Cirrus@Austlit

Epigraph: 'Learn to esteem life as it deserves; then thou art at the pinnacle of wisdom.'

Author's note: It was an expression of an English bishop "that man is a compound animal-half devil, half beast : earth, consequently, peopled by such beings, must be half hell. How much more sublime and beautiful is the following description of man by St. Gregory of Nyssa :-"Man," says he, "is part spiritual, by which he can unite himself to God; part material, by which he has it in his power to use, and even enslave himself to creatures. Virtue is his purple garment, immortality his sceptre, and eternal glory is his crown. His resemblance to his Creator consists in the soul only, that is, in its moral virtues and God's grace: which divine resemblance men most basely efface in themselves by sin."