effectually as did Gideon's ordeal by water, which brought
down a mob of ten thousand to a little steadfast band of three hundred.
No matter to what church we belong, or how flaming our professions, our
practical religion is determined by our answer to the question, What do
we most desire? What do we most eagerly pursue? England has as much need
as ever the house of Jacob had of the scathing words that poured like
molten lead from the lips of Isaiah the son of Amoz, 'Their land is full
of silver and gold, neither is there any end of their treasures. Their
land is also full of idols: they worship the work of their own hands.'
Money, knowledge, the good opinion of our fellows, success in a
political career--these, and the like, are our gods. There is a worse
idolatry than that which bows down before stocks and stones. The aims
that absorb us; our highest ideal of excellence; that which possessed,
we think would secure our blessedness; that lacking which everything
else is insipid and vain--these are our gods: and the solemn prohibition
may well be thundered in the ears of the unconscious idolaters not only
in the English world, but also in the English churches. 'Thou shalt not
give My glory to another, nor My praise to graven images.'

II. The worshipper will resemble his god in character.

As we have already said, the goal of religion is likeness, and the
truest worship is imitation. It is proved by the universal experience of
humanity that the level of morality will never rise above the type
enshrined in their gods; or if it does, in consequence of contact with a
higher type in a higher religion, the old gods will be flung to the
moles and the bats. 'They that make them are like unto them; so is every
one that trusteth in them.' That is a universal truth. The worshippers
were in the Prophet's thought as dumb and dead as the idols. They who
'worship vanity' inevitably 'become vain.' A Venus or a Jupiter, a Baal
or an Ashtoreth, sets the tone of morals.

This truth is abundantly enforced by observation of the characters of
the men amongst us who are practical idolaters. They are narrowed and
lowered to correspond with their gods. Low ideals can never lead to
lofty lives. The worship of money makes the complexion yellow, like
jaundice. A man who concentrates his life's effort upon some earthly
good, the attainment of which seems to be, so long as it is unattained,
his passport to bliss, thereby blunts many a finer aspirat