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The "little horn" of Daniel, as first rendered visible in the person of the brutal Phocas, began to be addressed in language of most fulsome and degrading flattery, which seems to be copied till the present time. That we may see how mercenary and aspiring ecclesiastics paid court to civil despots from the commencement of the famous 1260 years, let the following instance serve for a sample.
Whether it was, that the severity of the bondage under which this man held every one of them, did really corrode in their secret hearts, that they thought to repress the recollection of a thing so degrading, I can not determine; but certain it was, that his death was their deliverance; which they celebrated by an elevation of spirits, unknown before.
This is what that spirit, in its purity, did for the home, when there was no Bible to read at its hearthstone and no New Testament to put into the hands of young lovers departing to make a new rooftree. Labor will some day be too liberal to give up its Bible. In that age, when "God was dead"; in that age, when "the gods had abdicated"; they said, "the mechanic's occupation is degrading.
She was miserably educated; she was secluded from intercourse with strangers; she was shut up in her home; she was given in marriage without her consent; she was guarded by female slaves; she was valued chiefly as a domestic servant, or as an animal to prevent the extinction of families; she was seldom honored; she was doomed to household drudgeries as if she were capable of nothing higher; in short, her lot was hard, because it was unequal, humiliating, and sometimes degrading, making her to be either timorous, frivolous, or artful.
Alas for the clan, whose history was about to cease smothered in the defiling garment of ill-gotten wealth! Miserable, humiliating close to ancient story! She had no doubt as to her son's intention, although he had said nothing; she KNEW that his refusal of dower would be his plea in justification; but would that deliver them from the degrading approval of the world?
I ought to have qualified the advice, for she carried it too far, and was silent afterwards when she should have spoken that is to say, when it had become evident that endurance was useless and degrading. She fought hard to preserve her dignity, and was determined that "as the husband is, the wife is," should not be true in her case. But he did lower her insensibly, nevertheless.
'Uncle, you must I am sure you will release me from such vile and degrading companionship as I am exposed to now. I do not mean, said Kate, hurrying to the old man, and laying her arm upon his shoulder; 'I do not mean to be angry and violent I beg your pardon if I have seemed so, dear uncle, but you do not know what I have suffered, you do not indeed.
Spain, which had but just assumed the form of a single state by the combination of all its kingdoms, with its haughty nobles descended from petty kings, and arrogating almost sovereign power within their domains, with its fierce enthusiasm for the Catholic religion, which, in the course of long warfare with the Saracens, had become the absorbing characteristic of a whole nation, with its sparse population scattered over a wide and stern country, with a military spirit which led nearly all classes to prefer poverty to the wealth attendant upon degrading pursuits of trade; Spain, with her gloomy, martial, and exaggerated character, was the absolute contrast of the Netherlands.
Providence does not will the evil that man does when he misuses the freedom given to him; neither does Providence prevent him doing it, either because the wrong done by so feeble a creature is as nothing in its eyes, or because it could not prevent it without doing a greater wrong and degrading his nature. Providence has made him free that he may choose the good and refuse the evil.
To Malcolm's disgust, Esclairmonde caught at the proposal, which the Scottish haughtiness that lay under all his gentleness held somewhat degrading to the cousin of the Emperor. He fell into a state of gloom, which lasted till the loving-cup had gone round and been partaken of in pairs.
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