Is not that like man? he asks; man made of dust, kindled by the glow of life, vivified by the Divine breath? Well! you will say that glass is a very brittle affair; it somewhat resembles ice, and is just as fragile; one little fall, and it is shivered into countless fragments; it is made by a puff, it is clouded by a breath, it is broken by a touch. You consider it very fragile.—I tell you, on the authority of St. Augustine, that man is far more fragile. Glass carefully preserved may become an heirloom, but man can never last out more than a generation. Glass is only shattered by accident, but man is perishable by his nature. Glass is broken by external force, but man bears about within him the seeds of dissolution. Glass is snapped by a touch, but man untouched will crumble into his grave. Glass once broken may be restored, not so man. Glass though broken does not decay, but man’s flesh becomes corrupt. Having thus amused and rested his hearers, Deza begins another earnest appeal to them; he explains that the soul of man does not descend to the grave, and he solves a difficulty in the text, Genesis iii. 19, _Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return_. Having done this, it is proper that the congregation should be given a little breathing-time, and so the preacher takes the sentence, _Dust thou art_, and plays with it, by giving a description of dust agitated by the wind. Oh, into what fantastic shapes does the wind whirl the dust! how the dust-cloud runs along, rushes forward madly, stops and spins awhile, and tosses itself up, up, till it seems verily to fly; it ascends higher and higher, it is carried above the tree-tops, it will reach the clouds of Heaven. Stay!—the wind drops. Where is the dust? It falls, it obscures the landscape, it is scattered every where, it parches the tongue, it blinds the eyes, it clogs the throat; and that which just now dulled the air and obscured the sun, has returned to itself again; dust it was, and nothing more, and unto dust has it returned. Is not this a picture of man? asks the preacher; man, poor dust carried up and hurried forward by the winds of his vain fancies? Ambition puffs him up on high, only to fling him to earth again; passion drives him forward, and then drops him a helpless atom to his native soil. Look how high those giddy particles are flung—_Thou takest away their breath, they die, and are turned again to their dust_. Yes, toss yourselves in pride, rush on in the storm of passion, eddy up in the struggle of life, spin in the giddiness of pleasure, penetrate every where in the eagerness of curiosity—_Thou takest away their breath, they die, and are turned again to their dust_.