Editorial January 23, 1915 Issue

"No other gods"

John B. Willis

Nothing could be more definite or more inclusive than the requirement of the first commandment of the decalogue, and nothing more manifest or more lamentable than the universality of mankind's disobedience thereto. Its demand is that apart from Him whom Christ Jesus named "our Father," gods of every name and nature, whether honored among the nations or ruling in but a single life, each and all are not only to be denied place and power, they are to remain forever unknown.

This commandment is the chief emphasis of Scripture teaching. Nevertheless, how numerous and how influentially colossal are the gods to which Christian peoples have paid and are still paying devotion,—Mars, the god of war; money, the god of greed; lust, the god of sensualism; and material sense, the god of false belief,—these are some of the principalities and powers which error has enthroned and with which awakened thought is called to wrestle. Along with them, a legion of lesser deities have been privileged to usurp a place and command a service which in every degree of faith is pledged and professionally consecrated to God alone.

The pettiness of the Penates to which individual idolatry yields obeisance would be amusing ofttimes, were the fact less tragically significant in its effects upon character. To see a man, perchance of splendid capabilities, in bondage to some ignoble weakness or governed in important judgments by an utterly silly prejudice; to find that women of ability and culture are the slaves of the inanities of fashion or prevailing caste customs,—such discoveries of "what fools these mortals be," to follow Shakespeare's phrase, would make one smile, did he not remember that in effect "all these be gods," whose rule in human living speaks for the violation of the most fundamental requisite of Christianity and for the individual's practical consent to an ignoble enslavement, instead of claiming and entering into the enjoyment of the liberty of the sons of God.

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