ith them; but to set their esteem and
ardent pursuit upon material possession would be to lose that first, and
their virtue and affection together with it. And by such reasoning, and
what of the divine nature remained in them, they gained all this
greatness of which we have already told, but when the God's part of them
faded and became extinct, being mixed again and again, and effaced by
the prevalent mortality; and the human nature at last exceeded, they
then became unable to endure the courses of fortune; and fell into
shapelessness of life, and baseness in the sight of him who could see,
having lost everything that was fairest of their honour; while to the
blind hearts which could not discern the true life, tending to
happiness, it seemed that they were then chiefly noble and happy, being
filled with all iniquity of inordinate possession and power. Whereupon,
the God of God's, whose Kinghood is in laws, beholding a once just
nation thus cast into misery, and desiring to lay such punishment upon
them as might make them repent into restraining, gathered together all
the gods into his dwelling-place, which from heaven's centre overlooks
whatever has part in creation; and having assembled them, he said'----

The rest is silence. So ended are the last words of the chief wisdom of
the heathen, spoken of this idol of riches; this idol of yours; this
golden image high by measureless cubits, set up where your green fields
of England are furnace-burnt into the likeness of the plain of Dura:
this idol, forbidden to us, first of all idols, by our own Master and
faith; forbidden to us also by every human lip that has ever, in any age
or people, been accounted of as able to speak according to the purposes
of God. Continue to make that forbidden deity your principal one, and
soon no more art, no more science, no more pleasure will be possible.
Catastrophe will come; or worse than catastrophe, slow mouldering and
withering into Hades. But if you can fix some conception of a true human
state of life to be striven for--life for all men as for yourselves--if
you can determine some honest and simple order of existence; following
those trodden ways of wisdom, which are pleasantness, and seeking her
quiet and withdrawn paths, which are peace;--then, and so sanctifying
wealth into 'commonwealth,' all your art, your literature, your daily
labours, your domestic affection, and citizen's duty, will join and
increase into one magnificent harmon