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dawning consciousness that the one great Cause of all must be infinitely removed from
all limitations of time and sense, he not only ridiculed the man-like gods of his day, but
threw such doubt upon the external world of sense as practically to annihilate it
altogether. Speaking of the gods, he writes:--
"If oxen and lions could paint, they would make the pictures of their gods in their
likeness. Horses would make them like horses, oxen like oxen."
Xenophanes' witness against graven images and idolatry is remarkable, and would
have gladdened the heart of Moses, who wrote, by inspiration of God: "Thou shalt not
make unto thee any graven image" (Exod. 20: 4). The irony of his remarks about oxen
and lions reminds one of the irony of Isa. 44: 9-20, where the idolater makes his god
out of one part of a tree, and with the rest makes a fire to bake his bread. The Saviour
Himself testified concerning the Father: "Ye have neither heard His voice at any time,
nor seen His shape" (John 5: 37).
Xenophanes was unconsciously crying out for the Son of God. Had he known the
truth of Phil. 2:, that Christ was originally and by right "in the form of God", and that
He was the "Image of the invisible God" (Col. 1: 15), the empty void in his philosophy
would have been filled.
When he spoke of "gods in their likeness", he knew nothing of Gen. 1: and its
statement concerning the affinity between God and man: "Let us make man in our
image, after our likeness" (Gen. 1: 26).
Xenophanes' objection to anthropomorphic gods may have been justified in his own
day and circumstances, but we hope to show later in this series that Anthropomorphism
(This Figure of Speech is discussed in Volume XXIV, pages 145-147 and 208-211), is
vital to our understanding of God.
"There is one God supreme among gods and men, resembling mortals neither in form
nor in mind."
He distrusts the evidence of the senses. The external world is but "seeming", and
reality belongs only to "the One"--a doctrine very similar to Pantheism.
Xenophanes was very much concerned with Antitheses--"The one and the many",
"The permanent and the changing", ascribing reality to the one, and denying it to the
other. In this he was not altogether wrong as a reference to II Cor. 4: 18 will show:
"The things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are
age-abiding."
Unless it has been forced upon our notice, the idea of distrusting the senses may sound
absurd. We well remember a lesson at school that showed how necessary it is to have
some standard other than that of our own sense perceptions. Three pails were placed in
the class room, and the scholar first plunged each of his hands at the same time into each
of the two pails on either side, one containing ice-cold water, and the other hot water.