Indeed, it will generally be found that the failures of life, and the worse than failures, are mainly due to the same cause which emptied heavenly thrones of their angelic occupants.  What is it, let me ask, that comes into clearer prominence as the Washington tragedy[1] is being investigated and scrutinized?  Is it not that a diseased egotism, or perhaps it would be more correct to say, a stalwart egotism, robbed this country of its ruler, committed “most sacrilegious murder,” and “broke ope”

  “The Lord’s anointed temple, and stole thence
  The life o’ the building.”

[Footnote 1:  The assassination of President Garfield.]

Like bloody Macbeth, who greedily drank in the prognostications of the weird sisters, tho he feared that the “supernatural soliciting” could not be good, because they pandered to his monstrous self-infatuation, Guiteau, having wrought himself up through many years of self-complacency, claims to have believed that the divine Being had chosen him to do a deed which has filled the earth with horror.  Thus the growth of self-conceit into mammoth proportions tends to obscure the rights of others, and to darken with its gigantic shadow the light of conscience.  If we are to admit the prisoner’s story, as the expression of his real condition prior to the assassination, we look on one so intoxicated with the sense of his own importance that he would “spurn the sea, if it could roar at him,” and hesitate not to perform any deed of darkness that would render him more conspicuous.  Others, less heinous offenders than this garrulous murderer, have, from similar weakness, wrought indescribable mischief to themselves.  The man, for instance, who frets against providence because his standing is not higher and his influence greater, has evidently a better opinion of his deservings than is wholesome for him.  He imagines he is being wronged by the Creator—­that his merits are not recognized as they should be—­never, for a moment, remembering that, as a sinner, he has no claims on the extraordinary bounty of his heavenly Father.  From murmuring he easily glides into open rebellion, and from whispered reproaches to loud denunciations.  There are people in every community whose pride leads them into shameful transactions.  They would not condescend to mingle with their social inferiors, but they will subsist on the earnings of their friends, and consider it no disgrace to borrow money which they have no intention of returning.  Their vanity, at times, commits them to extravagances which they have no means of supporting.  They ought to have carriages and horses, mansions and pictures, with all the luxuries of affluence—­at least so they think—­and, being destitute of the resources requisite to maintain such state, they become adepts in those arts which qualify for the penitentiary.  Others have such confidence in the strength of their virtue, such commanding arrogance of integrity, that, like a captain who underestimates the force of an