And as night fared on, these Bachants and Bachantes, wine flushed or flamed with potations of a more fiery nature, would indulge in orgies well nigh paralleling the ancient saturnalias of Latium.

Such of the indolent rich as are morally leprous must be regarded as among the world's worst and most dangerous infestations.

But, alas, society will not or cannot be exorcised of them.

Their mammon bribes or intimidates, and at the same time it is their charter for dragging Virtue at their chariot wheels and besmirching Innocence with their gilded vices.

Howbeit, the habits and excesses of this species render them effete, and as a sequence self-exterminating.

At least, their descending lines are seldom perpetuated beyond the second or third generation.

CHAPTER VIII.

MEMORY-CONSCIENCE.

Omnipotence Can Read Man's Memory and Judge Him By It-Memory Continues a Function of the Soul After Death-Conscience the Monitor of the Soul-It Leads With One Hand While the Other Is Clasped In the Hand of God.

Memory is the historian and archivist of the Soul both in the incarnate and discarnate state. With ever busy buren it graves upon its imperishable tablets hieroglyphs that are understood only by him to whom they appertain, except they are also decipherable by the Great Reader of every secret. Its records are alike of good deeds and bad of the deathless Entity, and are jotted down with the fidelity of the speculum. Honoring Charity's behests, loving Mercy, manifesting such spirit to the outcast and the fallen as gladdened that soiled heart at the Gate of the Temple, recognition of the Divinity Spark in the stumbler and smoothing rough places before his uncertain feet, are inspirations whose fulfillment in very deed are blazoned on the

Tabula of Memory in tracery unsusceptible of obliteration.

Such acts and acts that bring new day-dawn and new life to hearts languishing and dying amid the ruins of Hope, are as pleasing to God as the hallowed Sanctus, or the propitiatory incense from censers amid shrines holy with the Consecrating Presence.

Never-forgotten, Heaven-sealed and Heavenblessed, these graces shall begem many a diadem in the Third Estate, and silence all reprehension for sin registered by Memory.

Transgression's uneradicable scars thereon emphasize the wonderful love from on high, since despite such markings the regenerated and forgiven Soul is vouchsafed refuge in the Bosom of the Loving Father.

Does God seek knowledge of any man's noble or ignoble deeds, He has only to consult the records of that man's Memory.

Such records are indisputable, unchallengeable. By their truths the creature can be justified or condemned.

Memory, let it be repeated, attends the Soul forevermore, whether in the Lobbies of Time, or in the always NOW.

It can be a Nemesis or an approving affinity.
Not one trace of the lights or shadows that ever

left their impress thereon but will appear through the film of forgetfulness at the magic touch of Thought.

Then, O Brother, have heed and let thy deeds be such that thy Memory's archives shall praise thee, and reflect honor upon thy measure of days before the Ever-living Judge!

Conscience is the Monitor of the Soul forever, its Pontifex Maximus, its augur and flamen, indeposable and deathless.

It sits in judgment and rebukes; it foretokens; it will not be gainsaid.

It is the spectral hand that writes "Tekel" on the heart-walls of the evil-paced, whether king or beggar, unworthy priest or canting hypocrite.

Against wrong doing and unrepentant spirit it utters oracles more unerring than Delphian hexameters, foreboding deserved smitings and peradventure Death itself.

The legend upon its banner is "Sacrosanct Truth," traced by the Hand of God.

Heaven is its Alma Mater. Right living its Vade Mecum.

Without the restraints born of its imperative admonitions, the God-imaged mortal would stoop to vices as abhorrent as the abominations that have made the Babylon of the Cushite a hissing and a byword among the generations.

It shames the wallower in moral obliquity; it beards the unprincipled man in his heart's innermost fastnesses.

Nor can the cheat or the liar flee its reproaches, nor the robber of widows and orphans parry the keen arrows of its reproof.

Whom it judges is its vassal until he rises to its own idealistic standard.

It is an abiding presence with the extramundane no less than with the finite being.

Ever casuistic, its pointing is upward and onward to the highest and the brightest ultimation.

It betters the Soul despite indifference consequent upon the searings of depravity.

Man's Evangel in both worlds, it leads with one hand while the other is clasped in the Hand of God. The guerdons of Conscience in all Estates are tranquil peace, holy thought and the loving guardianship of the Father.

Fulfilling its requirements effectuates that budding and blossoming and ripening of inner purity and holiness, whereby comes the final consecration and fitness for transference to the Third Estate.

Multiplied are the classes of Egos in the Second Estate, the highest whereof approximate to full stature in purity and loving adoration of the Ineffable Trinity.