Through the
ever open funnel of his self-greed, she pours in flattery. By
depreciation of others, she hints admiration of himself. By the slightest
motion of a finger, of an eyelid, of her person, she will pay him a
homage of which first he cannot, then he will not, then he dares not
doubt the truth. Not such a woman only, but almost any silly woman, may
speedily make the most ordinary, and hitherto modest youth, imagine
himself the peak of creation, the triumph of the Deity. No man alive is
beyond the danger of imagining himself exceptional among men: if such as
think well of themselves were right in so doing, truly the world were ill
worth God's making! He is the wisest who has learned to 'be naught
awhile!' The silly soul becomes so full of his tempter, and of himself in
and through her, that he loses interest in all else, cares for nobody but
her, prizes nothing but her regard, broods upon nothing but her favours,
looks forward to nothing but again her presence and further favours. God
is nowhere; fellow-man in the way like a buzzing fly--else no more to be
regarded than a speck of dust neither upon his person nor his garment.
And this terrible disintegration of life rises out of the most wonderful,
mysterious, beautiful, and profound relation in humanity! Its roots go
down into the very deeps of God, and out of its foliage creeps the old
serpent, and the worm that never dies! Out of it steams the horror of
corruption, wrapt in whose living death a man cries out that God himself
can do nothing for him.
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