Article October 30, 1926 Issue

Refusing to Make Graven Images

BEULAH HYDELOFF

In a day when pagan idolatry dominated the thought of the world, our Master came bearing witness to the true worship of Spirit and Truth. He clearly discerned the obstacles that a sense of mortal personality places in the pathway Spiritward, and commanded his followers to turn from the human to the divine, to the one who alone is good—God. Centuries later, the revered Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, perceiving the world still in bondage to idolatrous carnal beliefs, emphatically denounced the worship of personality and plainly indicated the results of such delusion when she stated (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 308), "He that by reason of human love or hatred or any other cause clings to my material personality, greatly errs, stops his own progress, and loses the path to health, happiness, and heaven."

A study of Christian Science strips the mask from the erroneous concept of man, and lays bare the pagan blindness of human thinking that leads to the worship of or dependence upon corporeal personality. It reveals Spirit as all, and presents irrefutable evidence that in looking to human selfhood for help or guidance, we reject our God and set up for ourselves graven images. If we cling to human personality, worship it, look to it for all good, then Christian Science must awaken us to the fact that we are exalting matter. Looking farther than that, we shall find that such adoration binds with cruel fetters the very ones we seek to love. And what is this but a form of pernicious evil?

In the journey out of the wilderness of deceptive finite beliefs into the haven of spiritual consciousness, no Christian Scientist can afford to be enticed into the making of any graven image. If he is, then the time must come when he will find himself crying out, "Ye have taken away my gods which I made ... and what have I more?" Divine Principle will then force him to retrace every step of the way, and very meekly, very prayerfully, he will have to begin again.

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