The History of an Idol, Its Rise, Reign, and Progress (J.C. Philpot, 1855)

1 John 5:21

“Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen.” 

Idolatry is a sin very deeply rooted in the human heart. We need not go very far to find of this the most convincing proofs. Besides the experience of every age and every climate, we find it where we would least expect it—the prevailing sin of a people who had the greatest possible proofs of its wickedness and folly, and the strongest evidences of the being, greatness, and power of God.

It amazes us sometimes in reading the history of God's ancient people, as recorded in the inspired page, that, after such wondrous and repeated displays of his presence, glory, and majesty, they should again and again bow down before stocks and stones. That those who had witnessed all the plagues of Egypt had passed through the Red Sea by an explicit miracle, were daily living on manna that fell from heaven and water that gushed out of the rock, who had but to look upward by day to behold the pillar of the cloud, and by night the pillar of fire to manifest the presence of Jehovah in their midst—that this people, because Moses delayed coming down from the Mount, should fall down before a golden calf, and say, "These are your gods, O Israel, which brought you up out of the land of Egypt," does indeed strike our minds with astonishment.

And that this sin should break forth in them again and again through their whole history down to the period of the Babylonish captivity, in spite of all the warnings of their prophets, all the terrible judgments of God, all their repeated captivities, and, what would be far more likely to cure it, all their repeated deliverances, does indeed show, if other proof were lacking, that it is a disease deeply rooted in the very constitution of fallen man.

If this be the case, unless human nature has undergone a change, of which neither scripture nor experience affords any evidence, the disease must be in the heart of man now as much as ever; and if it exists it must manifest itself, for a constitutional malady can no more be in the soul and not show itself, than there can be a sickness in the body without evident symptoms of illness.

It is true that the disease does not break out exactly in the same form. It is true that golden calves are not now worshiped, at least the calf is not, if the gold be, nor do Protestants adore images of wood, brass, or stone. But that rank; property, fashion, honor, the opinion of the world, with everything which feeds the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, are as much idolized now as Baal and Moloch were once in Judea, and Juggernaut now is in the plains of Hindostan, is true beyond all contradiction.

But what is idolatry? To answer this question, let us ask another. What is an idol? Is not this the essence of the idea conveyed by the word, that an idol occupies that place in our esteem and affections, in our thoughts, words and ways, in our dependence and reliance, in our worship and devotedness, which is due to God only? Whatever is to us what the Lord alone should be, that is to us an idol. It is true that these idols differ almost as widely as the peculiar propensities of different individuals. But as both in ancient and modern times the grosser idols of wood and stone were and are beyond all calculation in number, variety, shape, and size, so is it in these inner idols of which the outer are mere symbols and representations.

Nothing has been too base or too brutal, too great or too little, too noble or too vile, from the sun walking in its brightness to a snake, a monkey, an onion, a bit of rag, which man has not worshiped. And these intended representations of Divinity were but the outward symbols of what man inwardly worshiped—for the inward idol preceded the outward, and the fingers merely carved what the imagination had previously devised. The gross material idol, then, whether an Apollo, "the statue which enchants the world," or a negro fetish, is but a symbol of the inner mind of man.

In that inner mind there are certain feelings and affections, as well as traditional recollections, which sin has perverted and debased, but not extinguished. Such are, a sense of a divine Creator, a dread of his anger and justice, a dim belief in a state after death of happiness or misery, an accountability to him for our actions, and a duty of religious worship. From this natural religion in the mind of man, a relic of the fall, sprang the first idea of idolatry—for the original knowledge of God being lost, the mind of man sought a substitute, and that substitute is an idol—the word, like the similar term "image," signifying a shape or figure, a representation or likeness of God.

Against this therefore, the second commandment in the Decalogue is directed. Now, this idea of representing God by some visible image being once established by the combined force of depraved intellect and conscience, the debased mind of man soon sought out channels for its lusts and passions to run in, which religion might consecrate; and thus the devilish idea was conceived and carried out, to make a god of SIN. Thus bloodshed, lust, theft, with every other crime, were virtually turned into gods named Mars, Venus, Mercury, and so on; and then came the horrible conclusion, that the more sin there was committed, the more these gods were honored. Need we wonder at the horrible debasement of the heathen world, and the utter prostration of moral principles produced by the worship of idols—or at the just abhorrence and wrath of God against idolatry?

But we need not dwell on this part of the subject. There is another form of idolatry much nearer home; the idolatry not of an ancient Pagan or a modern Hindoo, but that of a Christian.

Idolatry is the very breath of the carnal mind. All that "the old man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts," desires, thirsts after, is gratified by, or occupied with, is its idol—and so far as a Christian is under the influence of this carnal mind, this old man, this evil heart of unbelief, this fallen Adam-nature, this body of sin and death—all which are Scripture terms to express one and the same thing—he bows down to the idol set up in the chambers of imagery.

There is an old Latin proverb, that "love and a cough are two things impossible to be concealed;" and thus, though an idol may be hidden in the heart as carefully as Laban's teraphim in the camel's saddle, or the ephod and molten image in the House of Micah, (Judges 18:14), yet it will be discovered by the love shown to it, as surely as the suppressed cough of the consumptive patient cannot escape the ear of the physician.

Nor need we go far, if we would but be honest with ourselves, to find out each our own idol—what it is, and how deep it lies, what worship it obtains, what honor it receives, and what affection it engrosses. Let me ask myself, "What do I most love?" If I hardly know how to answer that question, let me put to myself another, "What do I most think upon? In what channel do I usually find my thoughts flow when unrestrained?" for thoughts flow to the idol as water to the lowest spot in a field.

