The Alaska citizen., 1916-08-07
. . . . . . c . . Q HOW EVERY MAN PICTURES
GOD.

For We shall see Him as lie Is. | John 3:2.
 Mans level causes him to make his own picture of God. Sitting in his rude hut or roaming about the hills the savage seeks to find God as his own imagination would paint Him Spread before us all is the canvas of intellect. the experiences of life furnishes the pigments, while imagination yields the brush, and behold the portrait of God that We make The ignorant look with un- trained eye and see little to paint, the learned bring all human devices known into play microscope, tele- scope To prove that God exists ac- cording To their vision of Him. The more human the effects the more distorted the image. Man was made to see trees and flowers and fields and stars with his human eye, and no two men see the same. To the botanist the tree has cells and if bres. to the manufacturer it fur nishes him means of fashioning fur niture, to the housewife 1t furnish es heat for cooking. to the child there is stick for a play y-horse and a switch to compel obedience from the imaginary steed. To some A,f,l1 ujg n stanuy towering above them for punishment. to some He is as tyrant king imposing and demand ing a flow of tribute; to some He is a fountain of water. an oasis in the desert, q present help in the time of trouble; to Jesus He is Our Father who art in Heaven"
 The paintings that have brought great prices are portrait paintings. An artist who can reproduce the landscapes. the flowers, the sun sets. the moving creatures, wins a place in the public heart, but he who reproduces the face and eXpres- sions of noble person has a field of wider influence The earth and the things thereon is the fOotstOOl of God, but man created in Gods own image is as much higher than the footstoOl as the Maker is high CT than the made. To discover the invisible soul and place it on the canvas is the work of the imag:- nation. No man has seen God at any time" The paintings that have lived have been those wrought from the imaginations of those artists who have tried to paint the Bible in pictures The fine achievements of the world have been wrought from the imaginations of men. Columbus was furnished with some facts for navigation. but his imagination car ried him across the Atlantic Ra Madonna from his imagination John was exiled to the Isle of Patmos, where he shivered from exposure but in his vision he saw the new Jerusalem, the streets paved with gold a city that had no need of walls, an endless day where there is no need of moon or stars. where he saw the tree that brought forth it's fruit once each month, which haa1th of tho no. tiOns To John there came whisper ings that assured him that beyond there is a life immortal where men are clad in robes of purity, and sin cannot come; where none ever grow old and the children play in the streets. Like Moses, he endured by seeing God, and Heaven, that are invisible. He was painting a picture that should dwell in the lives of men and help them to see the finer, the better things in life, and point them to God and good.
 No man can well paint God who does not see in Him perfection. Goodness and purity must be in the lines of his portrait No man can worship a defective God. The real inspiration that comes to man comes not from the portrayal of evil or the painting of wrong doings the picture of the libertine, or the face of the debauchee. From earli- est history We are pleased with Homer picturng Achilles for the Greek boy, and Sophocles lifting up the pure chara ter of Antgone, whC in her self sacrifice protects her aged father, as an inspiration to the Greek maidens. Once any beloved one is seen to take on the blackness of sin with its train of follies and mean ness there falls at once the star ol hope Goodness and purity must enter into all things that abide. Dwarfed by ignorance and bigotry, men have bound God as was Prometheus, while their ignorance and bigotry flour ished and grew. Holy men would place their victims on the rack burn them at the stake, saw them asunder in the name of their deity but God was never present in their nefarious practices, but sought op portunty to enter the minds ol