The Devil of To-Day; His Play Between the False and the Good Being a Searching Allegory on the Subtle Intrigues of the Devil Within the Church, the Home, and Modern Society - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER V The Modern Thirst For Gold "Commerce has set the mark of selfishness. The signet of its all enslaving power. Upon a shining ore, and called it gold; Before whose image bow the vulgar great, The vainly rich, the miserable proud, The mob of peasants, nobles, priests and kings, And with blind feelings reverence the power That grinds them to the dust of misery. But in the temple of their hireling hearts Gold is a living god, and rules in scorn All earthly things but virtue."--Shelley. IN my dream I overlooked the Great City of Worldliness in all its vast extent. By its side, past a thousand great warehouses, a broad river raced to the ocean. Deep-laden ships lay at the wharves, or glided out into the mist, and floated away with the stream. The noise of traffic reached me,--the clatter and din of a thousand footsteps, a thousand hoofs, a thousand wheels. Streams of human life flowed in straight and devious ways, yielding, pushing, driving, in a stress of feverish excitement. I saw men there absorbed and rapt in eager self-seeking, crossing each other's course in every direction, and women as well--men and women of all conditions--and I asked myself, Where will these be in a hundred years, and what will be the sum and outcome of this labor? Then I was borne down into the very vortex of the city, that wild whirlpool of wealth and woe in which men and women are driven by the thirst for gold and pleasure, past the market-place, the banks and exchanges--a thousand places in which the war for wealth goes on day by day, the victors exulting, the vanquished mourning, the field strewn with the wrecks of human souls. But the gold-fever was not in every heart in that city. Thousands were there whose souls were clean and pure; to whom honor and righteousness wer...

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.