that each act lasts but for a moment, but also that past gratifications
leave no sort of solace to the appetite behind them; whereas past
acquirements or deeds of goodness are a perpetual joy as well as the
foundation of the present. There is something essentially isolated in
each act of sensuous delight. No man can by so willing recall the taste
of eaten food, nor slake his thirst by remembrance of former draughts,
or cool himself by thinking of 'frosty Caucasus.' But each such
gratification is done when it is done, and there is an end of its power
to gratify.

Further, the power of enjoyment wanes, though the lust for it waxes.
Hence each act has less and less power of satisfying.

One sees _blase_ young men of twenty-five. It was a man of under
thirty-five who wrote, 'Man delights not me, no, nor woman neither.' It
was a used-up _roue_ that was represented as saying, 'Vanity of
vanities, all is vanity.' It was of sensuous 'pleasures' that poor Burns
wrote,--

'Like the snowfall in the river,
A moment white,--then melts for ever.'

When a people is given over to such excess, late or soon the fate of
Samaria comes upon them. Think of the French Revolution or of the fall
of Rome, and learn that the prophet was announcing a law for all
nations, in his fiery denunciation, and one which holds good to-day as
ever.

But we may generalise more widely. Every godless life is essentially
transitory; of course, all life is so in one view. But suppose two men,