Article February 1, 2014

Divine healing

Originally published in the April 1, 1891 issue of the Christian Science Series (Vol. 2, No. 23)

“Thou shalt have none other gods before me.”—Ex. xx. 3.

The Mosaic Decalogue established for the world a code of morals, which is adhered to, theoretically at least, to this day. Civil law is based largely upon it. The authors of standard works upon human law go back to this code for their starting point. Theology draws its inspiration in part from it. It is a living, vital principle and rule of action in the world to-day. This is generally recognized. It is yet a corner-stone in the religious structure. It justly receives the homage of Christendom. It is a golden tablet, and its divine origin is not questioned by believers in the Bible. Its first article is: “Thou shalt have none other gods before me.” This is a sweeping edict against idolatry in every form. It is not directed alone against the image worship of the heathen. This worship, the worship of idols of wood and stone, or other representations of a personal Deity, has been but a small part of the idolatry of the world. It is but a small part of it now. It is the least mischievous part of it. There is a greater need of reforming and christianizing that part of the world now, who are bowing down before the Baal of the human body, and its train of supposed diseases, than there is for the regeneration of those who are worshipping their heathen gods of wood and stone.

Christendom should pay more attention to its own heathen, and more nearly cast the beam out of the Christian eye, before undertaking to cast the mote out of the eye of the foreign heathen. Idolatry is little understood yet. The first article of the Mosaic decalogue, is yet, what the late Governor Allen of Ohio would have called a “barren ideality.” Little is yet apparently known of the full import of the divine interdiction against idol worship. We make an idol of everything in the world to which we ascribe greater power than we do to God. This is the meaning of the first commandment; and how broad it is. The heathen gods and their worship constitute a small part of it. It is the god of the material senses against which the decalogue is directed; these are the images that are set up against the one and only God. The most frightful of these images is that of the human body, distorted as it is by the false beliefs of the material senses. The material senses have made it a hot-bed of pain and sickness, a festering sore, a very charnal house of leprosy. And why? because it has been worshipped as a god; because it has been made the idol of the human heart.

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