Persons fond of worldly magnificence are impelled by the most degraded and murderous passions. Thus Haman came home full of pride and revenge. He called a counsel of his partners in splendid guilt. He recounts his wealth, magnificence, and popularity with the king and queen. "Yet," says he, “all this availeth me nothing, so long as I see Mordecai the Jew sitting at the king's gate. The most successful darlings of earth are never fully contented; their highest felicity is miserable, and they are nearest destruction at the moment when they boast of being most secure. Of this character, to use the words of an ancient bishop, was "Goliath, whose heart was as high as his head; his strength was answerable to his stature; his weapons answerable to his strength; his pride exceeded all: because he saw his head higher, his arms stronger, his sword and spear bigger, his shield heavier than any Israelite's, he defies the whole host; and, walking between the two armies, braves all Israel with a challenge: Why are ye come out to set your battle in array? Am not I a Philistine, and you servants to Saul? Choose you a man for you, and let him come down to me. Give me a man, that we may fight together.' Carnal hearts are carried away with presumption of their own abilities, and, not finding matches to themselves in outward appearance, insult over the impotency of inferiors, and as those that can see no invisible opposition, promise themselves certainty of success. Insolence and selfconfidence argue the heart to be nothing but a lump of proud flesh."

6

Persons possessing in ample measure pecuniary wealth, and perverting it to the base uses of sinful display, are certainly not to be emulated by the good. This truth was well taught by Epictetus: "As when you see an asp in a golden casket, you do not esteem that asp happy, because it is inclosed in materials so costly and so magnificent, but despise and would shun it, on account of its venom; so, when you see vice, lodged in the midst of wealth and the swelling pride of fortune, be not

struck with the splendor of the materials, with which it is surrounded, but despise the gross alloy of its manners and sentiments."

The best men in every age have felt the need of superhuman aid, and have found true repose only when leaning on the arm which supports the pillars of the universe. God, as their king, made their law his will; "and in his will was their tranquillity." He was their fear and their love. "The earth," says Judde, "is a paradise to whoever seeks only to please God; but, on the contrary, it is an anticipated hell to the man who rejects his invitations." Of St. John, the precursor of our Lord, his holy mother said that he rejoiced in gladness. "This," says Diego de Stella, "is the difference that exists between good and evil men's joys: these do joy in their vanities and the other do rejoice in a good conscience before God. This is the rejoicing of St. John in joy." Albert the Great makes divine reflections on this head. "Nothing," he says, "can be happier than to place all things in Him, in whom there is no deficiency. Therefore, with all study, diligence, and labor, simplify your heart, that you may be converted from phantasms, immovable and tranquil, and that you may stand always within yourself in the Lord, as if your soul were in that now of eternity, that is, of divinity. If you continually and truly revolve these things within your mind, they will confer more upon you towards a happy life than all riches, delights, honors, nay, and besides, than all the wisdom and knowledge of this deceitful life, and corruptible world, even though in these things you were to excel all the men that ever existed." Augustine, speaking of men converted to God, says that they lose the things which they loved before. But where that love enters, the loss is remembered with additional joy and thankfulness; for in order to approach their primal source, it was necessary that they should part with the weights with which other men do vainly load their feet, toiling in hopes of happiness, which even the wise ancients knew could never be derived from such

things; as Cicero, when he says of Antony, "he was happy, if there can be any happiness in such a mind." They had thought to find peace and gladness in the love of creatures; and in them even Cicero could exclaim, " Oh how many and how bitter are the roots of sorrow." And now from these they are delivered by embracing poverty of spirit, which expects and finds light out of darkness, and, amidst privation, food on which they live, and never know satiety. That joy which might spring from natural sources, was exalted and secured to them by being sanctified; for they learned to offer the expansion of their hearts to God as well as their earthly friend, and they looked up to him in their mirth and playful hours, as well as in times of serious meditation; for even in the lowest things they saw, as Dante says,

-The printed steps

Of that eternal worth, which is the end
Whither the line is drawn.

If the extravagant is thus overwhelmed in his own pit, and finds only misery where he anticipated delight, let us seek the mercy of God in Christ, and practise that humility and moderation which lead to unfading joy. Without the discipline of persevering grace, we can experience no hope and find no heaven. For as Barrow says, "Virtue is not a mushroom, that springeth up of itself in one night when we are asleep, or regard it not; but a delicate plant, that groweth slowly and tenderly, needing much pains to cultivate it, much care to guard it, much time to mature it, in our untoward soil, in this world's unkindly weather. Neither is vice a spirit that will be conjured down by a charm, or with a presto driven away ; it is not an adversary that can be knocked down at a blow, or dispatched with a stab.”

Jerome advised his friend to be ever well employed, that when the devil came to tempt him, he might find him working in the vineyard of his Lord. We have the highest mo

tives to diligent devotion; and, by avoiding all sinful extravagance, may secure the brightest treasures on high.

"Seek Truth, that pure celestial truth-whose birth
Was in the heaven of heavens, clear, sacred, shrined,
In reason's light. Not oft she visits earth,

But her majestic port, the willing mind,

Through faith, may sometimes see. Give her thy soul,
Nor faint, though error's surges loudly 'gainst thee roll.

Seek Virtue, wear her armor to the fight,

Then, as the wrestler gathers strength from strife,
Shalt thou be nerv'd to a more vigorous might,

By each contending turbulent ill of life:

Seek Virtue, she alone is all divine;

And having found, be strong, in God's own strength and thine."

CHAPTER IX.

VANITY;

OR, THE DECORATED FOOL.

SAYS Solomon, Proverbs 21: 4, "An high look, and a proud heart, and the ploughing of the wicked, is sin." The language here employed, "ploughing of the wicked,” is somewhat obscure. We suppose that the wise preacher would have us understand that the inflated sensualist, whose vanity would drive God from his own universe and substitute self in the place thereof, never acts upon righteous motives, nor moves towards just ends. Now the intention of the heart determines the moral quality of the external action, and if pride or vanity is the impulse, sin must be the result. Hence the justice of bishop Taylor's remark: "Holy intention is to the actions of a man, that which the soul is to the body, or form to its matter, or the root to the tree, or the sun to the world, or the fountain to the river, or the base to a pillar. Without these, the body is a dead trunk, the matter is sluggish, the tree is a block, the world is darkness, the river is quickly dry, the pillar rushes into flatness and ruin, and the action is sinful, or unprofitable and vain." It is for this reason that the sacred writer in another chapter declares, “Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud."

We proceed to remark that vanity is a weakness common to all our race; a foible the most prominent in those who are least useful; a sin every way pernicious, and which should be devoutly subdued.