Perverted notions about God soon rot the religion in which they appear. The long career of Israel demonstrates this clearly enough, and the history of the Church confirms it. So necessary to the Church is a lofty concept of God that when that concept in any measure declines, the Church with its worship and its moral standards declines along with it. The first step down for any church is taken when it surrenders its high opinion of God.
Before the Christian Church goes into eclipse anywhere, there must be a corrupting of its simple basic theology. It simple gets a wrong answer to the question, "What is God like?" and goes on from here. Though she may continue to cling to a sound nominal creed, its practical working creed has become false. The masses of her adherents come to believe that God is different from what He actually is; and that is heresy of the most insidious and deadly kind.
The heaviest obligation lying upon the Christian Church today is to purify and elevate its concept of God until it is once more worthy of Him—and of it. In all its prayers and labors, this should have first place. We do the greatest service to the next generation of Christians by passing on to them undimmed and undiminished that noble concept of God that we received from our Hebrew and Christian fathers of generations past. This will prove of greater value to them than anything that art or science can devise.
Know that the Lord is God. / It is he who made us, and we are his; we are his people, the sheep of his pasture. Psalm 99:1
We do the greatest service to the next generation of Christians by passing on to them undimmed and undiminished the noble concept of God that we received from those came before us.
O God of Bethel, by whose hand
Thy people still are fed;
Who through this weary pilgrimage
Hast all our fathers led!
Our vows, our prayers we now present
Before Thy throne of grace;
God of our fathers! Be the God
Of their succeeding race.
-Philip Doddridge