"Wealth is like Genius,--bestowed not for personal gratification, but for the benefit of those who lack it. What have _you_ done for your fellow-men? The very book you wrote and launched upon the tide of bribery and corruption was published with the intention to secure applause for Yourself, not to give help or comfort to others. Your marriage was prompted by Lust and Ambition, and in the fair Sensuality you wedded, you got your deserts! No love was in the union,--it was sanctified by the blessing of Fashion, but not the blessing of God. You have done without God; so you think! Every act of your existence has been for the pleasure and advancement of Yourself,--and this is why I have chosen you out to hear and see what few mortals ever hear or see till they have passed the dividing-line between this life and the next. I have chosen you because you are a type of the apparently respected and unblamable man;--you are not what the world calls a criminal,--you have murdered no-one,--you have stolen no neighbour's goods--, your unchastities and adulteries are those of every 'fashionable' vice-monger,--and your blasphemies against the Divine are no worse than those of the most approved modern magazine-contributors. You are guilty nevertheless of the chief crime of the age--Sensual Egotism--the blackest sin known to either angels or devils, because hopeless. The murderer may repent, and save a hundred lives to make up for the one he snatched,--the thief may atone with honest labour,--the adulterer may scourge his flesh and do grim penance for late pardon,--the blasphemer may retrieve his blasphemies,--but for the Egoist there is no chance of wholesome penitence, since to himself he is perfect, and counts his Creator as somewhat inferior. This present time of the world breathes Egotism,--the taint of Self, the hideous worship of money, corrodes all life, all thought, all feeling. For vulgar cash, the fairest and noblest scenes of Nature are wantonly destroyed without public protest,[5]--the earth, created in beauty, is made hideous,--parents and children, wives and husbands are ready to slay each other for a little gold,--Heaven is barred out,--God is denied,--and Destruction darkens over this planet, known to all angels as the Sorrowful Star! Be no longer blind, millionaire whose millions have ministered to Self without relieving sorrow!----for when the world is totally corrupt,--when Self is dominant,--when cunning supersedes honesty,--when gold is man's chief ambition,--when purity is condemned,--when poets teach lewdness, and scientists blasphemy,--when love is mocked, and God forgotten,--the End is near! I take My part in that end!--for the souls of mankind are not done with when they leave their fleshly tenements! When this planet is destroyed as a bubble broken in the air, the souls of men and women live on,--as the soul of the woman you loved lives on,--as the soul of the mother who bore her, lives on,--aye!--as all My worshippers live on