Deadly Sins

"And the house, when it was building, was built of stone made ready before it was brought thither: so that there was neither hammer nor ax nor any tool of iron heard in the house while it was in buildinq."--1 Kings vi:7.

So built Solomon, his workmen coming and going on silent feet, fretful lest any noise should affront the ears of the Lord. But in Washington, D. C, hammers ring all day, all week, resting only on the Sabbath. For there, to the greater glory of God, men are buiding a Cathedral, named after the city in which it stands. A year ago, the foundations were finished; and it was seen that they were good. A fund of $10,000,000 is being raised to complete the Cathedral. Money comes in; new contracts are let. It is prophesied that the sound of the hammer will not cease for five years in Washington, at the end of which time the house will be builded. Last week, scaffolding was knocked away from the carved bosses of part of the vaulting, symbolic sculpture revealed.

In the six bays in which the carving has been completed, there are groups of bosses depicting the Seven Sacraments of the Church, the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, the Seven Deadly Sins. Thus, for a mute warning, the effigies of Vice stand against the effigies of Virtue before the face of the Lord. Ingenious are the presentiments of the Seven Sins--pungent apothegms in grey stone. They wear modern clothes, those jaunty evils; they are grouped about a central boss, Penance, symbolized by Peter, who receives the keys of the Church from Jesus Christ. The seven:

Pride, a dismayed figure, is not permitted to obscure his mortification in the mire toward which, a witless moment back, he strutted, but is caught midway in his tumble, for all posterity to jape.

Envy, penniless, accoutred in dismal garb, ogles the fur coat of a wealthy Babbitt.

Anger flails his weak bloody fists against the vaulting out of which he is moulded.

Covetousness stands mute, an abashed and haggard youth, amid the stony evidence of his larcenies.

Gluttony with a face half furtive, half swinish, gnaws a ham bone, one arm circling a paunchy bottle.

Lust is a serpent twining with subtle coil a man and a woman whom fires devour.

Sloth drowses in his garden. His flowers have long fallen away, and round his sotted head creep the lank leaves of poison ivy.