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It foments all the evil passions; it is allied with all the vices; it is antagonistic to human welfare. It glories merely in strength; it worships only success. It raises wicked men to power; it prostrates and hides the good. It extinguishes what is most lovely, and spurns what is most exalted. It makes a pandemonium of earth, and drags to its triumphal car the venerated relics of ages.
God is there, and the sentiment we have of His presence makes us bend our eyes upon the ground. We forget all that is without ourselves, and we feel but the heavy burden of our own existence. Majesty belongs to what is holy. A man capable of giving us an idea of holiness possesses majesty, and if we do not go so far as to kneel, our mind at least prostrates itself before him.
The intemperate man divests himself, for a time, of his rational and moral nature, casts from himself self-consciousness and self-command, brings on frenzy, and by repetition of this insanity, prostrates more and more his rational and moral powers.
And we have our eyes towards Jah, Jah, who will make haste to help us and to save us, that the Children of Iniquity shall not hurt us; and towards whom our hearts pant and are consumed within us: who shall give us Talons of Iron to be worthy to stand under the shadow of thine ass. These are the words of thy Servant of Servants, who prostrates himself to be trod on by the soles of thy feet.
Nothing but the force of this withering apprehension, nothing but the paralyzing and deadening weight with which it falls upon and prostrates the heart of every man who has helpless dependants to protect, nothing but this could have thrown a brave people into consternation, or could have made any portion of this powerful Commonwealth, for a single instant, to have quailed and trembled."
Thus we can only feel this kind of emotion in the case of a personal misfortune, only when the grief that we feel is sufficiently tempered to leave some place for that impression of pleasure that would be felt by a compassionate spectator. The loss of a great good prostrates for the time, and the remembrance itself of the grief will make us experience emotion after a year.
Woman may well wonder at the charm which prostrates the heavy Guardsman at the feet of the belle of the season. Even the most ardent of worshippers at such a shrine must, one would think, desire in their deity a little more sweetness and light. But the beauty of eighteen summers is trained to look on worship as simply her due, and to regard amiability as a mere superfluity.
If we wish to find them we have only to ask ourselves: What countries are making no contribution to the progress of the race? What countries have nothing to give us, whether in art, science, or industry? For example, Gervaise tells us of the Talapoins, or priests of Siam, that "they are exempted from all public charges, they salute nobody, while everybody prostrates himself before them.
"The obscure name of the one who prostrates himself is Wo, that of his degraded father being Weh. For this service he binds his ghost to attend your ghost through three cycles of time in the After." "It is remitted," said Chang Tao generously, as he resumed his way. "May the path be flattened before your weary feet."
The Pope and his attendants kneel and rise, he lifts the Host, and the world prostrates itself. A great procession of dignitaries with torches bears a fragment of the original cradle of the Holy Bambino from its chapel to the high altar, through the swaying crowd that gape and gaze and stare and sneer and adore. And thus the evening passes. Thus Christmas is ushered in at Rome.
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