Page:The Praises of Amida, 1907.djvu/61

 the heart that is crooked as a serpent, poisonous as a viper,—all these foul ideas come trooping together. The mind becomes like a dancing-floor of devils and evil spirits, and when their dance shall cease we cannot tell. We should like to stop their revels but we cannot: to restrain them, but they refuse to slacken their speed; and we learn then, by sad experience, that the pool of sin and wickedness is a bottomless one, that its dimensions defy measurement, and that, however proud we may be in our self-conceit, we are yet stupendously ignorant in our shallow views of things. Nor where did this prodigious mass of sin and wickedness come from? We can only say that it came from that human heart of ours which but a short while ago was so clear and bright. We can no more foretel the changes of the weather than we can those of the heart. The heart which looks like a calm and placid pool, is in reality the abode of countless and terrible poisonous dragons that dwell beneath its surface: it expands itself like the bright