{"id":5366,"date":"2016-08-16T03:19:41","date_gmt":"2016-08-16T08:19:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/vanities\/"},"modified":"2016-08-16T03:19:41","modified_gmt":"2016-08-16T08:19:41","slug":"vanities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/vanities\/","title":{"rendered":"VANITIES"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><i>While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. <\/i><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:right;line-height:normal'><i>\u2014II Corinthians 4:8<\/i><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7019<\/b><b> Mirage In Museum<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>A small room having walls that have to be touched to be believed was on exhibition in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Acquired from a 15th-century Italian palace, its walls contain 12 wooden cupboards whose open doors reveal on the shelves about 100 objects, including an hourglass, a celestial globe, books and musical instruments. The wall space around the cupboards is paneled and benches line the sides of the room. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>However, it is all an optical illusion\u2014a flat surface on which the uncanny perspective and shadows are produced by inlays of more than 500,000 pieces of wood in a vast variety of shapes and colors. So convincing is the three-dimensional effect that nearsighted visitors occasionally attempt to sit on the benches. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:right;line-height:normal'>\u2014Selected<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7020<\/b><b> Medals For Sale<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Nothing better illustrates the declaration of the apostle that \u201call the glory of man is the flower of the field\u201d than the display in a pawnshop of the following list of medals for sale:<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0cm;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm; margin-left:18.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-18.0pt;line-height:normal'>French Croix de Guerre &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;$2.00<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0cm;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm; margin-left:18.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-18.0pt;line-height:normal'>American Distinguished Service Medal &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;10.00<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0cm;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm; margin-left:18.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Belgian Croix de Guerre &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;2.00<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0cm;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm; margin-left:18.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-18.0pt;line-height:normal'>French Legion d\u2019 Honneur &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;12.00<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0cm;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm; margin-left:18.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-18.0pt;line-height:normal'>German Iron Cross &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;1.00<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0cm;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm; margin-left:18.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Mons Star (1914) &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;1.00<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0cm;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm; margin-left:18.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Mons Star (1915) &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;.50<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0cm;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm; margin-left:18.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Italian War Cross &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;3.00<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>If poverty has compelled the living to thus part with this badge of a nation\u2019s honor, only a deep sense of sacrificial service rendered can neutralize the bitterness that almost necessarily lurks in the heart. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7021<\/b><b> Creators Of \u201cSuperman\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were shy, thin youths with glasses in 1933 when they created the man of steel who would become a multi-million dollar hero: Superman.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Siegel and Shuster are old men today, living on pennies and memories. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>They have no royalties because they signed over their rights to Superman in 1938 for $130. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Siegel says he can\u2019t bear to watch the old Superman television series and it pains him to see kids reading comic books on the Man of Steel. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Shuster said that in 1966 he stood on the sidewalk on the opening night of the broadway musical, \u201cSuperman.\u201d \u201cI couldn\u2019t afford the price of a premiere ticket,\u201d he said. \u201cI just huddled out there, while the celebrities arrived and everyone gawked at them. I couldn\u2019t get in to see our own creation.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7022<\/b><b> Fading Of \u201cLast Supper\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Upon the large fresco of \u201cThe Last Supper\u201d at Milan, Da Vinci was engaged at least ten years. It is said that he often spent whole days so absorbed that he forgot to eat. Then for days he would only come and stand before it with folded arms, as if criticizing it. Sometimes he would hasten in the heat of midday from the cathedral, add a touch or two to his picture, and immediately return. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Unfortunately he mixed his colors with oil\u2014a fatal innovation\u2014so that in the course of a few centuries it has been repaired no less than three times. With strange insensibility the monks allowed the lower portion of the central group to be destroyed in order to make a door in the wall; and Napoleon\u2019s dragoons not only made the refectory a stable, but amused themselves throwing brickbats at the apostles. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>It is now a ruin, but one can form an idea of its merit from the copy made by Marco Uggione, one of Leonardo\u2019s best pupils, and which is now in the Royal Academy, London. