probe the mysteries of God and Heaven." Then
Pleasure, with dimpled cheeks and laughing eyes, and words that sound like
music to the ears, hurries out to greet the passers-by, and charms them by
her shining gifts. "Make me your object and your end," she says, "and I
will make you blessed. Forget your troubles and your cares, your fears of
present and future ills; rejoice and be glad, eat, drink and be merry;
indulge and drain to dregs the cups of sense, for this is all there is."
Philosophy comes with another hope. "Drink deeply," she counsels, "at the
spring of wisdom, and fear not God nor man; believe and trust in me, and I
will steal away the sting of sorrow and pain; I will restore you to man's
primeval state and land you safe on the shores of rest."

And when these deceivers--Ambition, Pride, Pleasure, and the like--have
plundered and sacked their victim's goods, when these painted idols of a
passing world have led away their worshippers as slaves, and stripped them
of all they possessed, they give them over to evil habits and to masters
that scourge and tear them. Like other prodigals, these pursuers of
earthly phantoms take leave of their Father's house of comfort and plenty,
they give up virtue, innocence, honesty, purity; they go into a far
country to waste their substance living riotously, only to awake, soon at
latest, to a land of famine, and to find themselves alone and in want.
Instead of the honor and fame and high estate they sought to gain, instead
of the escape from evil and pain and labor they hoped to find, they are
sent into fields to minister to swine--the swine of their own degradation.

So, to a degree, it is with us, each and all, who listen to other voices
and heed other calls than the voice and the call of God. If we prefer to
stray to other fields and desert the pasture of our Shepherd, if we prefer
a far country to our Father's home, if the world and its fleeting
pleasures are more to us than God and His paternal rewards, then we must
of necessity find ourselves at length in utter want and penury. It is this
possibility of deserting God, of seeking happiness outside of Him, of
overturning the plans which He has made for our salvation, that gives us a
vision of the awful failure of human life. The gifts of this world are by
nature fleeting and fast-flying, and if we allow them to take the place of
Him who made them, no matter how great our present boons, in spite of
wealth and friends and all