“Well,” said Mr. Hemmingway, “what I want to know is, What about the second commandment? I’ve been to your precious St. Silas’, and all I can say is that it’s the most idolatrous place I’ve ever seen in my life. Talk about graven images! I counted five crucifixes; and there was an image of the Virgin, and candles burning in front of it; and statues all over the place. More like a waxwork snow than a place of worship. It’s very easy to We why the minister left out the Ten Commandments from the service. I should think he would be ashamed to say them with all those idols looking down at him. Why you two children can’t be content with what’s good enough for your mother and me is more than I can say. As for the Bulls, I can’t understand them at all. Bull is a sensible fellow. At least, I always thought he was. But when I saw him this morning bowing down in the house of Rimmon, I said to myself, ‘Bull,’ I said, ‘you’re not the man you were.’”

“Well, you’d better tell him so, Dad,” said Arthur. “We’re going to supper there, aren’t we?”

[2] So after supper, when the two men settled down with their pipes, Mr. Hemmingway determined to have it out.

“Bull,” he said, “it seems to me there’s a rare lot of idolatry goes on at your church. Doesn’t it say in the Bible, ‘Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image’? I can’t think how you reconcile it with your conscience to be churchwarden at a place like that.”

“Well,” said Mr. Bull, “to tell you the truth, I used to wonder about it myself at bit once. It was my boy Jack who put me right about, it, when we put up our War Memorial. It was that big figure of Christ on the cross, which hangs over the entrance to the chancel. ‘It seems a bit like idolatry to me,’ I said, and Jack he was at me in a moment. ‘It’s not idolatry, Father,’ he said. ‘Idolatry means saying prayers to false images of God: and a crucifix isn’t a false image of God, and nobody wants you to say prayers to it.’ He has got a head on his shoulders, has Jack, and they have taught him a thing or two up at the church.

“Well, I wasn’t going to be told off by my own son, so I went into the thing myself. I went up to the vicar and asked him if it was right what Jack had said, and he said, ‘Yes, it was quite right.’ Of course a crucifix is only a bit of painted wood, but we honour it because it is a picture of God redeeming the world.”

[3] “But what I wanted to know is, How do you get out of the commandment?”

“I don’t get out of it. It seems to me that it has nothing to do with Christians at all, and never had. It was given to the Jews before Christ came. They were told that they must not try to make images of God: and they were told why not. Because they had not been shown what God was like, and when they were left to themselves, they could think of no better way of representing him than to make an image of a golden calf (Deut. iv. 15)! But we Christians have been taught what God is like. Jesus Christ is ‘the image of the invisible God,’ and when we make an image of Jesus Christ to help us to remember him and to worship him better, we are getting a true idea of God, and not a false one.’

‘H’m! I suppose you’ll be saying next that ‘Thou shalt not steal’ has nothing to do with Christians. They say that half of you Anglo-Catholics are Socialists in disguise. A pretty thing when a man’s made it the object of his life to build up a good business and has laid by a tidy little sum, and then some fellow comes: along and tells him he has no right to it!”

“‘Thou shalt not steal’ has a great deal to do with Christians, it seems to me. Surely justice and earning one’s living is part of the eternal law of God. No one has any right to eat unless [3/4] he does his work. Those who can work and won’t work are the real thieves, it seems to me, whether they live in a mansion or a tenement. You can’t compare that with keeping a rule about making images, which was given under quite different circumstances.”

“Well, then, what’s the good of talking about the Ten Commandments at all? Why don’t you say the nine commandments if you think that one of them is out of date?”

“I think that the second commandment has an inner meaning which is part of the eternal law of God, just as much as ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ It means that we must first get a right idea of God, and. then worship him in the right way, and not worship anything else.”

“How do you mean ‘worship him in the right way’? Surely every man has a right to worship as he likes best?”

“Well, I’m not so sure. Up to a point, I suppose so. But, after all, Christ did lay down a law about worship when he said, ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’ That’s the service you’ve just been to, and I am afraid you did not like it at all.”

“It seemed to me just so much idolatry; still, I don’t pretend to understand it, so perhaps I’m not much of a judge. But how do you mean ‘not worship anything else’? Protestants [4/5] aren’t idolaters, anyhow, whatever Catholics may be.”

“I don’t think it’s a question of Protestant or Catholic at all. Surely anyone who gives the first place in his life to anyone, or anything, less than God, is really worshipping the wrong object. What I’ve been learning all this last part of my life is that God must come first or nowhere, and that whatever you put first in your life is really your God. And, after all, that’s only what it says in the Bible. ‘Covetous-ness is idolatry,’ it says. And somewhere else it talks about people who make a god of their belly. It seems a queer sort of thing to say, doesn’t it? But then it’s a queer sort of state to be in.”

“Well, well, business is business isn’t it? Everything’s got to give way to that. They say I’m a warm man, but it’s only by watching every penny that I stand where I do to-day.”

“Yes, and a good dinner is a good dinner. But a glutton is a nasty fellow. I believe in looking after your business as much as anyone. But these men who think it’s the beginning and end of everything, it always seems to me they might just as well fall down and worship their money-bags outright. I don’t mean you, Hemmingway. You’re not like that, even if you think you are. But there are people who-seem to think that the serious business of life [5/6] is making and spending money, and that religion and everything else is just a sort of amusement. I always feel inclined to say to them, ‘My dear man, what do you suppose God is like, and do, you imagine that he put you into the world to make money?’ And some of these who think money is everything didn’t even earn it. It just came to them, and still they worship it. I didn’t mean to get preaching to you, Hemmingway: but religion has come to mean a lot to me lately.”

“He’s a real good fellow, is Bull’ said Mr. Hemmingway that evening to his wife. “But he is getting a bit fanatical about this religion of his. Seems to think it’s about the most important thing in the world!”

Still, he did not forget that conversation.