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:right;line-height:normal'>\u2014Selected<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7023<\/b><b> Bowler\u2019s Woe<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>This woe came to Julian Levitch in Memphis, Tennessee. A wobbly No. 5 pin that stayed up prevented this magnificent bowler from being $10,000 richer. Levitch threw eleven straight strikes at Park Bowling Lanes on a Saturday night and on his final ball, one pin swayed but wouldn\u2019t fall. He ended with 299. The Park Bowling Lanes has a standing offer of $10,000 to any player\u2014in open or league competition\u2014who bowls the perfect 300 game. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7024<\/b><b> Allergic Queen<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Olympia, Washington (UPI)\u2014Miss Becky Alexander, 18, the 1973 Washington Wheat Queen, had an embarrassing confession to make before the State Senate\u2014she\u2019s allergic to wheat. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>\u201cI\u2019m probably the only wheat queen in history who is allergic to wheat,\u201d she told the lawmakers. She immediately put down a sheaf of what she had been carrying. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7025<\/b><b> \u201cI Detest Music\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>At one time Leopold Stokowski conducted a series of concerts in Paris. As time went on he became aware of a deeper and deeper expression of gloom on the concertmaster\u2019s face, until finally, curious as to the cause of such profound melancholy, Stokowski began to question the man. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>\u201cTell me, my friend,\u201d he said, \u201cwhy are you so unhappy? Are you having domestic troubles, or do you feel unwell? Or perhaps you\u2019re in some financial difficulty?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>\u201cNo, no,\u201d growled the concertmaster, \u201cI detest music!\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7026<\/b><b> \u201cDon\u2019t Want To Be Secretary\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>The Perfect Secretary had been chosen out of 5000 business-college contestants from all over Britain. Pamela MacAllister stood out a mile, the judges agreed. Her typing and shorthand were expert. She had \u201cvitality, charm, courtesy, intelligence, etc.\u201d Awarded the prize, Pam was brought to the dais to cries of \u201cSpeech!\u201d She had something to say and said it: \u201cI don\u2019t want to be a secretary.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:right;line-height:normal'><i>\u2014Clipper<\/i><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7027<\/b><b> Half-Finished Painting<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>A. C. Dixon tells us that when the great artist Raphael died at the early age of 37, some of his friends and relatives carried his marvelous painting \u201cThe Transfiguration\u201d in the funeral procession. It was only partially finished, and they felt that because of his youth and the limited time he was allotted to use his creative genius, it was a symbol of life\u2019s shortness. But the completed picture has a deeper meaning\u2014a message that should impress itself upon all of us: life\u2019s sojourn is fleeting and death sometimes terminates even our best efforts. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:right;line-height:normal'>\u2014Henry G. Bosch<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7028<\/b><b> Other Unfinished Works<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Visitors may see in the study at Abbotsford the last words written by Sir Walter Scott in his journal: \u201cTomorrow we shall \u2026 \u201d The entry was never finished. Franz Schubert left his great \u201cUnfinished Symphony,\u201d and Charles Dickens laid down his pen in the midst of writing a novel, and students have wondered ever since how the work would have ended. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:right;line-height:normal'>\u2014James Hastings<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7029<\/b><b> A Suicide\u2019s View<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>A few years ago a famous writer committed suicide. He was only 62 at the time. He was world-famous as an author. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Shortly before he took his own life, he said to a friend:<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>\u201cWhat does a man care about? Staying healthy. Working good. Eating and drinking with his friends. Enjoying himself in bed. I haven\u2019t got any of them. Do you understand? None of them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7030<\/b><b> \u201cHere Lies (Napoleon)\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>The body of Napoleon I, exhumed from its plain, wooden casket in October 1840, (19 years after his death) had not decomposed although his leather boots had rotted off. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>The stone above his tomb on St. Helena had on it only the word \u201cCI-GIT\u201d\u2014or \u201cHERE LIES!\u201d He had requested a simple burial, that his ashes be spread on the banks of the Seine near the people he loved \u2026 But his final resting place was the Ornate Hotel des Invalides. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7031<\/b><b> One Mourner Showed Up<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Not for nothing did the jet-set society earn its sobriquet. People arrive and depart from it with supersonic suddenness, though few have managed to do so as discretely as Talitha Getty, the glamorous 31-year-old wife of Paul Getty, Jr. After she died of what police said was barbiturate poisoning, a Roman funeral was held for Talitha. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>One unidentified woman came; no one else seemed to care. Commenting on the absence of husband, father, in-laws, friends and flowers, one of Talitha\u2019s acquaintances mumbled, \u201cShe wouldn\u2019t want us to do something so uselessly sad.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7032<\/b><b> Mozart\u2019s Burial<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Mozart\u2019s body was lowered into a pauper\u2019s grave, and no loving eye to note the spot. A few friends went as far as the church, deterred from going farther by a storm. The widow was ill and seemed indifferent as to the disposition of the remains, and on inquiry it was impossible to learn where the grave had been dug. