that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow
of thee turn not thou away....

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one,
and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and
despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what
ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body,
what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the
body than raiment?...

"Nothing of this is to be found in the ancient sages and moralists,
not in Hesiod, nor in the maxims of Greece any more than in Confucius.
It is not in Cicero, nor in Aristotle, nor even in Socrates any more
than in the modern Franklin. The principle of inspiration is
different, if indeed it be not opposite: the paths may come together
for a moment, but they cross one another. And it is this delicate
ideal of devotedness, of moral purification, of continual renouncement
and self-sacrifice, breathing in the words and embodied in the person
and life of Christ, which constitutes the entire novelty as well as
the sublimity of Christianity taken at its source."

Of M. Sainte-Beuve's delight in what is the most excellent product of
literature, poetry, testimony is borne by many papers, ranging over
the whole field of French poetry, from its birth to its latest page.
"Poetry," says he, "is the essence of things, and we should be careful
not to spread the drop of essence through a mass of water or floods of
color. The task of poetry is not to say everything, but to make us
dream everything." And he cites a similar judgment of Fenelon: "The
poet should take only the flower of each object, and never touch but
what can be beautified." In a critique of Alfred de Musset he speaks
of the youthful poems of Milton: "'Il Penseroso' is the masterpiece of
meditative and contemplative poetry; it is like a magnificent oratorio
in which prayer ascends slowly toward the Eternal. I make no
comparison; let us never take august names from their sphere. All that
is beautiful in Milton stands by itself; one feels the tranquil habit
of the upper regions, and continuity in power." In a paper on
the letters of Ducis, he proves that he apprehends the proportions of
Shakespeare. He asks: "Have we then got him at last? Is our stomach up
to him? Are we strong enough to digest this marrow of lion (_cette
moelle de lion_)?" And again, in an article on the men of the