Page:Sermons on the Ten Commandments.djvu/47

 fancy themselves almost as great as He who made them. Such persons are man-worshipers, and are too much struck with admiration of human powers, to be able to bow down in heart before the Great Being from whom, in fact, all those powers are derived, and by whom they are momentarily sustained. But there are men in ordinary life, men who are neither literary nor scientific, but who are so puffed up with self-conceit, with pride at the thought of their own intelligence, and admiration of their own prudence, as to be unable truly to worship any God but themselves. Such men are truly idolaters. Unless, perchance, sickness or distress of some kind should be found sufficient to break down their pride, they can hardly find a place hereafter among the angels of heaven, who are all humble worshipers of the Lord.

The Commandment continues: "Nor any likeness of anything which is in the heavens above, or in the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth."

Here, now, a different kind of sin is referred to, namely, the sin of hypocrisy, which puts on a "likeness" of what is good and true, while within there is nothing but evil and the false. By the expressions, "heavens, earth, and waters under the earth," are signified, in the spiritual sense, not the outward universe, but the inner world of man's mind, in its various degrees or divisions. "The heavens" signify the heavenly or spiritual mind, "the earth," the natural mind, and the "waters under the earth," the sensual or corporeal mind, that is, the part of the mind which is next to the senses, and which