Faith of Our Fathers – Part 5

The local historian G.R. Balleine was also a clergyman, and in 1940, at the outbreak of the Second World War, he penned a series of 52 lessons around the Apostle’s Creed. Balleine being first a foremost a historian, there’s a lot of history there that I’ve never come across before, and I have studied church history quite a lot.

He’s also master of the pithy anecdote or illustration to bring something to life, which is why Frank Falle says the original history, flowing freely, is a better book to read that its more worthy revisions. Joan Stevens was a fair historian, but she could not write nearly as well as Balleine, who has an almost intimate chatty style.

Hi ideas of the druids don't really stand up to modern study though. The druids were accused of human sacrifice, but no sources have child sacrifice. Of course, like most ancient peoples, they would have had animal sacrifice.

Ronald Hutton's study can be seen summarised here:
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/bookreviews/5323383/Blood-and-Mistletoe-The-History-of-the-Druids-in-Britain-By-Ronald-Hutton-review.html.

I’m hoping to put some or all of Balleine's book online on Sundays.

Faith of Our Fathers – Part 5: I believe in God.
By GR Balleine

GETTING TO KNOW GOD

I believe in God.

PASSAGE TO BE READ Acts xvii. 16-34.

TEXT TO BE LEARNT " Now set your heart and your soul to seek the Lord your God " (1 Chron. xxix. 19).

Aim: To make the class realize the need of getting rid of false ideas of God.

HYMNS : " As pants the hart," and " And now the wants are told."

APPARATUS : View of Stonehenge. Pictures of Sacrifice of Isaac and St. Paul at Athens.

HOMEWORK: Make a list of false ideas that men have held about God.

THOUGHT FOR TEACHERS : The value of a religion depends on the truth and sufficiency of its idea of God.-W. P. Paterson.

PREHISTORIC RELIGION.

(a) Last week we saw the importance of Belief in God. This was no late development. Men began very early to believe in a God. About the time when Abraham was building altars in Palestine, thousands of round-headed dark-haired savages were busy on Salisbury Plain dragging immense blocks of stone on wooden rollers. These were the Builders of Stonehenge. Why such enormous toil ? They were erecting a Temple to their God, a Temple so magnificent that its ruins remain to the present day. (Show postcard.)

(b) But Stonehenge is quite a modern sanctuary. We can visit a Temple at least ten thousand years older than Stonehenge or Abraham. At .Niaux in the south of France there is a hole in a mountain-side looking like a large rat-hole. If we crawl through, we find ourselves in a narrow winding tunnel, leading more than half a mile into the heart of the mountain. This ends at last in a vast cavern, the walls of which are covered with paintings of human hands. Hundreds of prehistoric savages have groped their way through the awe-inspiring darkness, and by the light of a moss wick in the grease of a hollowed pebble have traced their hands on the walls of their sacred cave, as they registered a vow to their God.

(c) As soon as we find man upon earth, we find traces of a belief in God ; but it took a long time to get to know God properly. It is so with our knowledge of one another. As soon as we meet a man, we believe in his existence. But we know very little about him. Probably some of our first impressions prove to be utterly mistaken. Gradually we get to understand him better. At last we become friends. It was just like this with man's beliefs about God. All sorts of false impressions had to be outgrown.

HOW MANY GODS?

(a) The-first false impression that man formed was that there were many Gods. He heard thunder, and he said, " There is a God in the sky." He watched the tides, and he said, " There is a God in the sea." He saw corn grow, and he said, " There is a God in the earth." And so he began to worship dozens of different Gods.

When Moses was a boy, the Egyptians round him worshipped more than a thousand Gods, a God of the Nile, a God of the Desert, and a God of the Sea, a God of the Sun, a God of the Moon, and a God of Darkness, a God of Growth, a God of Death, and a God of Time. Every thing that happened had its own God. And this is still the belief of half mankind. The Japanese Government lately took a census of the shrines in Japan, and found that the number of Gods worshipped was 190,436.

(b) The Jews were the nation that taught the world better. Moses led them out of Egypt, the land of a thousand Gods, into the Wilderness to the awful solitude of Sinai. While the thunder rolled round the mountain peak, he taught them to believe in the One Great God, Jehovah, Whom he had learnt to know in his exile. He pledged them to worship Jehovah and no other. " Thou shalt have none other Gods but Me."

