Personality

The original nature worshiper worshiped pure nature, the winds, and the moon, and then in turn the sun. After a time he carved his stock or his stone into a representation of nature, such as the demon of the northwest wind, the hippopotamus of the Nile, or the birds of the air. The Greek set up in his temple the human figure, making it a marvel of perfection, as in the Zeus of the Acropolis, the Venus of Milo, or the Apollo of Belvidere. The Romans went even a step further. They made Caesar god, and enthroned their images of Divus Caesar, amongst other places in Pergamos, "where Satan's seat is." It was perfectly natural, therefore, that the people of Lystra, when they beheld the healing of the man impotent in his feet, should imagine that the gods were come down to them in the likeness of men, and that, after they had called Barnabas Jupiter, and Paul Mercury, the priests of the former should have brought oxen and garlands to the city gates, in order to do sacrifice in their manner.

It is much easier, however, to train a people into idolatry than to cause them to break from their idols. The whole struggle of the prophets of Israel, century after century, was to prevent the people going back to the old gods, planting their groves and molding their images of Baal. Whoever the first man who made an idol may have been, he set an example which the world is still following, not only in darkest Africa, but wherever the crowd cries Hosanna! before a human being one day, in order that it may cry Crucify him! the next. The exorcists had set an example in Asia which the primitive Christian was incredibly swift to follow. Thus, when Paul was preaching at Ephesus, it was recorded "that from his body were brought unto the sick handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them." Not even Christ Jesus could break the belief of the people in the material efficacy of physical contact. The woman with the issue of blood, who touched his garment in the press at Capernaum, possessed a faith so assured of the efficacy of what she did as to bring about her own healing. Centuries later the kings of England touched, for the king's evil: Dr. Johnson was so touched in the eighteenth century.

What all this means is made quite clear by Mrs. Eddy, in her Message of the 19th of April, 1899, printed on pages 151—152 of "The First Church of Christ Scientists and Miscellany." "When human thought discerned its idolatrous tendencies," she writes, "it took a step higher; but it immediately turned to another form of idolatry, and, worshipping person instead of Principle, anchored its faith in troubled waters. At that period, the touch of Jesus' robe and the handkerchief of St. Paul were supposed to heal the sick, and our Master declared, 'Thy faith hath made thee whole.' " It is almost incredible that the people to whom Christ Jesus and Paul preached should really have imagined for a moment that it was the touch of a human being, and not an understanding of divine Principle, that healed. But, though centuries have passed, the world, in some form or another, still demands a ruler, and still raises the cry of the Israelites to Samuel, "Nay; but we will have a king over us." This cry is, of course, only the sensuality of humanity making itself heard. Humanity is a great child, in the nursery of mortal mind, which demands perpetually that somebody shall think for it, plan for it, feed it, and protect it. It tears a tzar from the throne, but only to let a bolshevist dictator take his place. It releases itself from the mental control of priestcraft, only to place itself under the physical control of medicine. The woes of the people, declared the Taoist philosopher, were due to the philanthropy of the Yellow Emperor; it was his exertions in the name of paternal government which reduced the thinking capacity of his subjects.