t folly then to think of worshipping such things!

The tendency of the human heart to represent God by something that
appeals to the senses is the origin of all idolatry. It leads directly
to image-worship. At first there may be no desire to worship the thing
itself, but it inevitably ends in that. As Dr. MacLaren says:
"Enlisting the senses as allies of the spirit is risky work. They are
apt to fight for their own band when they once begin, and the history
of all symbolical and ceremonial worship shows that the experiment is
much more likely to end in sensualizing religion than in
spiritualizing sense."

PICTURES AND IMAGES.

But some one says--"I find pictures are a great help to me, and
images. I know that they are not themselves sacred, but they help me
in my devotions to fix my thoughts on God."

When Dr. Trumbull was in Northfield, he used an illustration that is a
good answer to this. He said, "Suppose a young man were watching from
a window for his absent mother's return, with a wish to catch the
first glimpse of her approaching face. Would he be wise or foolish in
putting up a photograph of her on the window-frame before him, as a
help to bear her in as he looks for her coming? As there can be no
doubt about the answer to that question, so there can be no doubt that
we can best come into communion with God by closing our eyes to
everything that can be seen with the natural eye, and opening the eyes
of our spirit to the sight of God the Spirit."

I would a great deal sooner have five minutes communion with Christ
than spend years before pictures and images of Him. Whatever comes
between my soul and my Maker is not a help to me, but a hindrance. God
has given different means of grace by which we can approach Him. Let
us use these, and not seek for other things that He has distinctly
forbidden.

Dr. Dale says that in his college days he had an engraving of our Lord
hanging over his mantlepiece. "The calmness, the dignity, the
gentleness, and the sadness of the face represented the highest
conceptions which I had in those days of the human presence of Christ.
I often looked at it, and seldom without being touched by it. I
discovered in the course of a few mouths that the superstitious
sentiments were gradually clustering about it, which are always
created by the visible representations of the Divine. The engraving
was becoming to me the shrine of God manifest in the flesh, and I
understood the growth of ido