1. What is an idol? 2Do you think you know? 3For idols are unrecognized as such, and never seen for what they really are. 4That is the only power that they have. 5Their purpose is obscure, and they are feared and worshipped, both, because you do not know what they are for, and why they have been made. 6An idol is an image of your brother that you would value more than what he is. 7Idols are made that he may be replaced, no matter what their form. 8And it is this that never is perceived and recognized. 9Be it a body or a thing, a place, a situation or a circumstance, an object owned or wanted, or a right demanded or achieved, it is the same.
2. Let not their form deceive you. 2Idols are but substitutes for your reality. 3In some way, you believe they will complete your little self, for safety in a world perceived as dangerous, with forces massed against your confidence and peace of mind. 4They have the power to supply your lacks, and add the value that you do not have. 5No one believes in idols who has not enslaved himself to littleness and loss. 6And thus must seek beyond his little self for strength to raise his head, and stand apart from all the misery the world reflects. 7This is the penalty for looking not within for certainty and quiet calm that liberates you from the world, and lets you stand apart, in quiet and in peace.
3. An idol is a false impression, or a false belief; some form of anti-Christ, that constitutes a gap between the Christ and what you see. 2An idol is a wish, made tangible and given form, and thus perceived as real and seen outside the mind. 3Yet it is still a thought, and cannot leave the mind that is its source. 4Nor is its form apart from the idea it represents. 5All forms of anti-Christ oppose the Christ. 6And fall before His face like a dark veil that seems to shut you off from Him, alone in darkness. 7Yet the light is there. 8A cloud does not put out the sun. 9No more a veil can banish what it seems to separate, nor darken by one whit the light itself.
4. This world of idols is a veil across the face of Christ, because its purpose is to separate your brother from yourself. 2A dark and fearful purpose, yet a thought without the power to change one blade of grass from something living to a sign of death. 3Its form is nowhere, for its source abides within your mind where God abideth not. 4Where is this place where what is everywhere has been excluded and been kept apart? 5What hand could be held up to block God’s way? 6Whose voice could make demand He enter not? 7The “more-than-everything” is not a thing to make you tremble and to quail in fear. 8Christ’s enemy is nowhere. 9He can take no form in which he ever will be real.
5. What is an idol? 2Nothing! 3It must be believed before it seems to come to life, and given power that it may be feared. 4Its life and power are its believer’s gift, and this is what the miracle restores to what has life and power worthy of the gift of Heaven and eternal peace. 5The miracle does not restore the truth, the light the veil between has not put out. 6It merely lifts the veil, and lets the truth shine unencumbered, being what it is. 7It does not need belief to be itself, for it has been created; so it is.
6. An idol is established by belief, and when it is withdrawn the idol “dies.” 2This is the anti-Christ; the strange idea there is a power past omnipotence, a place beyond the infinite, a time transcending the eternal. 3Here the world of idols has been set by the idea this power and place and time are given form, and shape the world where the impossible has happened. 4Here the deathless come to die, the all-encompassing to suffer loss, the timeless to be made the slaves of time. 5Here does the changeless change; the peace of God, forever given to all living things, give way to chaos. 6And the Son of God, as perfect, sinless and as loving as his Father, come to hate a little while; to suffer pain and finally to die.
7. Where is an idol? 2Nowhere! 3Can there be a gap in what is infinite, a place where time can interrupt eternity? 4A place of darkness set where all is light, a dismal alcove separated off from what is endless, has no place to be. 5An idol is beyond where God has set all things forever, and has left no room for anything to be except His Will. 6Nothing and nowhere must an idol be, while God is everything and everywhere.
8. What purpose has an idol, then? 2What is it for? 3This is the only question that has many answers, each depending on the one of whom the question has been asked. 4The world believes in idols. 5No one comes unless he worshipped them, and still attempts to seek for one that yet might offer him a gift reality does not contain. 6Each worshipper of idols harbors hope his special deities will give him more than other men possess. 7It must be more. 8It does not really matter more of what; more beauty, more intelligence, more wealth, or even more affliction and more pain. 9But more of something is an idol for. 10And when one fails another takes its place, with hope of finding more of something else. 11Be not deceived by forms the “something” takes. 12An idol is a means for getting more. 13And it is this that is against God’s Will.
9. God has not many Sons, but only One. 2Who can have more, and who be given less? 3In Heaven would the Son of God but laugh, if idols could intrude upon his peace. 4It is for him the Holy Spirit speaks, and tells you idols have no purpose here. 5For more than Heaven can you never have. 6If Heaven is within, why would you seek for idols that would make of Heaven less, to give you more than God bestowed upon your brother and on you, as one with Him? 7God gave you all there is. 8And to be sure you could not lose it, did He also give the same to every living thing as well. 9And thus is every living thing a part of you, as of Himself. 10No idol can establish you as more than God. 11But you will never be content with being less.