CONCLUSION. 511 more or less, richer or poorer, prosperity or privation, no longer exists ; the dis- tinction is swallowed up when contem- plated in the view of endless happiness or endless misery. Here, then, if you hesitate, you have already taken your part : irresolution is decision ; deliber- ation is destruction ; you have already resolved. The hand which now holds the pen dares not denounce anathemas, but trem- bles as it transcribes the divinely inspired denunciation of the prophet Zephaniah. " The great day of the Lord is near, it is near, it hasteth greatly : it is the voice of the day of the Lord, when the mighty man shall cry bitterly. That day is a day of wrath ; a day of trouble and dis- tress; a day of wasteness and desolation; a day of darkness and gloominess ; a day of clouds and thick darkness ; a day of the trumpet and alarm !" The awful ruins of imperial Rome, the still more defaced vestiges of learned Athens, present a deeply touching spec-
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