ROOTS OF IDOLATRY. 195 



is of all others the most difficult to obey : 

 "Thou shalt have no other Gods before 

 Me." The dependence of the human mind 

 on outward symbols, and then its tendency 

 to identify the symbols with the concep- 

 tions they represent — these are the roots of all 

 Idolatry. The course of thought, in our own 

 day, even among highly civilized and enlight- 

 ened men, may well remind us how easy 

 and how natural it is to lapse into systems 

 of belief, which in their fundamental cha- 

 racter are essentially Creature-worship. The 

 fact is, that so far from there being any 

 difficulty in understanding how spiritual truth, 

 once known, could be ever lost, all obser- 

 vation and experience prove that it is the 

 most difficult of all things to maintain with 

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