Has it not sometimes seemed as if
ambitious prelacy had forgotten the purer example for the baser, and
copied Bossuet's pride instead of Fenelon's charity? Nay, has not priestly
assumption coveted the talons and forgotten the wings of the Eagle of
Meaux and lost sight wholly of the Dove of Cambray? What government or
ruler in Christendom would not be the better for a counsellor as eloquent
and fearless as he who dared rebuke without reserve the great Louis of
France in words like these:
"You do not love God; you do not even fear him but with a slave's fear; it
is hell and not God whom you fear. Your religion consists but in
superstitions, in petty superficialities. You are like the Jews, of whom
God said: _'Whilst they honor me with their lips, their hearts are far
from me.'_ You are scrupulous upon trifles and hardened upon terrible
evils. You love only your own glory and comfort. You refer everything to
yourself as if you were the God of the earth, and everything else here
created only to be sacrificed to you. It is you, on the contrary, whom God
has put into the world only for your people."
POEMS.
BY MRS. GEORGE P. MARSH.
I.
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