If, then, the thoughts flow continually to the farm, the shop, the business, the investment, to the husband, wife, or child; to that which feeds lust or pride, worldliness or covetousness, self-conceit or self-admiration—that is the idol which, as a magnet, attracts the thoughts of the mind towards it.

Your idol may not be mine, nor mine yours; and yet we may both be idolaters. You may despise or even hate my idol, and wonder how I can be such a fool or such a sinner as to hug it to my bosom; and I may wonder how a partaker of grace can be so inconsistent as to love such a silly idol as yours. You may condemn me, and I condemn you; and the word of God's grace and the verdict of a living conscience condemn us both.

O how various and how innumerable those idols are! One man may possess a refined taste and educated mind. Books, learning, literature, languages, general information, shall be his idol. Music, vocal and instrumental, may be the idol of a second; so sweet to his ears, such inward feelings of delight are kindled by the melodious strains of voice or instrument, that music is in all his thoughts, and hours are spent in producing those harmonious sounds which perish in their utterance. Painting, statuary, architecture, the fine arts generally, may be the Baal, the dominating passion of a third. Poetry, with its glowing thoughts, burning words, passionate utterances, vivid pictures, melodious cadence, and sustained flow of all that is beautiful in language and expression, may be the delight of a fourth. Science, mathematical or mechanical, the eager pursuit of a fifth. These are the highest flights of the human mind; these are not the base idols of the drunken feast, the low jest, the mirthful supper, or even that less debasing but enervating idol—sleep and indolence, as if life's highest enjoyments were those of the swine in the sty.

An idol is not to be admired for its beauty or loathed for its ugliness, but to be hated because it is an idol. You middle-class people, who despise art and science, language and learning, as you despise the ale-house, and ballfield, may still have an idol. Your garden, your beautiful roses, your verbenas, fuchsias, needing all the care and attention of a babe in arms, may be your idol. Or your pretty children, so admired as they walk in the street; or your new house and all the new furniture; or your son who is getting on so well in business; or your daughter so comfortably settled in life; or your dear husband so generally respected, and just now doing so nicely in the farm. Or your own still dearer SELF that needs so much feeding, and dressing and attending to—who shall count the thousands of idols which draw to themselves those thoughts, and engross those affections which are due to the Lord alone?

You may not be found out. Your idol may be so hidden, or so peculiar, that all our attempts to touch it, have left you and it unscathed. Will you therefore conclude that you have none? Search deeper, look closer; it is not too deep for the eye of God, nor too hidden for the eyes of a tender conscience anointed with divine eye-salve. Hidden love is the deepest of all love; hidden diseases the most incurable of all diseases. Search every fold of your heart until you find it. It may not be so big nor so ugly as your neighbor's; but an idol is still an idol, and an image still an image, whether so small as to be carried in the coat pocket, or as large as a gigantic statue.

Every man has his idol; but it is not every man who sees it. Few groan under it.

"Dear children, keep yourselves from idols." 1 John 5:21

"The dearest idol I have known,
 Whatever that idol be,
 Help me to tear it from my heart,
 And worship only Thee."

http://www.gracegems.org/

Self-Love (Hannah More, 1811)

"The idol Self," says an excellent old divine, "has made more desolation among men than ever was made in those places where idols were served by human sacrifices. It has preyed more fiercely on human lives than Molech." To worship images is a more obvious idolatry, but scarcely more degrading than to set up self in opposition to God. To devote ourselves to this service is as perfect slavery, as the service of God is perfect freedom. If we cannot imitate the sacrifice of Christ in His death, we are called to imitate the sacrifice of Himself in doing His will. Even the Son of God declared, "I came not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me." This was His grand lesson, this was His distinguishing character.

Self-will is the ever flowing fountain of all the evil which deforms our hearts, of all the boiling passions which inflame and disorder society; the root of bitterness on which all its corrupt fruits grow. We set up our own understanding against the wisdom of God, and our own passions against the will of God. If we could ascertain the precise period when sensuality ceased to govern the animal part of our nature, and pride ceased to govern the intellectual part, that period would form the most memorable era of the Christian life; from that moment on we begin a new date of liberty and happiness; from that stage we set out on a new career of peace, liberty and virtue.

Self-love is a Proteus of all shapes, shades and complexions. It has the power of expansions and contractions as best serves the occasion. There is no crevice so small through which its subtle essence cannot stretch itself to fill. It is of all degrees of refinement; so coarse and hungry as to gorge itself with the grossest adulation, so fastidious as to require a homage as refined as itself; so artful as to elude the detection of ordinary observers, so specious as to escape the observation of the very heart in which it reigns paramount. Yet, though so extravagant in its appetites, it can adopt a moderation which imposes, a delicacy which veils its deformity, an artificial character which keeps its real one out of sight.

We are apt to speak of self-love as if it were only a symptom, whereas it is the disease itself. It is a malignant disease which has possession of the moral constitution and leaves nothing uncorrupted by its touch. This corrupting principle pollutes, by coming into contact with it, whatever is in itself great and noble. The poet, Alexander Pope, erroneously called self-love "a little pebble that stirred the lake, and made it the well—spring of human progress." His lines are as follows:
Self-love thus pushed to social, to divine,
Gives you to make your neighbor's blessing thine.
Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to make
As a small pebble stirs the peaceful lake.

The Apostle James appears to have been of a different opinion from Pope. James speaks as if he suspected that the pebble stirred the lake a little too roughly. He traces this mischievous principle from its birth to the largest extent of its malign influence. The question, "where come wars and fightings among you?" he answers by another question: "come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members?"

