shapes of things, had now, as it appeared, laid his terrible hand
upon the main pillars which supported the whole edifice of our moral
and spiritual state. The inhabitants of the earth had grown too
enlightened to define their faith within a form of words, or to
limit the spiritual by any analogy to our material existence.
Truths which the heavens trembled at were now but a fable of the
world's infancy. Therefore, as the final sacrifice of human error,
what else remained to be thrown upon the embers of that awful pile,
except the book which, though a celestial revelation to past ages,
was but a voice from a lower sphere as regarded the present race of
man? It was done! Upon the blazing heap of falsehood and worn-out
truth--things that the earth had never needed, or had ceased to
need, or had grown childishly weary of--fell the ponderous church
Bible, the great old volume that had lain so long on the cushion of
the pulpit, and whence the pastor's solemn voice had given holy
utterance on so many a Sabbath day. There, likewise, fell the
family Bible, which the long-buried patriarch had read to his
children,--in prosperity or sorrow, by the fireside and in the
summer shade of trees,--and had bequeathed downward as the heirloom
of generations. There fell the bosom Bible, the little volume that
had been the soul's friend of some sorely tried child of dust, who
thence took courage, whether his trial were for life or death,
steadfastly confronting both in the strong assurance of immortality.

All these were flung into the fierce and riotous blaze; and then a
mighty wind came roaring across the plain with a desolate howl, as
if it were the angry lamentation of the earth for the loss of
heaven's sunshine; and it shook the gigantic pyramid of flame and
scattered the cinders of half-consumed abominations around upon the
spectators.