Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

332 THK FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOMrepublics, Etruria and Home, and no less the greatrealm of India, and China stretching through all timesin her vast peopled isolation, bear alike witness tothis alliance. Not only the house has its householdgod, but the city and its worship are blended together,and sacrilege is likewise treason. That in itself isthe legitimate carrying out of Noah's first sacrifice :the normal state of human life according to the divineideal given in the fathership of Noah, wherein belief,action, and worship are harmoniously joined togetherfor the man, the family, and the commonwealth.It is hard to calculate the enormous disturbanceof this triple union produced by the denial of God'sunity. By such denial man's conception of God wasessentially corrupted. As soon as God was multiplied,He ceased to be immense and infinite, all-powerfuland all-wise : He ceased likewise to be the God ofthe whole earth, and of the whole race of man. Theconception of the One God corrupted by the divisionof His Being ran speedily out into all the abominationsof false worship, as seen in its three main lines,worship of dead men exalted into heroes, worship ofinferior spirits, worship of the powers of nature. Thevarious false gods thus set up became national gods,and were made after the imaginationo of those whomthey were supposed to protect. We are led to concludefrom the passage of Scripture recording theconfusion of languages that it was a punishment forsome great act of pride and rebellion on man's part.It may be conjectured that the earth ceased to be ofone tongue at the same time that it ceased to worshipone God, and it is certain that the variety of languages-^^^"- ensuing upon the dispersion of men over theearth was rivalled by the variety of gods whom the