The same pervading spirit which creates hostility between nations, creates animosity among neighbors and discord in families. It is the same principle which, having in the beginning made Cain a murderer in his father's house, has been ever since in perpetual operation. It has been transmitted in one unbroken line of succession through that long chain of crimes of which history is composed, to the present triumphant spoiler of Europe [Napoleon]. In cultivated societies, laws repress the overt act in private individuals by punishment, but the Christian religion is the only thing that has ever been devised to cleanse the spring.

"The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it?" This proposition, this interrogation, we read with complacency, and both the statement and the question being a portion of Scripture, we think it would not be decent to contradict it. We read it, however, with a secret reservation that it is only the heart of all the rest of the world that is meant, and we rarely make the application which the Scripture intended. Each hopes that there is one heart that might escape the charge, and he makes the single exception in favor of his own. But if the exception which everyone makes were true, there would not be a deceitful or wicked heart in the world.

As a theory we are ready enough to admire self-knowledge, but when it comes to practice, we are as blindfolded as if our happiness depended on our ignorance. To lay hold on a religious truth, and to maintain our hold, is no easy matter. We like to have an intellectual knowledge of divine things, but to cultivate a spiritual acquaintance with them cannot be easily achieved. We can even force ourselves to believe that which we do not understand more easily than we can bring ourselves to choose that which crosses our will or our passions. One of the first duties of a Christian is to endeavor to conquer this antipathy to the self-denying doctrines against which the human heart so sturdily holds out.

The scholar takes incredible pains for the acquisition of knowledge. The philosopher cheerfully consumes the midnight oil in his laborious pursuits; he willingly sacrifices food and rest to conquer a difficulty in science. Here the labor is pleasant, the fatigue is welcome, the very difficulty is not without its charms. Why do we react so differently in our religious pursuits? Because in the most laborious human studies, there is no opposition to the will, there is no combat of the affections. If the passions are at all implicated, if self-love is at all concerned, it is rather in the way of gratification than of opposition.

There is such a thing as a mechanical Christianity. There are good imitations of religion, so well executed and so resembling as not only to deceive the spectator but the artist. If properly used, the careful reading of pious books is one of the most beneficial means to preserve us from the influence of self-love. These very books, however, in the hands of the lazy and self-satisfied, produce an effect directly contrary to that which they were intended to produce, and which they actually do produce on minds properly prepared for them. They inflate where they were intended to humble. Some hypochondriacs amuse their melancholy hours by consulting every available medical book, and fancy they can find their own ailment in the ailment of every patient, until they believe they actually feel every pain of which they read, though they read a case diametrically opposite to their own.

So the religious soul, weakened by self-love, may be unreasonably elated when reading books that describe a religious state far beyond their own. He feels his spiritual pulse by a watch that has no rhythm in common with it, yet he fancies that they go exactly alike. He dwells with delight on symptoms, not one of which belongs to him, and flatters himself with their supposed agreement. He looks in those books for signs of grace, and he observes them with complete self-application; he traces the evidences of being in God's favor, and those evidences he finds in himself.

Self-ignorance appropriates truths faithfully stated but wholly inapplicable. The presumption of the novice arrogates to itself the experience of the advanced Christian. He is persuaded that it is his own case and seizes on the consolations which belong only to the most elevated piety. Self-knowledge would correct the judgment. It would teach us to use the pattern held out as an original to copy, instead of leading us to fancy that we are already wrought into the likeness. It would teach us when we read the history of an established Christian, to labor after a conformity to it, instead of mistaking it for the description of our own character.

Human prudence, daily experience, self-love, all teach us to distrust others, but all motives combined do not teach us to distrust ourselves; we confide unreservedly in our own heart, though as a guide it misleads, as a counselor it betrays. It is both defendant and judge. Self-love blinds the defendant through ignorance; and moves the judge to acquit through partiality.

Though we praise ourselves for our discretion in not confiding too implicitly in others, yet it would be difficult to find any friend, neighbor, or even an enemy who has deceived us so often as we have deceived ourselves. If an acquaintance betray us, we take warning, are on the watch, and are careful not to trust him again. But however frequently the bosom traitor deceives and misleads, no such determined stand is made against his treachery: we lie as open to his next treachery: we lie as open to his next assault as if he had never betrayed us! We do not profit by the remembrance of the past delusion to guard against the future.

Yet if another deceive us, it is only in matters respecting this world, but we deceive ourselves in things of eternal importance. The treachery of others can only affect our fortune or our fame, or at worst, our peace; but the eternal traitor may mislead us to our everlasting destruction. We are too much disposed to suspect others who probably have neither the inclination nor the power to injure us, but we seldom suspect our own heart, though it possesses and uses both.

We ought however fairly to distinguish between the simple VANITY and the HYPOCRISY of self-love. Those who content themselves with talking as if the praise of virtue implied the practice, and who expect to be thought good because they commend goodness, only propagate the deceit which has misled them. Hypocrisy, on the other hand, does not even believe herself. She has deeper motives, she has designs to answer, competitions to promote, projects to effect. But mere vanity can subsist on the thin air of the admiration she solicits, without intending to get anything by it. She is gratuitous in her loquacity; for she is ready to display her own merit to those who have nothing to give in return, whose applause brings no profit, and whose censure no disgrace. Self-love feels strengthened by the number of voices in its favor, and is less anxious about the goodness of the work than the loudness of the acclamation. Success is merit in the eyes of both.

But even though we may put more refinement into our self-love, it is self-love still. No subtlety of reasoning, no elegance of taste, though it may disguise the inmost motive, can destroy it. We are still too much in love with flattery even though we may profess to despise that praise which depends on the acclamations of the masses. But if we are over-anxious for the admiration of the better-born and the better-bred, this by no means proves that we are not vain, it only proves that our vanity has better taste. Our appetite is not coarse enough perhaps to relish that popularity which ordinary ambition covets, but do we never feed in secret on the applause of more distinguishing judges? Is not their having extolled our merit a confirmation of their discernment, and the chief ground of our high opinion of theirs?

