APES >> Mimicry >> External Worship

Mimicry is the familiar characteristic of monkeys and apes, even to the great gorillas, of whom it is said that “they watch the actions of men, and imitate them as nearly as  possible.  Like the ivory hunters, they pick up the fallen tusks of elephants, but not knowing where to deposit them, they carry their burdens about until they themselves drop, and even die from fatigue” (Natural History). Their very forms are burlesque imitations of human forms.  “Monkey tricks” and mimicry are well-known human attributes, and the love of these is the monkey in us.

In regard to spiritual things, there is a deeper kind of monkey character. Man becomes truly man, in the image and likeness of God, by learning from God, and living what he learns. But man is an ape, and no man, when he assumes the forms and the words of Christian worship in prayer and preaching and profession, but does not know the Lord in his heart nor love Him nor live from Him; in which case he is only a grotesque, perverse counterfeit of a man.

The apes which Solomon imported, with gold and silver, ivory and peacocks, were representatives of externals of worship, or of humanity, which with the Israelites were without internals.      (Apocalypse Revealed #839.    Apocalypse Explained #514)

Author: JOHN WORCESTER 1875