(c) But for centuries they were slow to grasp that the other gods were nothing. While worshipping Jehovah, they had a sneaking feeling that Baal, God of the Canaanites and Chemosh, God of Moab, were real Gods too, who might make themselves unpleasant.

(Some teachers may like to remember three technical words : Polytheism is believing in many gods. Monolatry is believing that other gods exist, but worshipping only one. Monotheism is believing in and worshipping one Only God. For centuries the religion of the average Israelite was Monolatry not Monotheism.)

It was the Prophets who taught Israel that there was no other God but Jehovah. How scornfully Elijah mocked at Baal ! " Either he is talking, or out hunting, or on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep, and must be awaked " (1 Kings xviii. 27). The Prophets taught that Jehovah was not merely God of Israel, but God of the whole earth, God of the stars and sun. "I am the Lord and there is none else " (Isa. xlv. 6). It was those Jewish Prophets who taught us to say, " I believe in God," not " Gods." The Nicene Creed begins emphatically, " I believe in One God."

(d) This is a very great and steadying belief. The Universe is not all at sixes and sevens with a dozen different spiritual forces pulling different ways. One Mind and one Will is working its purpose out. There is only one Captain on this vessel, and everything is under His control. -

WHAT KIND OF GOD ?

(a) Men made another mistake. Because God was so great, they thought He must be very stern and exacting. They thought that, if they were to win His help, they must surrender to Him what they loved best. Hence arose everywhere the horrible practice of human sacrifice.

Before the Greeks sailed for Troy, Agamemnon their leader sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia to win the favour of the Gods. Mesha, King of Moab, when besieged by the Israelites, " took his eldest son that should have reigned in his stead, and offered him for a burnt offering upon the wall " (2 Kings iii. 7).

Among the Druids in ancient Britain the same idea is found : the best way to make friends with God is to sacrifice one's child !

(b) Even the early Israelites were not free from this horrible idea. Remember the sacrifice of Isaac. Abraham had come from Ur of the Chaldees, and the Chaldeans practised human sacrifice. He sprang from a heathen family (Jos. xxiv. 2), and may have witnessed human sacrifices in his own home. He came to Canaan, where human sacrifices were very common. One day he felt that his religion ought to cost him more ; that he ought to make as big a sacrifice as his heathen neighbours ; that God was expecting him to surrender his son.

(He must have been mistaken. If human sacrifice is wrong to-day, it can never have been right in the eyes of Him Who is the same yesterday, to-day and for ever. Even as a test a God of Righteousness could never have commanded a sin.)

He cut wood for the burnt offering. He took the boy into a lonely mountain. He built an altar with large stones. He laid the wood upon it. He was just going to kill the child ; when suddenly there flashed across his mind a strong conviction which he knew to be the Voice of God : "Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything to him." He had made a great religious discovery. Human sacrifice was not the will of God.

(c) Here again it was the Prophets who broke down this widespread notion. " Shall I give my first-born for my transgression ? " asked Micah (vi. 7) ; and he replied, " God hath shown thee, O man, what is good, and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God." We cannot please God by bloodshed. We please Him by being good.

WAITING FOR A FULLER REVELATION.

(a) Thus step by step, as ages passed, men got to know God better. First one and then another barbarous and ignorant idea about Him was outgrown. But the Old Testament writers all felt that they did not know enough. The Book of Job is one of the latest in the Old Testament, yet Job complained : " Oh, that I knew where I might find Him ! Behold, I go forward, but He is not there, and backward, but I cannot perceive Him " (xxiii. 3, 8). One of the greatest Old Testament prophets complained, " Verily Thou art a God that hidest Thyself " (Isa. xlv. 15). A fuller and completer revelation was needed than any the Old Testament could offer.

(b) So in the fullness of time God sent His Son to make Him known to man. This brings us to the second clause of our Creed which we shall begin to study next week. For the moment let us remember that when a Christian says " I believe in God," he means, " I believe in God as Jesus Christ revealed Him." When a Christian missionary, like St. Paul at Athens, found that the heathen  themselves confessed that they were puzzled about God, and dedicated an altar " To the Unknown God," he was able to assert : "Whom ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you." (Read and explain Passage.) We can know God far better than any heathen or Jew. Let us use our opportunities. (All repeat Text.)