But if any circumstances arise to induce them to change the too-favorable opinion which they had formed of us, though their general character remain as unimpeachable as when we most admired them, do we not begin to judge them unfavorably? Do we not begin to question their claim to that discernment which we ascribed to them, to suspect the soundness of their judgment on which we had commented so loudly? We do well if we do not entertain some doubt of the uprightness of their motive, as we probably question the reality of their friendship. We do not candidly allow for the effect which prejudice, which misinformation, which partiality may produce even on an upright mind. Still less does it enter into our calculation that we may actually have deserved their disapproval, that something in our conduct may have incurred the change in theirs.

It is no low attainment to detect this lurking injustice in our hearts, to strive against it, to pray against it, and especially to conquer it. We may consider that we have acquired a sound principle of integrity when prejudice no longer blinds our judgment, when resentment does not bias our justice and when we do not make our opinion of others correspond to the opinion they entertain of us. We must have no false estimate which shall incline us to condemnation of others, or to partiality to ourselves. The principle of impartiality must be kept sound or our determinations will not be accurate.

In order to strengthen this principle, we should make it a test of our sincerity to search out and to commend the good qualities of those who do not like us. But this must be done without affectation, and without insincerity. We must practice no false candor. If we are not on our guard, we may be seeking praise for our generosity, while we are only being just. These refinements of self-love are the dangers only of spirits of the higher order, but to such they are dangers.

The INGENUITY of self-love is inexhaustible. If people extol us, we feel our good opinion of ourselves confirmed. If they dislike us, we do not think the worse of ourselves, but of them; it is not we who lack merit, but they who lack true insight. We persuade ourselves that they are not so much insensible to our worth, as jealous of it. There is no shift, stratagem, or device which we do not employ to make us stand well with ourselves.

We are too apt to calculate unfairly in two ways: by referring to some one signal act of generosity, as if such acts were the common habit of our lives; and by treating our habitual faults, not as common habits, but occasional failures. There is scarcely any fault in another, which offends us more than vanity, though perhaps there is none that really injures us so little. We have no patience that another should be as full of self-love as we allow ourselves to be; so full of himself as to have little leisure to pay attention to us. We are particularly quick-sighted to the smallest of his imperfections which interferes with our self-esteem, while we are lenient to his more grave offenses which, by not coming in contact with our vanity, do not shock our self-love.

Is it not strange that though we love ourselves so much better than we love any other person, yet there is hardly one, however little we value him, that we had not rather be alone with, that we had not rather converse with, that we had not rather come to close quarters with, than ourselves? Scarcely one whose private history, whose thoughts, feelings, actions and motives we had not rather pry into than our own? Do we not use every art and contrivance to avoid getting at the truth of our own character? Do we not endeavor to keep ourselves ignorant of what everyone else knows respecting our faults, and do we not account that man our enemy who takes on himself the best office of a friend—that of opening to us our real state and condition?

The little satisfaction people find when they faithfully look within makes them fly more eagerly to the things without. Early practice and long habit might conquer the repugnance to look at home, and the fondness for looking abroad. We might perhaps collect a reasonably just knowledge of our own character if we could ascertain the real opinions of others concerning us. But that opinion being, except in a moment of resentment, carefully kept from us by our own precautions, profits us nothing. We do not choose to know their secret sentiments because we do not choose to be cured of our error; because we "love darkness rather than light;" because we conceive that in parting with our vanity, we should part with the only comfort we have, that of being ignorant of our own faults.

Self-knowledge would materially contribute to our happiness by curing us of that self-sufficiency which is continually exposing us to mortifications. The hourly irritations and vexations which pride undergoes are far more than equivalents for the short intoxications of pleasure which they snatch.

The enemy within (our deceitful heart) is always in a confederacy with the enemy without, whether that enemy be the world or the devil. The domestic foe (our deceitful heart) accommodates itself to their allurements, flatters our weaknesses, throws a veil over our vices, tarnishes our good deeds, guilds our bad ones, hoodwinks our judgment, and works hard to conceal our internal springs of action.

Self-love has the talent of imitating whatever the world admires, even though it should happen to be Christian virtues. Because we regard our reputation, self-love leads us to avoid all vices, not only to escape punishment, but disgrace if we committed them. It can even assume the zeal and copy the activity of Christian charity. It attributes to our conduct those proprieties and graces which are manifested in the conduct of those who are actuated by a sounder motive. The difference lies in the ends proposed. The object of the one is to please God, of the other, to win the praises of people.

Self-love, judging the feelings of others by its own, is aware that nothing excites so much odium as its own character would do, if nakedly exhibited. We feel, by our own disgust at its exhibition in others, how much disgust we ourselves should excite if we did not clothe it with gentle manners and a polished address. Where therefore we would not condescend "to take the lowest place, to think others better than ourselves, to be courteous and pitiful" on the true Scripture ground, politeness steps in as the accredited substitute of humility— and the counterfeit "gem" is willingly worn by those who will not go to the expense of the real jewel.

There is a certain elegance of mind which will often restrain a well-bred man from sordid pleasures and gross sensualism. He will be led by his good taste perhaps not only to abhor the excesses of vice, but to admire the theory of virtue. But it is only the excesses of vice which he will abhor. Exquisite gratification, sober luxury, incessant but not unmeasured enjoyment form the principle of his plan of life. If he observes a temperance in his pleasures, it is only because excess would take off the edge, destroy the zest, and abridge the gratification.

By resisting gross vice he flatters himself that he is a temperate man and that he has made all the sacrifices which self-denial imposes. Inwardly satisfied, he compares himself with those who have sunk into coarser indulgences, and he enjoys his own superiority in health, credit and unimpaired faculties, and exults in the dignity of his own character.

