is to "have" the true God--which means, not only to know and confess,
but to be in real relationship with Him.

Despite His so-called self-sufficiency, man is not very self-sufficing,
after all. The vast endowments of Julius Caesar did not prevent him from
chafing because, at the age when he was still obscure, Alexander had
conquered the world. To be Julius Caesar was not enough for him. Nor is
any man able to stand alone. In the Old Testament Joshua said, "If it
seem evil unto you to serve the Lord, choose you this day whom ye will
serve,"--implying that they must obey some one and will do better to
choose a service than to drift into one (Josh. xxiv. 15). And in the New
Testament Jesus declared that no man can serve two masters; but added
that he would not break with both and go free, he was sure to love and
cleave to one of them. Now, he only is proof against apostasy, who has
realised the wants of the soul within him, and the powerlessness of all
creatures to satisfy or save, and then, turning to the cross of Christ,
has found his sufficiency in Him. "Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast
the words of everlasting life." Marvellous it is to think that
underneath the stern words "Thou shalt have none other," lies all the
condescension of the privilege "Thou shalt have ... Me."

_THE SECOND COMMANDMENT._

"Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image, ... thou shalt not
bow down thyself unto them, nor serve them."--xx. 4-6.

How far does the second of these clauses modify the first? Men there are
who maintain the severe independence of the former, so that it forbids
the presence of any image or likeness in the house of God, even for
innocent purposes of adornment. But the Decalogue is not a liturgical
directory: what it forbids in church it forbids anywhere; and on this
theory the statues in Parliament Square would be idolatrous, as well as
those in Westminster Abbey. And such Christians are more Judaical than
the Jews, who were taught to place in the very Holy of Holies golden
cherubim overshadowing the mercy-seat, and to represent them again upon
its curtains.

It is therefore plain that the precept never forbade imagery, but
idolatry, which is the making of images to satisfy the craving of men's
hearts for a sensuous worship--the making of them "unto thee." The
second clause qualifies and elucidates the first. And what the
commandment prohibits is any attempt to help our worship by representing
the ob