Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 3.pdf/353

 dominion; who takes the holy things of the church, pollutes and profanes them, and turns them into channels for self-aggrandizement; who converts all the external and governing powers of the church into instruments of cruelty, exercising the most tyrannical sway over others, denuding them of their property, and even taking away their lives; who so far forgets his finite condition, as even to compete with the, and in the plenitude of his pride exclaims, "I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will be like the Most High!" Can there be a more melancholy picture of madness than this? Surely there is a striving against Omnipotence, an attempt to dethrone the great Saviour, and to occupy His august seat. This is madness in the extreme. But it lacks not imitators on a more limited scale; for the lust of dominion exercises itself continually in little matters, which escape notice only from the very circumstance of their frequency. From disobedience to the Divine command to, "," the state of insanity in the world is awful! Here, covetousness; there, craft and Herodianism: in this place, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness; in that, deception, intrigue, and attempts to circumvent even the Supreme Himself. It is a horrible picture of the human heart! No asylum for the reception and treatment of the physically insane, can present a more melancholy appearance.

Disobedience to the Divine commandments not only induces madness but blindness also. Madness relates to evils of heart, blindness to errors of the understanding; for the understanding is the eye of the spirit. As when love to the Lord reigns in the heart, the Sun