There is, if the expression may be allowed, a sort of religious self-deceit and affectation of humility which is in reality full of self, which is entirely occupied with self, and which only looks at things as they refer to self. This religious vanity operates in two ways. First, we not only lash out at the imputation by others, of the smallest individual fault to ourselves; while at the same time we pretend to charge ourselves with more corruption than is attributed to us. On the other hand, while we are lamenting our general lack of all goodness, we fight for every particle that is questioned by others. The one quality that is in question always happens to be the very one to which we must lay claim, however deficient in others. Thus, while renouncing the pretension to every virtue, "we depreciate ourselves into all." We had rather talk even of our faults than not occupy the foreground of the canvas.

Humility does not consist in telling our faults, but in willing to be told of them; in hearing them patiently and even thankfully; in correcting ourselves when told; in not hating those who tell us of them. If we were little in our own eyes, and felt our real insignificance, we would avoid false humility as much as mere obvious vanity. But we seldom dwell on our faults except in a general way, rarely on those of which we are really guilty. We do it in the hope of being contradicted, and thus of being confirmed in the secret good opinion we hold of ourselves. It is not enough that we inveigh against ourselves. We must in a manner forget ourselves. This oblivion of self from a pure principle would go further towards our advancement in Christian virtue than the most splendid actions performed on the opposite ground.

That self-knowledge which teaches us humility teaches us compassion also. The sick pity the sick. They sympathize with the disorder of which they feel the symptoms in themselves. Self-knowledge also checks injustice by establishing the equitable principle of showing the kindness we expect to receive. It represses ambition by convincing us how little we are entitled to superiority. It renders adversity profitable by letting us see how much we deserve it. It makes prosperity safe, by directing our hearts to Him who confers it, instead of receiving it as the consequence of our own deserving.

We even carry our self-importance to the foot of the throne of God. When prostrate there we are not required, it is true, to forget ourselves, but we are required to remember HIM. We have indeed much sin to lament, but we have also much mercy to adore. We have much to ask, but we have likewise much to acknowledge. Yet our infinite obligations to God do not fill our hearts half as much as a petty uneasiness of our own, nor HIS infinite perfections as much as our own smallest need! The great, the only effectual antidote to self-love is to get the love of God and of our neighbor firmly rooted in the heart. Yet let us ever bear in mind that dependence on our fellow creatures is as carefully to be avoided as love of them is to be cultivated. There is none but God on whom the principle of love and dependence form but a single duty.

Hannah More, "Practical Piety"

http://www.gracegems.org/

The Ransomed Returning Home (Octavius Winslow)

Isaiah 35:10

“And the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”

The children of God are on their way to the Father’s house. As 
spiritual voyagers they are homeward-bound. Heaven is the place 
at which they will as certainly arrive as that Christ Himself is there. 
Already the expectant of glory binds the “wave sheaf ” to his believing 
bosom. Faith is the spiritual spy of the soul. It travels far 
into the promised land, gathers the ripe clusters—the evidences 
and pledges of its reality and richness—and, returning, bears with 
it these, the “first-fruits” of the coming vintage. “My soul has 
desired the first ripe fruits:” and he who has in his soul the “first-fruits 
of the Spirit, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption 
of the body,” knows something in his experience of heaven upon 
earth. Ah! many a glimpse and gleam of the heavenly land dawns 
upon the Christian in the darkness of his dungeon, in the loneliness 
of his exile, in the cloistered stillness of his suffering chamber. 
Such was the rapture of a departing saint: “The celestial city is full 
in my view. Its glories beam upon me, its breezes fan me, its odors 
are wafted to me, its sounds strike upon my ear, and its spirit is 
breathed into my heart. Nothing separates me from it but the river 
of death, which now appears but as an insignificant rill, that may 
be crossed at a single step, whenever God shall give permission. 
The Sun of Righteousness has been gradually drawing nearer and 
nearer, appearing larger and brighter as He approached, and now 
He fills the whole hemisphere, pouring forth a flood of glory, in 
which I seem to float like an insect in the beams of the sun; exulting, 
yet almost trembling, while I gaze at the excessive brightness, 
and wondering with unutterable wonder why God should deign 
thus to shine upon a sinful worm”—Payson. 

Thus, long before the 
believer reaches the celestial city, the evidences of its existence 
and fertility float past his barque, as manifestly as did the tokens of 
a new world the vessel which bore Columbus to its shores. The 
relation of present grace to future glory is close and indissoluble. It 
is that of the seed to the flower—of the morning twilight to meridian 
day. Grace is the germ of glory; glory is the highest perfection 
of grace. Grace is glory militant; glory is grace triumphant. Thus 
the believer has two heavens to enjoy—a present heaven experienced 
in the love of God in his heart, and a future heaven in the 
fulness of joy that is at Christ’s right hand, and the pleasures that 
are for evermore. We wish not at this stage of our work to intro-duce 
the dark background of the picture, and yet we cannot with-hold 
the passing remark, that as heaven has its foretastes of happiness, 
its preibations of glory, its dayspring from on high in the heart 
of the regenerate, so has hell its dark forebodings, its certain approaches, 
in the soul of many of the unregenerate—some shadows 
of the “outer darkness” that will enshroud the lost forever. Reader, 
is it heaven or hell of which you have in your experience the ear-nest? 
One drop of hell, one beam of heaven, can fill the soul with 
either! 

