As collateral to, and consequent on, this condition of the mind, they lay the utmost stress on a disregard of all the vanities of life, a proper subjection of the lusts of the flesh, and an abstaining from the pomp and vainglory of ambition, riches, power, and the faculties.

In short, the one thing needful was humility--humility--humility.

Once thoroughly humbled to a degree that put them above the danger of backsliding, they obtained glimpses of security, and were gradually elevated to the hopes and the condition of the just.
The brigadier was still eloquently discoursing on this interesting topic, when a distant door opened, and a gold stick, or some other sort of stick, announced the right reverend father in God, his grace the most eminent and most serene prelate, the very puissant and thrice gracious and glorified saint, the Primate of All Leaphigh! The reader will anticipate the eager curiosity with which I advanced to get a glimpse of a saint under a system as sublimated as that of the great monikin family.

Civilization having made such progress as to strip all the people, even to the king and queen, entirely of everything in the shape of clothes, I did not well see under what new mantle of simplicity the heads of the church could take refuge! Perhaps they shaved off all the hair from their bodies in sign of supereminent self-abasement, leaving themselves naked to the cuticle, that they might prove, by ocular evidence, what a poor ungainly set of wretches they really were, carnally considered; or perhaps they went on all-fours to heaven, in sign of their unfitness to enter into the presence of the pure of mind in an attitude more erect and confident.

Well, these fancies of mine only went to prove how erroneous and false are the conclusions of one whose capacity has not been amplified and concatenated by the ingenuities of a very refined civilization.