The figure of the potter and the clay is frequently employed in the Hebrew Scriptures to illustrate the spiritual relationship between God and man. For example, we read in the sixty-fourth chapter of the book of Isaiah, "But now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand." Again, in the twenty-ninth chapter of the same book, the writer points out how the people of that time had reversed the true order, saying: "Surely your turning of things upside down shall be esteemed as the potter's clay: for shall the work say of him that made it, He made me not? or shall the thing framed say of him that framed it, He had no understanding?"
Following the course of human history from the time of Isaiah to the present day, it is amazing to note how tenaciously the tendency has persisted to humanize God and to deify mortal man in both the theory and the practice of orthodox religion. On page 140 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" we read, "In the beginning God-created man in His, God's, image; but mortals would procreate man, and make God in their own human image." The gradual evolution of this idolatrous tendency in human thought may be clearly traced in its effect upon the plastic arts of ancient times as shown in the collections found in our public museums. Here we see that the earliest specimens of pottery were formed for merely utilitarian purposes. Later, however, as the potter's skill developed, he began to embellish his wares with fantastic designs, frequently copied from nature. Then as he became more and more proficient, the potter grew correspondingly ambitious, till finally his imagination knew no bounds. Then, casting aside all restraint, he began to model heroic statues representing the gods of mythology, which were afterwards reproduced in stone, and these in turn were endowed by popular superstition with power to control the destinies of men and nations. Thus it came to pass in the process of time that what had occurred in the Pantheon of Rome and the temples of ancient Greece recurred in the temples of scholastic theology, and the finest skill of the human intellect was employed in formulating a concept of God which was patterned after the likeness of finite beings.
Recognizing this selfsame idolatrous tendency in modern times, Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, again writes on page 248 of Science and Health: "We are all sculptors, working at various forms, moulding and chiseling thought. What is the model before mortal mind? Is it imperfection, joy, sorrow, sin, suffering? Have you accepted the mortal model?" If we are to accept the immortal model, is it not clear, in the light of the Scriptures and Christian Science, that we must turn away from the human to the divine Mind as the only true potter and acknowledge spiritual thought as the only true clay?