And yet, though journeying homeward, we are but slow voyagers. 
Our barque often slumbers upon its shadow, as if anchored 
motionless in the still, calm waters within the haven, instead of 
cleaving the mighty billows, and speeding its way m full sail for the 
everlasting kingdom. Alas! how few there are who have an “abundant 
entrance” into the kingdom of grace below. They are, at best, 
but hangers upon the door of the ark; but borderers upon the land 
that freely flows with the fulness of a full Christ. Like Israel of old 
they “possess not their possessions.” There is much of the good land 
they have never explored. Much peace, much joy, much love, much 
hope, much in an advanced knowledge of Christ and of God, and 
of their interest in the Savior’s love, and in the high and heavenly 
calling, attainable, but to which they have not attained; they have 
not apprehended that for which they are apprehended of Christ 
Jesus. They are oftener heard mournfully to exclaim, “My heart 
cleaves unto the dust,” rather than in the more joyful strains, “O 
that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away and be at 
rest.” To help your soul heavenward,—to point the steps by which 
you may ascend nearer to God, and advance with quickened speed 
towards your eternal rest,—to encourage, cheer, and stimulate,— 
we proceed to expound the appropriate truths, and to unveil the 
winning hopes, by which the gospel of Christ seeks to promote our 
heavenly meetness, and to allure us to a world of perfect and end-less 
bliss. We can scarcely select from the Word of God, as illustrating 
the character, the journey, and the prospects of the believer, 
a more striking and beautiful portion than that which we propose 
in the present chapter to open. “And the ransomed q/ the Lord shall 
return, and come to Zion with songs, and everlasting joy upon their 
heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing 
shall flee away,” (Isa. 35:10.)

It is a most beautiful, expressive delineation of the character 
of the Lord’s people—“the ransomed of the Lord.” Mark how the 
Holy Spirit, whether speaking amid the twilight of the Old, or 
in the meridian light of the New Testament, ever makes the Cross 
of Christ the grand central truth. Here is a designation, which involves 
great principles, and defines a distinct and separate condition 
of our humanity. It casts into the deepest shade earth’s proudest 
titles, eclipses the glory of all intellectual greatness, and outbids 
the world’s dearest delights. Bring all the objects of sense, and 
all the discoveries of science, and all the achievements of intellect, 
and all the fame and distinction and glory for which heroes ever 
sighed, or which senators ever won and place it in focal power side 
by side with the salvation of the soul, and it pales into insignificance. 
But let us, in a few words, open up this high character—the 
“ransomed of the Lord.”

The word implies a previous state of bondage, slavery, and servitude. 
We speak properly of redeeming a captive, of ransoming a 
slave. Now the “ransomed of the Lord” are delivered from just such 
a state. By nature we are bondslaves, the servants of sin, the captives 
of Satan. Christ’s redemption changes this state; it ransoms 
and emancipates the Church. It totally reverses our moral condition. 
It makes a freeman of a slave; a child of an alien; a friend of a 
foe; a saint of a sinner; an heir of heaven of an heir of hell. The 
atoning work of Christ brings us back to our original and unfallen 
state, while it advances us in dignity, glory, and safety transcendently 
beyond it. We receive by the second Adam all, and infinitely 
more than we lost in the first Adam. But look at the leading 
points in this process of redemption. The Ransomer is God,—the 
ransom price is the vicarious sacrifice of Jesus,—the ransomed are 
the whole election of grace. How striking the words of Jehovah— 
“Deliver him from going down to the pit, for I have found a ransom.” 
It is the gracious exclamation of the Father. He provides the 
ransom. He found it reposing from eternity in His own bosom— 
He found it in Himself—“God will provide Himself a lamb for a 
burned offering.” Thus does the New Testament confirm the Old, 
while the Old Testament foreshadows the New. We read in the 
Epistle of John, “Whom God has set forth to be a propitiation 
through faith in his blood.” “God so loved the world, that he gave 
his only begotten Son.” Do not fail, beloved reader, to trace up your 
gracious springs to their infinite Fountain—God’s everlasting love. 
To stop at Calvary is to trace the river but halfway to its source. We 
admit that the spiritual traveler arriving at the cross finds a new 
world of grandeur bursting upon his view; but as he pursues his 
research, and learns more of the character, and heart, and purpose 
of God in salvation, there unfolds to his eye an expanse of moral 
scenery, clad in such tenderness, unveiling such sublimity, and vocal 
with such song, as infinitely transcends his loftiest thought or 
conception of the character, government, and glory of Jehovah. 
The Cross is the only standpoint, and Christ is the only mirror, 
where God can be rightly studied and seen.

From this glance at the Father, the originating source of our 
ransom, turn we for a moment to the Ransomer. No other being 
could have achieved the work but Jesus. No other ransomer was 
divine enough, nor holy enough, nor strong enough, nor loving 
enough. He was just the Ransomer for God, and just the ransom 
for man. Reposing one hand upon the throne of heaven, and the 
other upon the cross of earth, by the sacrifice of Himself He so 
united and reconciled God and man. Henceforth the cross and the 
throne are one, and will form the study, admiration, and praise of 
unfallen and redeemed intelligences through eternity. How clearly 
the apostle puts this fact of our reconciliation!— “And having made 
peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things 
unto himself; by him, I say, whether they be things in earth or things 
in heaven. And you, that were sometime alienated, and enemies in 
your mind by wicked works, yet now has he reconciled in the body 
of his flesh through death, to present you holy, and unblameable, 
and unreproveable in his sight,” (Col 1:2022.) And where this 
costly and precious offering? The Word of God alone can supply 
the answer: “HEREIN IS LOVE!” Love eternal moved the heart of 
Christ to relinquish heaven for earth—a diadem for a cross—the 
robe of Divine Majesty for the garment of our nature, taking upon 
Himself the leprosy of our sin, while in Him was no sin at all. Oh 
the infinite love of Christ!—what a boundless, fathomless ocean! 
Never was there, and never can there be, in the highest development 
of the affections, such love as Christ’s. Ask the “ransomed of 
the Lord,” whose chains He has dissolved, whose dungeon He has 
opened, whose liberty He has conferred, whose music angels bend 
to hear, if there ever was love like His! This is the love, beloved, we 
are so prone to question in our trials, to quench in our sorrows, to 
limit in our difficulties, and to lose sight of under the pressure of 
guilt, and in the writhings of Divine correction. Oh, whatever else 
you question, whatever else you doubt, question not, doubt not 
the love that Jesus, your Ransomer, bears you!

