Idolatry

Idolatry, worship paid to a mere symbol of the divine while the heart is dead to all sense of that which it symbolises; a species of offence against the Most High, of which many are flagrantly guilty who affect to regard with pity the worshipper of idols of wood or stone. “Idolatry,” says Buskin, apropos of Carlyle's well-known doctrine, “is summed up in the one broad wickedness of refusing to worship Force and resolving to worship No-Force; denying the Almighty, and bowing down to four-and-twopence with a stamp on it.”

Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)