Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/82

 spondence was lost. The highest art of the sculptor is to make visible and real some invisible power or virtue. It is well for us to worship and desire the unattained ideal that the artist succeeds in communicating to us, but to worship the image is idolatry. Thus idolatry arose in corrupting the motive of the artist and the use of the symbol.

The various religions of the world to-day are the results of the various developments from former revelation, varied because of the adulteration, falsification, and erroneous understanding of past revelations. Christianity is therefore not an evolution. It starts with a Divinely given revelation, the Word, out of which modern civilization is, above all question, a development. The origin of the civilization of to-day, developed from the Word, is an illustration of the rise of all the distinct civilizations that have been since the world began, for upon revelation in some form each has risen.

The Christian dispensation, though based upon revelation, and thus illustrating all others, stands alone in its character. It consists not only in a revelation of written truth that teaches of God, but also of a revelation of God, His life, His truth,