And what shall we say of the ransom price? It was the richest, 
the costliest, Heaven could give. “He gave Himself for us.” What 
more could He do? What less would have sufficed? It were, perhaps, 
an easy sacrifice for an individual to give his time, or his property, 
or his influence, or the expression of his sympathy for an object; 
but to give himself to sell himself into slavery, or to immolate 
himself as a sacrifice, were quite another thing. The Son of God 
gave not angels, of whom He was Lord; nor men, of whom He was 
the Creator; nor the world, of which He was the Proprietor; but 
He gave HIMSELF, body, soul, spirit, His time, His labor, His blood, 
His life, His death, His all, as the price of our ransom, as the cost 
of our redemption. He carried the wood, and He reared the altar; 
then, baring His bosom to the stroke of the uplifted and descending 
arm of the Father, paid the price of our salvation in the warm 
lifeblood of His heart. The Law exclaimed, “I am honored!”— 
Justice said, “I am satisfied!”—“Mercy and truth met together, righteousness 
and peace kissed each other”—and heaven resounded with 
hallelujahs. “You are bought with a price;” and what a price, O Christian! 
“You were not redeemed with silver and gold, but with the precious 
blood of Christ.” Bear about with you the vivid remembrance 
of this truth, that your whole life may be a holy thing—a pleasant 
psalm of thanksgiving and praise to God. How potent the argument, 
how touching the motive!—“I am a ransomed being; I am 
the price of blood—the blood of the incarnate Deity; therefore, 
and henceforth, I am to glorify Him in my body, soul, and spirit, 
who redeemed, disenthralled, and saved me.” 

How is it that we feel the force and exemplify the practical 
influence of this amazing, all commanding truth so faintly? Oh the 
desperate depravity of our nature! Oh the deep iniquity of our 
iniquitous hearts! Will not the blood drops of Jesus move us? Will 
not the unknown agonies of the cross influence us? Will not His 
dying love constrain us to a more heavenly walk? Ransomed from 
the curse, from sin, and from Satan, brought out of Egypt with a 
high and outstretched arm, surely this should speed us onward, 
quicken our progress heavenward, and constrain us, with Moses, 
to “esteem the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of 
Egypt, having respect unto the recompense of the reward.” How ought 
we to “lay aside every weight, and the sin which does so easily beset 
us, and to run with patience the race that is set before us, looking 
unto Jesus,” and so speeding our way to the heavenly city! 

We need scarcely remind the reader that the “ransomed of the 
Lord” compose the whole election of grace, the one Church of 
Christ, and the one family of God. What a uniting, sanctifying, and 
heaven helping truth is this! The divisions, which sunder and separate 
the Church of God are human; the ties which bind and unite 
the Church of God are Divine. The many systems of ecclesiastical 
polity, and modes of worship, which present to the eye the Christian 
Church as a “house divided against itself,” are of man; but the 
affection and sympathy, the doctrines and the hopes, which create 
an essential oneness in the family, and domesticate the habits and 
communion of its members, are of God—and because they are of 
God, they shall never be destroyed. This truth is a heaven helping 
truth. That which promotes our holiness, promotes our heavenliness; 
and growing heavenliness advances us nearer to heaven. If we 
walked more in love and fellowship and sympathy with the Lord’s 
people of each part of the one fold, we should have a sweeter cross 
and a lighter burden to carry. Are we not making more real and 
rapid progress in our heavenly course, and in meetness for heaven 
itself, when “by love we are serving one another,” rather than when 
in the bitterness of a bigoted and sectarian spirit we wrangle and 
dispute, “bite and devour one another?” Try the power of love, 
beloved reader—lay aside the prejudice, suspicion, and coldness 
which sunder you in fellowship and labor from other Christian 
communions than your own, and see if you may not, by sacred 
communion, mutual faith, prayer, service, and sympathy, gather the 
strength and the encouragement that shall accelerate and smooth 
your heavenward way. No grace advances the soul with greater force 
towards a heaven of love than love itself—whether it be love to 
man, or love to God who redeemed main “ The love of Christ 
constrains us.” 

And now let us consider the return home of the Lord’s ransomed; 
this truth will bring the beaming prospect of the Church of 
God more closely before us. “The ransomed of the Lord shall return, 
and come to Zion.” The Church of God in her Babylonish 
captivity, hanging her harp upon the willows that drooped over the 
waters in which she mingled her tears, with her captivity turned, 
and brought again to Zion, is an impressive symbol of the Christian 
Church. We are in Babylon now, and prisoners of hope. But we 
shall return from our captivity before long, and come to the heavenly 
Zion. Earth shall not always be our place of exile; we shall not 
always sing the Lord’s song in a strange land, nor always shed these 
tears, and wear these fetters, and endure those cruel taunts of our 
foes. Each trembling step of faith, each holy aspiration of love, 
each sin subdued, each foe vanquished, each trial past, each temptation 
baffled, is bringing us nearer and still nearer to the bright 
threshold of glory, upon which sister spirits stand beckoning us 
home. Oh yes! we shall return! We shall return from our first departure 
from our Father—from our exile from Paradise—from the 
strange land into which we were driven—from all our heart and 
household idols, from all our treacherous departures and base 
backslidings, from all our secret and open conflicts, from all our 
veiled and visible sorrows, from all that taints and wounds and 
shades us now. Every wanderer shall return—the lamb that strayed 
from the Shepherd’s side, the sheep that broke from the fold, the 
child that forsook the Father’s home, all, all shall return, “kept by 
the power of God,” secured by the everlasting covenant, restored 
and brought back by the unchanging love and faithfulness of the 
ever living Head and enthroned High Priest within the veil. All 
shall return. 

