Article May 27, 1916 Issue

Ark of the Covenant

GEORGE AUSTIN ANDERSON

Men write history which subsequently is read by other men, and while it seems more than we may expect that every historian should write with discerning wisdom, it is nevertheless within the possibilities of every individual reader's attainment to read human history with a divining consciousness of the vast range of man's real being, and to see the incidents therein contained, not as facts in any final sense, but as symbols.

Since all history is typical of states through which every man in some sense passes, the interest which all come to feel in it is easily explained, and this is especially true with regard to the history of the people of Israel. In his essay "History" Emerson says: "There is no age or state of society or mode of action in history to which there is not somewhat corresponding in his [each man's] life. ... This life of ours is stuck round with Egypt, Greece, Gaul, England, war, colonization, church, court, and commerce, as with so many flowers and wild ornaments grave and gay. I will not make more account of them. I believe in eternity." Though he reasoned well, the fact that this great writer failed to make due distinction between the divine Mind, whose expression is spiritual understanding, and mortal mind, whose function is idolatry, marks the inadequacy of his philosophy.

Throughout the ages mankind have acknowledged a power outside themselves and have looked to it for approbation, condemnation, and guidance. The essential unity which exists between God, the infinite good, and the real man, is counterfeited in the material concept of creation which simulates the divine. Here the order is reversed. Mortal man has made his gods in his own image and likeness,—whether this take the form of a graven image patterned after his physique, or whether he worship and serve his inner beliefs, his mortal mind misconceptions, the more genreal form of idolatry today, misnamed natrual law. Both are phases of the belief of life in matter and of man as a creator, even the belief of a material birth and its subsequent growth, maturity, and decay.

Send a comment to the editors

NEXT IN THIS ISSUE

Article

"Ye have need of patience"