Whereupon, the God of Gods, 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. 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:[227] 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, good
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which are pleasantness,[228] and seeking her quiet and withdrawn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 harmony.
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