But one element of bliss yet remains to complete and consummate 
this return of the ransomed of the Lord—we refer to the 
final resurrection of the body. We do not adopt the frigid idea, as 
maintained by some, of an intermediate state, intervening between 
the present happiness of the saints and the resurrection of the body, 
during which the soul remains in a state of dreamy repose, and not 
in the full play of its perfected and enlarged powers, basking in the 
warm sunshine of the Divine glory. We rather adopt what we conceive 
is the move scriptural and pleasant idea of the believing soul’s 
immediate entrance into the glorified presence—that, “absent from 
the body, it is present with the Lord.” But we hold, at the same 
time, that the happiness and the glory of the saints are not complete 
until the ransomed soul is once more the occupant of the 
ransomed body, and that this reunion transpires on the morning of 
the “first resurrection.” If his truth is written upon the page of 
God’s Word as with a sunbeam. What says the Lord by the mouth 
of the prophet?—“I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I 
will redeem them from death: O death, I will be your plagues; O 
grave, I will be your destruction,” (Hos. 13:14.) And again, “Your 
dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. 
Awake and sing, you that dwell in dust: for your dew is as the dew of 
herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead,” (Isa. 26:19.) How 
strong was Job’s faith in the glorious resurrection!— “I know that 
my Redeemer lives, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon 
the earth: and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in 
my flesh shall I see God.” Then comes the full redemption—the 
re-espousal of the ransomed body and the ransomed soul, both  
now identically and eternally one, celebrating the “marriage supper 
of the Lamb!” Glorious as the resurrection will be to all, especially 
glorious will it be to some of the saints. Their frames, now 
distorted by nature, paralyzed by disease, wasted by sickness, shall 
then feel the quickening touch of Christ—gentle as a mother’s kiss 
waking her infant from its slumber—and spring from the dust a 
spiritual body, refined and etherealized, vigor in every limb, symmetry 
in every proportion, grace in every motion, perfection in 
every sense—blindness shall no more dim the eye, nor deafness 
blunt the hearing—clad in a robe of light, rivaling the splendor of 
an angel’s form, holiness sanctifying, and immortality enshrining 
the whole. Shall this be thought by you a thing incredible? He who 
is the “Resurrection and the Life” will accomplish it. His word is 
given, His power is engaged, His glory is involved, and His own 
resurrection is a pledge and “fIRST FRUITS” that He “shall change our 
vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto His glorious body, 
according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things 
unto Himself.” 

And where shall we return? “To Zion.” That Zion which John 
saw and described:—“And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on the 
mount Zion, and with him an hundred forty and four thousand, 
having his Father’s name written in their foreheads.” And still the 
Lamb is the central object, whatever the apocalyptic vision John 
beheld. Jesus is ever in the midst of His churches—His golden 
candlesticks—standing up in His divine majesty, and in His invincible 
strength, for the children of His people. Around Him cluster 
His ransomed ones, all sealed in their foreheads—open, and manifest, 
and visible to all—with the new name which adoption gives, 
whereby they cry “Abba, Father.” Then, there is the music with 
which the ransomed of the Lord shall return to Zion—“with songs, 
and everlasting joy upon their heads.” The songs of the believer are 
often mingled with sighs and groans in this vale of tears; it is a 
blended song we sing, of “mercy and of judgment.” But no, harsh 
discordant notes will mar this newborn anthem. We shall sweep 
no strings that jar, and touch no chords that respond not to the 
diapason note of glory. Joy, now sadly interrupted, will then wreath 
our brow as a diadem. Chanting music, crowned with joy, we shall 
take our places with the sealed of God on Mount Zion. “Sorrow 
and sighing shall flee away.” What expressive and joyous words are 
these! Sorrow without and sighing within, make up much of our 
chequered experience here on earth. What a blended history is 
ours! We commence our day with a heart freshly tuned, breathing 
its morning hymn of praise so sweetly; but before the sun that rose so 
brightly is set, what shadows have deepened around our soul! and 
we lay an aching head upon our pillow, thankful that the blood of 
sprinkling cleanses from all sin. But from the heaven to which we 
are going, all sorrow and sighing will forever have passed. The 
shadows will have dissolved, sin will be effaced, sighing will cease, 
sorrow will be turned into “fulness of joy,” and heaven will be resplendent 
with undimmed and unfading glory, and resound with a 
new and endless song. Is not this heaven worth living for, worth 
suffering for, worth laborings for—no, if need be, worth a thousand 
martyrdoms? 

“A captive here, and far from home, 
For Zion’s sacred courts I sigh: 
There the ransomed nations come, 
And see the Savior ‘eye to eye.’ 
“While here, I walk on hostile ground; 
The few that I can call my friends 
Are, like myself, with fetters bound, 
And weariness my path attends. 
“But we shall soon behold the day 
When Zion’s children shall return; 
Our sorrows then shall flee away, 
And we shall never, never mourn. 
“The hope that such a day will come 
Makes e’en the captive’s portion sweet; 
Though now we’re distant far from home 
In Zion soon we all shall meet.”

Octavius Winslow, "Help Heavenward"

http://www.gracegems.org/