That Wretched Idol, Self, Octavius Winslow, Christ and the Christian in Temptation, 1877. Of all the sins common to our fallen nature, God has the most signally stressed that sin of idolatry, or false worship. Man is by nature an idolater. his sinful mind, being alienated from God, seek some object of worship other than the true and living God. The believer is not entirely exempt from this sin, hence we have these exhortations of the apostles addressed to the early Christians and in these last days addressed to us. Little Children, Keep Yourselves from Idols. 1 John 5, 21. my dearly beloved, flee from idolatry." 1 Corinthians 10, 14. Surely it was not the gross and senseless idolatry of the heathens to which the apostles thus refer, but to other idols and other worship, less palpable and degrading, but not less superstitious or offensive to God. The worship of self is a natural and fearful form of idolatry. It is an innate and never entirely eradicated principle of our nature, but clings to us to the very last of life. Alas, the holiest and the best of us want to be something or to do something. when in reality we are nothing and can do nothing. For the most part, we walk in our religious life upon stilts, always appearing in the eyes of others taller than we really are. But real greatness and true humility have ever been in alliance with abnegation of self. The holiest saints have always walked the lowest paths, for they saw the most of God's majesty and the least of their own worth. The nearer a man draws to God, the more he loathes the vanity of self and clings to the sufficiency of grace. who can stand before the cross and gaze upon the Creator of all worlds, impaled between two criminals, himself dying as the chief, and not shrink into his own nothingness, bewailing that he should have ever been betrayed into the folly and the sin of burning the incense of idolatry before that wretched idol self. Beware of self-idolatry. It is the most insidious, hateful, and degrading form of idolatry to which a person can be subjected.