Can I add that the dark tyrant Pride had for ever yielded up his empire, that he never again whispered his evil suggestions to those who so long had worn his chain?
Alas! I dare not thus violate probability, or sacrifice the great truth of which this fiction is the fanciful vehicle. The contest against Pride is a life-long campaign. From the time when he breathed ambition to Eve in the words, Ye shall be as gods, or roused in the heart of the first murderer the hatred which stained his hand with the blood of a more favoured brother, the influence of pride over our fallen race has been fearful, too often fatal! I have but sketched him in some of his forms,—of how many have I not even attempted to trace the outline! Pride of purse, Pride of person, family Pride, national Pride, the Pride that draws the trigger of the duellist, that tightens the grasp of the oppressor, and, perhaps worst of all, spiritual Pride, which brings Satan before even the saintly in the guise of an angel of light! Let some more powerful pencil draw these, till conscience start at the portrait of the demon who seeks the house that is cleansed and garnished, nor comes alone, but brings with him ambition, dissension, jealousy, hatred, and other dark ministers of death.
Reader! have you recognised Pride as an evil, have you struggled with him as a foe? Look to your soul and see if it bear not the mark of his galling chain. If the fetter be on it still, oh! with the strength of faith and the energy of prayer, burst it, even as Samson burst the green withes with which a secret enemy had bound him! Or, to change the metaphor, if you feel the proud spirit within, like the inflated sphere of the æronaut, ready to bear you aloft to a cloudy and perilous height, whence you will look down on your fellow-creatures, stop not to dally with danger, persuade not yourself that the peril is unreal, but resolute as one who knows that life and more than life is at stake, clip the soaring wing of the Eaglet,—cut the cords of your balloon!
Proud,—and of what? poor, vain, and helpless worm,
Crawling in weakness through thy life’s brief term,
Yet filled with thoughts presumptuous, bold, and high,
As though thy grovelling soul could scan the sky,—
As though thy wisdom, which cannot foreshow
What one day brings of coming weal or woe,