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7033<\/b><b> Alexander The Great\u2019s Funeral<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Alexander the Great, we are told, being upon his deathbed, commanded that, when he was carried forth to the grave, his hands should not be wrapped, as was usual, in the gravecloths, but should be left outside the bier, so that all men might see them, and might see that they were empty; that there was nothing in them. He was born to one empire, and the conqueror of another; the possessor while he lived, of two worlds, of the East, and of the West, and of the treasures of both, yet now when he was dead could retain not even the smallest portion of these treasures. The poorest beggar and he were at length upon equal terms. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7034<\/b><b> \u201cI\u2019ve Got The Bones\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>The golden, jeweled coffin containing the bones of Charlemagne was returned to Aachen in a United States Army truck after having been removed from the Aachen Cathedral in 1939 for safekeeping. They came back home, bouncing on the floor of a U.S. Army truck. It was almost nightfall when the telephone rang in the office of the Aachen military government. Major Jack Bradford of Minneapolis, Minnesota, said to be Governor of Aachen, heard the voice at the other end say: \u201cI\u2019ve got the bones with me. Where will I put them?\u201d That is how the remains of Europe\u2019s most famous \u201cdisplaced person\u201d arrived back home. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7035<\/b><b> Talleyrand\u2019s Brain<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Victor Hugo tells this story: The doctors embalmed the corpse. After the manner of the ancient Egyptians, they removed the bowels and brains. After having transformed Prince Talleyrand into a mummy, and having nailed it up in a coffin, lined with white satin, they went away, leaving on the table that brain which had thought so much, inspired so many men, constructed so many ambitious edifices, managed two revolutions, deceived twenty kings, and held the world in check. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>\u201cThe doctors gone, the servant entered and saw what they had left. Not knowing that it was wanted, and regarding it as a loathsome object, he gathered it together and threw it into the sewer in front of the house.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7036<\/b><b> Why Xerxes Wept<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>The army which Xerxes conducted against Greece consisted of seventeen hundred thousand men, besides a numerous fleet. When the Persian monarch beheld, from an eminence, the Hellespont covered with his ships and the plains of Abydos filled with his troops of different nations he pronounced himself happy. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Immediately after, however, he began to weep; and being asked by his uncle why he wept, surrounded as he was by so much glory, he replied, that he wept to think that of the vast crowd which he then beheld not one individual would be living in a hundred years. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:right;line-height:normal'>\u2014Walter Baxendale <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7037<\/b><b> Remains Of \u201cSeven Wonders\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>About all that remains of the so-called \u201cSeven Wonders\u201d of the ancient world are as follows:<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>The only remains of the tomb of Mausolus, built in 350 B.C., are now exhibited in the British Museum. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, once the center of the fertility cult of Diana, was probably destroyed in A.D. 262 by the Goths. This was about 200 years after the city was visited by Paul. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>The Hanging Gardens of Babylon grow no more. They adorned one of the world\u2019s spectacular cities during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar. Babylon\u2019s ruins have been found on the Euphrates River, about fifty-five miles south of modern Baghdad. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>The magnificent statue of Zeus once stood forty-feet high in the city of Olympus where the Olympian games were held every four years. During Byzantine times plunderers dragged off and burned the huge statue. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>King Ptolemy\u2019s famous lighthouse near Alexandria, Egypt, was built 200-feet-square at the base. It crumpled during a fourteenth-century earthquake. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>The Colossus of Rhodes met the same fate in 224 B.C. It was originally a giant 100-foot statue of Apollo that spanned the harbor on the isle of Rhodes. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Only the pyramids, built before the time of Moses, have survived the ravages of time. They were built as tombs for the pharaohs who fully expected to be revived after death. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7038<\/b><b> Shattered Statue<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>\u201cOzymandias\u201d by Shelley, tells of a traveler from an ancient land. He says he saw in a desert country the remains of a huge statue, two vast stone legs standing, and on the sand, half sunk, he saw a shattered head whose ugly, sneering face accurately portrayed its original. On the pedestal he read the proud lines: \u201cMy name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.\u201d Many centuries had worn down the statue, this was all that remained. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>No matter how carefully a proud despot may try to be remembered forever, he will finally be conquered by time. Nothing in this world is immutable. Pride will go down before time. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7039<\/b><b> Temple Of Diana Now<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>The Temple of Diana is the most faded of all Ephesus\u2019 glories. Today all that remains of the Temple are only a few broken bits of column lying in a shallow depression. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Concerning this temple, an ancient writer said, \u201cI have seen the Gardens of Babylon, the Colossus of Rhodes, the immense pyramids, and the mausoleum, but when my eyes turned on the Temple of Diana at Ephesus all the other wonders of the world lost their brilliance.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7040<\/b><b> The Great Leveling In France<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>During the old French Revolution of 1793 the royal tombs in the crypt of the magnificent Abbey of St. Denis, near Paris, were all opened by the republicans. The treasures of the coffins were taken out, consisting of silver sceptres, coronets, rings, and other articles; the lead coffins were melted down to make bullets. