Page:Post-Mediaeval Preachers.djvu/206

 Well! you will say that glass is a very brittle affair; it somewhat resembles ice, and is just as fragile; one little fall, and it is shivered into countless fragments; it is made by a puff, it is clouded by a breath, it is broken by a touch.

You consider it very fragile.—I tell you, on the authority of St. Augustine, that man is far more fragile.

Glass carefully preserved may become an heirloom, but man can never last out more than a generation.

Glass is only shattered by accident, but man is perishable by his nature.

Glass is broken by external force, but man bears about within him the seeds of dissolution.

Glass is snapped by a touch, but man untouched will crumble into his grave.

Glass once broken may be restored, not so man.

Glass though broken does not decay, but man’s flesh becomes corrupt.

Having thus amused and rested his hearers, Deza begins another earnest appeal to them; he explains that the soul of man does not descend to the grave, and he solves a difficulty in the text, Genesis iii. 19, Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

Having done this, it is proper that the congregation should be given a little breathing-time, and so the preacher takes the sentence, Dust thou art, and plays with it, by giving a description of dust agitated by the wind. Oh, into what fantastic shapes does the wind whirl the dust! how the dust-cloud runs along, rushes forward madly, stops and spins awhile, and tosses itself up, up, till it seems verily to fly; it ascends higher