Let me then begin this sermon with a parable. Alas! that the parable
should represent a common and notorious fact. Suppose yourselves in some
stately palace, amid marbles and bronzes, statues and pictures, and all
that cunning brain and cunning hand, when wedded to the high instinct of
beauty, can produce. The furniture is of the very richest, and kept with
the most fastidious cleanliness. The floors of precious wood are
polished like mirrors. The rooms have every appliance for the ease of
the luxurious inmates. Everywhere you see, not mere brute wealth, but
taste, purity, and comfort. There is no lack of intellect either:--wise
and learned books fill the library shelves; maps and scientific
instruments crowd the tables. Nor of religion either;--for the house
contains a private chapel, fitted up in the richest style of mediaeval
ecclesiastical art. And as you walk along from polished floor to
polished floor, you seem to pass in review every object which the body,
or the mind, or the spirit, of the most civilized human being can need
for its satisfaction.
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