Page:Spiritual Reflections for Every Day in the Year - Vol 3.pdf/258

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the calm and holy delights of Jerusalem; nor is the dweller in Jerusalem to be despised because he is not enrobed in the rich drapery, and externally wears not the brilliant gems of Tyre. We must remember that everything is good, if it holds its proper place; and hence our duty is plain—wherever we may behold good and virtue in another, we must love and reverence him for the sake of the good and the virtue which he manifests; and the more active he is in the dissemination of the particular good or usefulness of which he is the recipient, the more must we respect and strive to imitate him, in the sphere in which we are placed. All good is of God, whatever may be its kind and degree; God is in everything that is good; and, whatever may be the spheres respectively in which we move, if we do good from the real love of it, and ascribe the power to will and to do unto the Lord, our labour will be blessed, and we shall hereafter obtain a high reward.

But if Tyre, and the principle of which it is the type, forget the source whence every good is derived, and, instead of using its wealth and its labour to promote the good of mankind, and to honour the great and glorious Giver of all good, and, losing its humility, begins to be proud of its possessions—if, in consequence of this, inflamed with the lust of dominion, like the Romish Church in our own day, she plunges into all the iniquity of traffic, aims at extending her dominion by fraud, violence, and deceit, holding forth the terrors of condemnation to those who yield not to her sway—if such a Tyre, or its representative principle, shall come so much into the love of self, and the lust of universal power and dominion, the Lord hath pronounced against her that which shall most inevitably