The river Nile was an object of idolatrous worship for ages. Its source was a mystery, and its annual rise in its rainless valley was so beneficent, that it was given the worship which belonged to the Divine alone. All the hope of the harvest depended on its annual overflow. It moistened and fertilized and prepared the ground, and then receded until the harvest was grown and gathered. Moses showed the Egyptians the impotence of their idols by making this chief idol, and the things that came out of it, a curse. The cow was worshiped because it was the most useful and necessary of their animals. A real or supposed power to give or withhold favors has been from the beginning the source and spring of idolatry. Riches, property, as the means of supplying our needs, is an object more coveted than any other. The principle of usury greatly aggravates this tendency. The principle of usury makes it imperishable; it can be perpetuated, unimpaired from year to year and from age to age; it is a constant source of benefit; it is productive of all that is necessary to supply human needs. It supplies, too, without effort on the part of the recipient. The sun, with his light and heat, makes the labor of the farmer successful. The rising Nile moistening and fertilizing the land, prepares the way for the sower. The cow draws the plow and the harrow, and threshes the grain, but usury makes property bring all needed material good without effort on the part of the owner. It brings him the matured fruits of the farm, though he neither plows or sows nor reaps. No labor on his part is needed. His property clothes and feeds him, and yet does not grow less, but is endowed with perpetual youth, ever giving yet never exhausted or diminished. He may die, but his idol knows no decay, and may continue to bless his children through the generations. This quality of riches makes them a greater source of blessing than the sun or any other object of idolatrous worship. This leads to unlimited self-denial and sacrifice to gain and retain property. The devotees subordinate their own ease and physical comfort, their own intellectual development, to secure it, they will themselves shrivel in body and soul; like other idolaters they will even yield the highest interests of their children, when this idol demands their sacrifice. 6. It destroys spirituality. Property is matter and not spirit. With the thought and heart and effort directed to a material thing, the spirit is neglected. The heathen Greek artist directed his whole attention to the material part of man. The symmetry of the human physical form was his study. The perfect man was the most symmetrically developed specimen of physical form. His thought of man was matter. The Christian directs his thought to the spirit, his mind and heart, his noble purposes, and all the qualities of true manhood. The material part is subordinated to the spiritual.