breast--in the instinct of worship, and the craving for sensual indulgences. _Idolatry has combined these most powerful of all cravings_--has provided deities in whose worship the worst passions of man's animal nature have been gratified. +V. Nevertheless the empire of idolatry shall be utterly destroyed.+ It shall vanish as utterly as the great empire of Assyria. "The idols He shall utterly abolish." Already that empire has been overthrown where it seemed most firmly established, and the complete fulfilment of the prediction of our text is obviously now only a question of time. Even in heathen countries, men are becoming ashamed of their idols, and are representing them as merely the _media_ of worship. The victory of Christianity over idolatry is already assured. The struggles that are yet to shake the world will be, not between Christianity and idolatry; not even between Christianity and atheism, for atheism is necessarily merely a brief episode in human experience; but between Christianity and other forms of monotheism. APPLICATION. 1. _In the wide-spread and long-continued empire of the idols we have a conclusive proof of man's need of a Divine revelation._ The natural progress of fallen man is not to light, but to darkness (Rom. i. 21-23; 1 Cor. i. 21). 2. _In the prediction of our text, we have a conclusive proof of that in the Bible we have such a revelation._ Consider the circumstances of the prophet: idolatry on every hand, corrupting even His own people. It was contrary to all experience; it must have seemed to many who first heard it as the ravings of a lunatic. Such a prediction, already so marvellously fulfilled, came from God! 3. _In the approaching complete fulfilment of the prediction of our text, let us rejoice._ And let us labour as well as pray, that the time may be hastened when by idolatry God shall be no longer dishonoured and man degraded. MAN'S INSIGNIFICANCE AND GOD'S SUPREMACY. ii. 22. _Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?_