Image worship

“ It is one thing to worship an image, and another to learn represented in the image what we ought to worship. For what the Scriptures are for those who can read, that a picture is for those who are unable to read ”

“ This plain teaching as to the only meaning of reverence paid to images, namely, that it is relative and intended for that which the image represents, our author enforces by several examples. Just as a priest when saying mass with a book before him, bends [302] down, holds up his hands, kneels, and performs other external signs of worship, not to the book, but to God, “so should the unlettered man use his book, that is images and paintings, not worshipping the thing, but God in heaven and the saints in their degree. ”

“ For how should lifeless images seem fit even to serve you, when they can neither hear, nor see, nor feel anything? Yea, even the material of which they are made, whether it be gold or silver, or even brass or wood, though it might have profited you for necessary uses, you have rendered wholly inefficient and useless by fashioning gods out of it. We therefore declare to you the true worship of God, and at the same time warn and exhort the worshippers, that by good deeds they imitate Him whom they worship, and hasten to return to His image and likeness, as we said before. ”

“ These illustrations show that the worship rendered to images did not terminate in them as its object, but referred to an unseen Intelligence beyond them, who was supposed to be cognizant of their circumstances and their acts, and to be able to protect them and grant their requests. It proceeded on the assumption that the visible emblem, the graven image, or whatever was selected by individuals or canonized by the priests, and worshipped as an idol—the proper signification of which is, a figure, likeness, or representation—was a medium of intercourse with the Being worshipped. ”

“ The senseless earth is dishonoured by the makers of images, who change it by their art from its proper nature, and induce men [57] to worship it; and the makers of gods worship not gods and demons, but in my view earth and art, which go to make up images. For, in sooth, the image is only dead matter shaped by the craftsman’s hand. But we have no sensible image of sensible matter, but an image that is perceived by the mind alone,—God, who alone is truly God. ”

“ Whether the idol was an image, the work of men's hands, or any created thing, as the sun, moon, and stars, or a human being (for men, both dead and living, were made objects of worship) , the effect was to draw away the spirit from conjunction with God and heaven, and thus to extinguish all spiritual light in the mind, and to render it grossly natural. ”

“ Pure love, poetic genius, and true religion have done much to vindicate and to restore the normal harmony.
The time has now come when a clearer vision and better action are possible,—when man and woman may stand as pillars of one temple, priests of one worship. ”

“ Instituting a generous and tolerant survey of religious opinions, we see nothing in the solemn pomp of catholic worship which could disorganize the mind; as human beings, they have employed human art to render the impression more vivid and durable. ”

“ The magnificent domain waited in harmony and beauty for its inhabitants, “And God said, let us make man in our image, after our likeness.” “So God created man in his own image: in the image of God created he him.” ”

“ For carved images are images wrought by the hand. Why are all who worship carved images confounded? Because all people have seen His glory. All nations now confess the glory of Christ: let those who worship stones be ashamed. ”

“ There is no reason to suppose that the practices I have described originated later than the carving of sacred images, and were at first a peculiarity of their worship. There is every reason to suppose exactly the reverse. ”

“ Poetry, music, painting, sculpture, and architecture all are unquestionably legitimate handmaids of religion and may be made most serviceable. But the use of images for ornament, instruction, and enjoyment is one thing; the worship of images is quite another thing. [271] In the Middle Ages only a few lofty souls here and there took the true view. Pictures were put into churches not as objects of art, but as aids and objects of worship. ”

“ The argument for this insidious and perilous exchange is sometimes put in a kind of religious phraseology, as if these visits to beautiful scenes in nature were only the introduction to another kind of worship, and as if gazing upon the master-pieces of human art in painting, or sculpture, or architecture, exercised a purifying and elevating influence on the mind ”

“ In such countries, you can contemplate that religion in all its open and unveiled idolatry; it is there you will see more fully exhibited the practice of worshipping images, of bowing down to dumb idols in the shape of pictures, images, saint worship, angel worship, &c., &c. ”

“ None of the ancient and habitual worshippers during peaceful times, were now to be seen in their carved galleries, with hands shadowing their brows, while composing their minds to pray where their fathers had prayed, and after the same mode of worship. ”

“ For no nation was ever so brainless or stupid as to believe that idols or images made of mere inanimate matter were living beings, much less a living God. No! the images which have been represented by Christian writers as being objects of worship in numerous heathen countries have been nothing more than mere imaginary likenesses of the Divine Being, and were gotten up for the same purpose that Christian men obtain photograph likenesses of their absent friends, and hang them on the walls of their dwellings. ”

“ This is more than honor: it is worship. It is giving to the creature that which belongs only to the Creator. These superstitions and idolatries have produced in Protestant minds a revulsion of feeling, which sometimes carries them to an equal extreme the other way. We are so shocked by a false estimate that we hardly take pains to get a true one. We find it difficult to disentangle our thoughts from this mass of legend, and to form a just conception of a character which is beautiful because of its freedom from all pretension, its simplicity, its modesty, purity, and truth. ”

“ Symbolic worship is an attestation to an unseen God, its ostensible purpose being of course that a gradual revelation of God may be vouchsafed to the pious devotees of sacraments and ceremonies. The inaugurator of a rite, desiring to express his ideas of abstract or absolute truth, contrives a symbol, a work of art that shall stand as the likeness of his thoughts—a likeness capable of carrying significance according to the discriminating intelligence of all who may behold it. ”

“ A richly sensuous or ceremonial religion has great attraction for the vulgar, and if only artistically performed, equally great charms for the fashionable and refined, simply because the education of the eye and the ear is much more easy and pleasant than that of the understanding—hence the strength and influence of such religions. For if once the sensuous is admitted as an element in any degree whatever as rendering our worship more acceptable to God, it obviously follows that worship ought to be made as highly sensuous or ceremonial as is possible. ”

