the example of Solomon, the wisest of men, enslaved by sensual affections, and so far forgetting the true God as to build temples to the idols of his sinful companions. But I will give you an illustration which, alas! is not an uncommon occurrence. Consider, for instance, all that a married woman risks by abandoning herself to an unlawful love. We choose this passion from among the rest to show you the strength of the others. She cannot but know that should her husband discover her crime he may kill her in his anger, and thus in one moment she will lose her reputation, her children, her life, her soul, all that she can desire in this life or the next. She knows, moreover, that her disgrace will fall upon her children, her parents, her brothers, her sisters, and all her race; yet so great is the strength of this passion, or rather the power of this tyrant, that she tramples all these considerations under foot to obey its dictates. Was there ever a master more cruel in his exactions? Can you imagine a more miserable, a more absolute servitude?
Yet such is the bondage in which the wicked live. "They are seated in darkness and the shadow of death," says the prophet, "hungry and bound with chains."[1] What is this darkness, if not the deplorable blindness of the wicked, who neither know themselves nor their Maker, nor the end for which they were created? They see not the vanity of the things upon which they have set their hearts, and they are insensible to the bondage in which they live.
- ↑ Ps. cvi. 10.
