=30.= It has been stated that man possesses an instinct for worship, that he craves and will find some object of adoration. When man fell into the darkness of continued transgression, and forgot the Author of his being, and the God of his fathers, he sought for other deities. Some among men came to regard the sun as the type of the supreme, and before that luminary they prostrated themselves in supplication. Others selected for adoration earthly phenomena; they marvelled over the mystery of fire, and, recognizing the beneficent effects of that phenomenon, they worshiped the flame. Some saw, or thought they saw, in water the emblem of the pure and the good, and they rendered their devotions by running streams. Others, awed into reverence by the grandeur of towering mountains, repaired to these natural temples, and worshiped the altar instead of Him in whose honor and by whose power it had been raised. Another class, more strongly imbued with a reverence for the emblematic, sought to create for themselves artificial objects of adoration. They made images and worshiped them; they hewed uncouth figures from tree trunks, and chiseled strange forms in stone, and to these they bowed.[116] "Nations, ignorant of God, Contrive a wooden one." =31.= Idolatrous practices in some of their phases came to be associated with rites of horrible cruelties, as in the custom of sacrificing children to Moloch, and, among the Hindoos, to the Ganges; as also in the wholesale slaughtering of human beings, under Druidical tyranny. The gods that human-kind have set up for themselves are heartless, pitiless, cruel.[117] [116] See Note 7. [117] See Note 8.