“ In this respect Art supplies to the consciousness which seeks to envisage the Divine manifestation, the definite presence of an individual and real human figure, a concrete image, moreover, of the exterior traits of events, in which the birth, life, sufferings, death, resurrection and ascension of Christ are more widely circulated to the glory of God; so that it is exclusively by Art that the real and visible presence of the Divine is for ever renewed over again in a permanent form. ”

“ Man, therefore, viewed from this position of his earthly habitation, is surrounded by a symbolical world of sensuous emblems. And if we can, or, rather, if we will, believe the grand intimation with which revelation opens, the first and highest destination of man is even symbolical—to be the Divine image. ”

“ It is the sanctification of color, sound, and skill, of intellect, imagination, and emotion. It is devotion—devotion of what is excellent in man, devotion of what symbolizes the loveliness of nature. Therefore it is that worship calls for art; therefore, too, it is that art so often finds its noblest use in worship. Worship and art together take the beauty of the world and offer it up as a tribute at the feet of God."
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The Church, the Place of Worship
It would seem that at first Christians worshiped in any place which they could use with safety. ”

“ Basing the religion they instituted upon their system of Allegorical Astronomy, and making its personifications the objects of worship, they thus originated the anthropomorphic or man-like Gods, and, claiming to have composed them under the inspiration of these self same divinities, they designated them as sacred records, or Scriptures, and taught the ignorant masses that they were literal histories, and their personifications real personages, who, having once lived upon earth, and; for the good of mankind, performed the wondrous works imputed to them, were then in heaven whence they came. ”

“ I have sat listening to him and watching the singular gleam when he seems to have an eye within an eye which sees a vision not granted to others—the vision of a Church, glorious and conquering, the expression and the crown of a complete world of knowledge, where the human and the Divine clash no more even seemingly. ”

“ Do you not see that in that communion only, beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, he will be enabled to bring forth not images of beauty, but realities; for he has hold not of an image, but of a reality; and bringing forth and educating true virtue to become the friend of God, and be immortal, if mortal man may? ”

“ It seems to me clear, then, that if we are to emphasize the transcendent elements in religion; if they represent, as we have been contending, the central elements of the religious experience, its creative factors, then the revival of worship will be a prime step in creating a more truly spiritual society. ”

“ They have made unto themselves graven images, not fashioned alike, but each an image of his own, and each would have Me to be like unto the image which he has made. For they murmur among themselves: It is we that have made God ”

“ The use of images has been ordained by the Church for two principal ends — namely, that we may reverence the saints in them, and that the will may be moved and devotion to the saints awakened by them. When they serve this purpose they are beneficial and the use of them is necessary; and therefore we must choose those that are most true and lifelike, and that most move the will to devotion, and our eyes must ever be fixed upon this motive rather than upon the value and cunning of their workmanship and decoration. ”

“ It means, of course, that if the Soul's capability of 'apprehending' or learning the true meaning and use of every fact and circumstance which environs its existence, were properly perceived and applied, then the 'Image of God' in which the Creator made humanity, would become the veritable likeness of the Divine. ”

“ Yet look again;—even here is passion, sentiment, futurity. The imagination involuntarily shapes out the fortunes of that disposition so legibly expressed in the speaking countenance. But in the deep meaning of the mild full eye, in the holy expression which beams in every lineament, in the spotless form, has not genius made the nearest approaches to our unbreathed conceptions of an infant Saviour! Regard that prophet—how glorious, yet how good, he seems! No spirit insensible to human woe, unpitying of human frailty, lives there. ”

“ Hence the invention and construction of images as imaginary likenesses of the Gods, to serve as substitutes for them, to be venerated in their stead daring their absence, as we secure the likeness of a friend when about to leave us for a journey, or to be long absent. And here we may date the primary origin of idolatry, which is nothing more nor less than the first rude germination of man's religious nature. ”

“ Increase as much as you will the perfection of the created image, it remains always infinitely distant from the uncreated, personal image of himself which the Father contemplates in the Word, and loves in the Holy Spirit, within the circle of the blessed Trinity. ”

“ Subjective worship has grown out of, and been a refinement upon, the external cult, which in the beginning was in the eyes of mankind much the more important of the two. To the incantation, to the material offering, to the sacrifices of the victims succeeded subjective prayer and the subjective offering of love, and the subjective sacrifice of egoistic passion. ”

“ But perchance, thou seest with the eye of Faith, gazing on that brightness, that is to be, through the painted-glass of thy imagination. Strange are the pictures of the future that mankind can thus draw with this brush of faith and this many-coloured pigment of imagination! ”

“ Commentary.—What better proof have we that images are the books of the illiterate, the ever-speaking heralds of honouring the saints, teaching those who gaze upon them without words, and sanctifying the spectacle. I have not many books nor time for study, and I go into a church, the common refuge of souls, my mind wearied with conflicting thoughts. ”

“ The beauty produced by sanctifying grace must be conceived not merely as a reflection of the absolute nature of God, who is the pattern-exemplar of all beauty, but more specifically as an image of the Trinity impressed upon the soul. St. Paul teaches that the soul is transformed into an image of the Divine Logos, to whom, as the holy Fathers tell us, beauty is appropriated in an especial manner.1064 Cfr. ”

“ Let the faithful soul, then, be careful that, when he sees the image, he desire not that his senses should be absorbed by it, whether the image be corporeal or imaginary, whether beautifully made, whether richly adorned, whether the devotion that it causes be of sense or of spirit, whether it produce supernatural manifestations or no. ”