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>And the bones and bodies of the sovereigns that had reigned over France for fourteen centuries were all thrown into a pit near the church, and the grass grows over their common grave. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:right;line-height:normal'>\u2014Denton<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7041<\/b><b> Most Beautiful Woman<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Betsey Patterson of Baltimore was regarded as the most beautiful woman in America, and the charm of her beauty was acknowledged in the highest circles of Europe. In 1804 Napoleon\u2019s youngest brother, on a visit to America, became infatuated with Elizabeth and married her; but the marriage was afterward annulled through the influence of Napoleon. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Toward the end of her remarkable career, Betsey Patterson said, \u201cOnce I had everything but money. Now I have nothing but money.\u201d Writing in middle life to a friend, she confessed, \u201cI am dying with ennui. I am tired of reading, and of all my ways of killing time. I doze away my existence. I am too old to croquet, and without this stimulus I die of ennui. The Princess Gallitizin tries to keep me up to the toil of dressing by telling me I am a beauty. I am tired of life, and tired of having lived.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Such was the melancholy confession of a woman who had great beauty of body and delighted to adorn that body, but had no inner beauty of the soul. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7042<\/b><b> \u201cAlabama!\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>There is a tradition of an Indian chief who with his tribe fled before the prairie fires, till he had crossed a broad river, when he struck his tent-pole into the ground, and cried, \u201cAlabama!\u201d (Here we may rest!) He was no prophet. Hostile tribes overpowered them, and they found only graves where they sought a home. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:right;line-height:normal'>\u2014Foster<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7043<\/b><b> Scott\u2019s Business Failure<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>In 1825, at the height of his fame, surrounded by his family and friends, Scott was living at Abbotsford, his \u201cromance in stoen.\u201d In that year his printing house failed and left him in debt more than a hundred thousand pounds. In his diary of that period we find such entries as this: \u201cNaked we entered the world and naked we leave it; blessed be the name of the Lord\u201d; \u201cI have walked my last in the domains I have planted\u2014sat the last time in the halls I have built. But death would have taken them from me if misfortune had spared them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>With splendid courage he took arms against a sea of troubles and began to write the new romances which were to clear his house of debt. Year after year he toiled on, until his health gave way under the strain, and still he continued to write until death stilled the wand of his imagination. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:right;line-height:normal'>\u2014C. E. Macartney<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7044<\/b><b> Paying Too Much For Whistle<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>When Ben Franklin was seven years old, friends gave him copper pennies for his birthday. He took the money and bought himself a toy whistle. At home he made so much noise with it that he disturbed the whole family. They told him he had paid four times what the whistle was worth. In tears, he learned a lesson that he remembered all his life. It curbed a desire to spend money foolishly. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>When he observed the actions of men later in his life, he often thought, they are paying too much for the whistle. Most of life\u2019s miseries, he decided, were caused by a false estimate of the value of things. This wise philosophy could well be applied today in our homes, schools, churches, and nations. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:right;line-height:normal'>\u2014Charlotte Carpenter<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7045<\/b><b> Surviving Signboard\u2019s Failure<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>On a main business street of Yokohama the leading art store exhibited this sign: \u201cThe wealth that cannot perish. Put your money in curios!\u201d After an earthquake, when the shop was a wreck and the curios were rubbish, the sign still survived\u2014a cynical commentary! <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7046<\/b><b> African Ad Misses The \u201cTimes\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>The New York <i>Times<\/i> carried this advertisement for the little country of Sierra Leone:<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>\u201cThe climate for investment is made all the more encouraging by the political stability of the country\u2014unsurpassed in twentieth-century Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Though a proud boast, it was for the moment \u201ca legitimate one.\u201d Experts had predicted that after the election \u201cthat country would be the first of the new Black African nations to change its government by means of ballots, rather than bullets.\u2026\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Instead, by the time <i>Times<\/i> got around to running the ad, Sierra Leone already had acquired the dubious distinction of being the tenth African country in two years to be taken over by a military coup.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:right;line-height:normal'><i>\u2014Prairie Overcomer<\/i><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7047<\/b><b> White House Transients<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Calvin Coolidge was walking with a Senator friend across from the White House when the Senator pointed to the executive mansion and asked facetiously, \u201cWonder who lives there?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>\u201cNobody,\u201d replied Cal. \u201cThey only come and go.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:right;line-height:normal'>\u2014Chester A. Wilson<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7048<\/b><b> President\u2019s Simple Choice<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>When President Johnson stopped overnight at the Chicago Hilton, the staff pulled out all stops in planning for the one meal he was to have at the hotel: breakfast. Three special chefs reported at 4 a.m., and the breakfast menu was carefully planned around their talents. The hour came at last, and with it the order for the Presidential breakfast\u2014corn flakes and coffee. