from the temple at Jerusalem.  I say taught us, for the foolhardy braggart was past learning anything himself.  Like the yet more silly Herod, who drank in the adulation of the mob as he sat shimmering in his silver robe and slimed his speech from his serpent-tongue, he was too inflated and bloated with vanity to be corrected by wholesome discipline.  Both of these rulers were too self-satisfied to be reproved, and God’s exterminating indignation overtook them.  Like empty bubbles, nothing could be done with them, and hence the breath of the Almighty burst and dispersed their glittering worthlessness.  Pope John XXI., according to Dean Milman, is another conspicuous monument of this folly.  “Contemplating,” writes the historian, “with too much pride the work of his own hands”—­the splendid palace of Viterbo—­“at that instant the avenging roof came down, on his head.”  And Shakespeare has immortalized the pathetic doom which awaits the proud man, who, confident in his own importance and in the magnitude of his destiny, is swallowed up in schemes and plans for his personal aggrandizement and power.  Wolsey goes too far in his self-seeking, is betrayed by his excess of statecraft, and, being publicly disgraced, laments, when too late, his selfish folly:—­

                             “I have ventured,
  Like little wanton boys that swim on bladders,
  These many summers on a sea of glory,
  But far beyond my depth:  my high-blown pride
  At length broke under me; and now has left me,
  Weary, and old with service, to the mercy
  Of a rude stream, that must forever hide me.”

It is not difficult to discern the fatal effects of this spirit in the lives of the great and mighty; but we are frequently blind to its pernicious influence on the lowly and weak.  We do not realize, as we ought, that the differences between men lie mainly in their position, not in their experiences and dangers.  The leaders of society are merely actors, exhibiting on the public stage of history what is common to mankind at large.  However insignificant we may be, and however obscure our station, our inner life is not far removed from that of the exalted personages who draw to themselves the attention of the world.  The poorest man has his ambitions, his struggles and his reverses; and the first may take as deep a hold upon his heart, and the second call forth as much cunning or wisdom to confront, and the last as much bitterness to endure, as are found in the vicissitudes of a Richelieu or a Napoleon.  The peasant’s daughter, in her narrow circle, feels as keenly the disappointment of her hopes, and mourns as intensely the betrayal of her confidence, or the rude ending of her day-dreams, as either queen or princess, as either Katharine of England or Josephine of France.  We do wrong to separate, as widely as we do in our thoughts, ranks and conditions of society.  The palace and the hovel are nearer to each other than we usually think; and what passes beneath the fretted ceiling of the one, and the thatched roof of the other, is divided by the shadowy line of mere externalities.  And so it happens that the fall of an angel may be pertinent to the state of a fisherman-disciple, and the fall of a prime minister or ruler have its message of warning for the tradesman and mechanic.