When a young man has fixed it in his mind to make a fortune, and taken that for his end,—woe to him! he is an idolater, and has broken the first Commandment, and thus will be easily led to break all the rest. He has taken Mammon for his God, and turned his back on heaven, and his path is downward. In twenty or fifty years, he will be in that evil place whither myriads have gone before him.
The world is full of such idolatry: what shall we do? I will tell you what you that hear me can do for yourselves. If you are a young man,—whenever the thought of getting rich comes into your mind, and you find it beginning to become your principal end in life—drive it away, as you would a monster that would devour you. And pray the Lord to help you drive it away. Let your only end be, to be an upright and good man, a worthy member of society, and preparing to be an angel of heaven. Live for this end, and no other. Then will all things which you really need,—as much earthly wealth as will be for your good,—be sent you by the Lord's providence, while engaged in the faithful and diligent discharge of your duty; for the Lord himself has declared, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all things (needful) shall be added unto you."[10]
Here, then, is one form of idolatry, which is to be guarded against. But there are many other forms of it. There is the love of self, which is still more deeply evil than the love of the world. The love of the world is, indeed, one form of self-love or selfishness; but what is meant distinctively by the love of self, is the love of dominion, ambition, the love of putting one's self above others. This, in all its forms, is the most direfully infernal passion of the human breast; for as the love of others equally as of one's self, or more than of one's self, is the very love that makes heaven, so is the love of self above others, especially in the form of desiring to rule over others, the essential principle of hell. Hence, such love is idolatry of the deepest kind, it blots out God utterly from the soul, and makes men at heart atheists.
But it is not merely in public and political life, that such love of self and of ruling exists: it may be found, also, in private life. Whoever is filled with the thought of himself, with self-esteem and self-admiration; whoever wishes to take the lead in all things, and to be first, and to subject others to his own will, is, in that degree, a worshiper of himself, and an idolater. And there is no doubt that much of the speculative atheism that prevails at this day is attributable to this source: for the fire of self-love in the heart, sends up a smoke into the understanding, which clouds it and shuts out the light of heaven, by which alone God can be mentally seen. Intellectual self-conceit is the destruction of many a soul, and it needs to be guarded against as a sin.
"The command, Thou shalt not make to thyself other gods, involves," says the Doctrine of the New Church, "that man should not love himself and the world above all things, for what a man loves above all things, that is his god. There are two loves altogether opposite to each other, the love of self and love to God; also the love of the world and the love of heaven. He who loves himself loves his own proprium [or selfhood], and the proprium of man is nothing but evil: hence also, he loves evil in all its complex; and he who loves evil, hates good, and thence also hates God. He who loves himself above all things, immerses his thoughts and affections in the body, and thereby in his proprium; and he who is immersed in the body and in his proprium, is in corporeal ideas, and in pleasures which are merely of the body, and hence is in thick darkness as to those things which are above. And he who is not in the light of heaven, but in thick darkness, inasmuch as he does not see anything of God, denies God, and acknowledges as God either nature, or some man, or some idol, and even wishes to be worshiped himself as a god. Hence, then, it follows, that he who loves himself above all things, worships other gods than the Lord. It is the same, though in a less degree, with one who loves the world. By the love of self is understood especially the love of ruling over others from the sole delight of rule, and for the sake of eminence, and not from the delight of uses, nor for the sake of the public good: and by the love of the world is understood especially the love of possessing worldly property for the mere delight of possession, and for the sake of wealth, and not from the delight of uses arising from them, nor for the good which may thus be done."[11]
"He," continues the New Church Doctrine, "who supposes that he acknowledges and believes that there is a God, before he abstains from the evils mentioned in the Decalogue, and especially from the love of ruling grounded in the mere delight of rule, and from the love of possessing worldly property grounded in the mere delight of possession, and not in the delight of uses—is much deceived. However much a man may confirm himself in the belief that there is a God, from the Word, from preachings, from books, and from the light of reason, and may thence persuade himself that he believes,—nevertheless he does not believe, if the evils arising from the love of self and of the world are not removed. The reason is, because evils and their delights stand in the way and keep back the good affections and their delights which flow in from heaven, and thus intercept that internal confirmation which attends such influx; and before this internal confirmation is received, there is only a faith of the mouth, which in itself is no faith, and there is not the faith of the heart, which is real faith. The faith of the mouth is faith existing only in the externals of the mind; whereas the faith of the heart is a faith existing in the internals of the mind. Now, if the internals are filled with all kinds of evils, then, when the externals are taken away, as is the case with every man after death, then the man rejects from himself even the belief that there is a God."[12]
These profound truths, my brethren, declared by the Doctrine of the New Church, are of a nature to make us reflect. We need to examine ourselves, to see whether we are truly heart-worshipers of God, or only lip-worshipers. Tried by the test here given, it is to be feared that thousands who are seen every Sabbath-day solemnly worshiping God with their lips in the churches of the land, are at heart atheists, and will be found such after death. We need to beware lest we be of that number, self-deceived. If we are habitually indulging in any known evils, the love of self, the love of the world, the love of pleasure,—if we give way to angry passions, to the spirit of rage, of hatred and revenge,—if we are not continually striving to combat our evils, and continually examining ourselves, also, to know what our evils are—then we are idolaters at heart, whatever we may appear before the world, or whatever we may suppose ourselves to be. But in the degree that we combat our evils, and overcome them, and put them away, in that degree good from the Lord will flow in, and with it the light of heaven, and we shall thereby have an internal conviction and confirmation that there is a God of love and goodness, a true and heavenly Father, an everlasting Friend, who will watch over us and keep us all our life long, and gift us at length with life eternal in heaven; and with our minds filled with such belief and perception, our worship will be genuine, and tender, and from the heart; and every act of such worship will conjoin us more closely with the Lord.
- ↑ Rev. ix. 20.
- ↑ Deut. xxxii. 16, 17.
- ↑ Lev. xvii. 2—7.
- ↑ 1 Cor. x. 19, 20.
- ↑ John iii. 27.
- ↑ Arcana Cœlestia, n. 8875.
- ↑ Coloss. iii. 5.
- ↑ True Christian Religion, n. 293.
- ↑ Matt. vi. 24.
- ↑ Matt. vi. 33.
- ↑ Apocalypse Explained, n. 950.
- ↑ Ap. Ex., n. 952.