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:right;line-height:normal'>\u2014Selected<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7049<\/b><b> Skull In The Picture<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>One of the great prizes of the National Gallery is a picture by Holbein entitled \u201cThe Ambassadors.\u201d It is a picture which, in its colouring, its accessories, its sumptuous surroundings, as well as the rank, dignity and learning its two figures represent, makes it a symbol of all the world has to offer. The two ambassadors are men of powerful influence, they have all that the world can give\u2014the ease which comes from high rank; the culture which comes through education of the faculties, suggested by the mathematical instruments, the globe, the flute, and the music book. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>It might be taken as a picture representing the triumph of \u201cpomp and circumstance,\u201d were it not for a strange object which the artist has painted on the floor of the sumptuous apartment. This is the \u201canamorphosis\u201d or perspectively distorted image of a human skull, which, touching the floor on the left, stretches obliquely upward toward the right. It is the artist\u2019s commentary upon life. Remember, O man, he seems to say, that thou art mortal. The world passeth away. He only that doeth the will of God shall abide forever. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:right;line-height:normal'>\u2014James Burns<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7050<\/b><b> Round And Round The Vase<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>Fabre tells us that he got a procession of caterpillars started around the rim of a big palm vase. Now, a caterpillar leaves a trail of silk behind it that acts as a lifeline to guide it back from the gazing grounds to the nest. But Fabre cut this line where it reached the rim, and the caterpillars, completing the circle of the rim of the vase, guided by the lifeline they had left unwittingly behind, started around again. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>All day long they marched around and around, a solid ring of caterpillars, each with its head to the tail of the one who went before. Fabre says: \u201cFar into the night they still journeyed on, slaves to their lifeline and bound to follow the one ahead. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>The next day they resumed their patient march. The third, the fourth, the fifth day and night they went. The sixth night, the seventh day, the seventh night, and still the go-around that was far from merry, kept on, and with its marchers as footsore and weary as were ever members of Stonewall Jackson\u2019s foot calvary or John J. Pershing\u2019s heroes of the Argonne drive. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:right;line-height:normal'>\u2014Robert G. Lee<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7051<\/b><b> Man Who Lost Both Ways<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>An old man of Chou, sitting by the roadside, was very downhearted and depressed. A passer-by, who wanted to know the cause of the old man\u2019s state, asked, \u201cWhy do you look so sad and sorrowful?\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent: 18.0pt;line-height:normal'>The old man replied, \u201cIt is because I have missed all the opportunities of my life. When I was young the trend of the time was to regard men who were scholars in high esteem and offer them the best positions, so I studied. But when I became a scholar, the custom of the time was then to prefer only old men rather than young ones. Yet again the age looked up to youth and ignored the old. Now I am old; it is impossible for me to regain my youth, and I am still out of place. These changes have been the cause of my exceeding sorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:right;line-height:normal'>\u2014Lun Heng<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>7052<\/b><b> Epigram On Vanities <\/b><\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0cm;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm; margin-left:18.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-18.0pt;line-height:normal'>\u2022&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Those who live must die, those who meet must part. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:right;line-height:normal'>\u2014Japanese Proverb<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0cm;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm; margin-left:18.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-18.0pt;line-height:normal'>\u2022&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Meeting is the beginning of parting. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:right;line-height:normal'>\u2014Japanese Proverbs<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0cm;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm; margin-left:18.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-18.0pt;line-height:normal'>\u2022&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal align=right style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt; text-align:right;line-height:normal'>\u2014Benjamin Disraeli<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0cm;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm; margin-left:18.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-18.0pt;line-height:normal'>\u2022&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Every day the world turns over on someone who had just been sitting on top of it. <\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-top:0cm;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:0cm; margin-left:18.0pt;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-indent:-18.0pt;line-height:normal'>\u2022&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Napoleon summarized his own fading fame in a single sentence: \u201cI am doing now what will fill thousands of volumes in this generation; in the next, one volume will contain it all; in the third, a paragraph; in the fourth, a single line.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=MsoNormal style='margin-bottom:0cm;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal'><b>See also:<\/b> Man ; Progress ; Uncertainty, Spirit of. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. \u2014II Corinthians 4:8 7019 Mirage In Museum A small room having walls that have to be touched to be believed &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/vanities\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;VANITIES&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}