_THE FIRE OF ENVY_
"_Where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work!_"
--JAMES iii. 13-18.
In Milton's "Comus" we read of a certain potion which has the power to
pervert all the senses of everyone who drinks it. Nothing is apprehended
truly. Sight and hearing and taste are all disordered, and the victim is
all unconscious of the confusion. The deadly draught is the minister of
deceptive chaos.
And envy is like that potion when it is drunk by the spirit. It perverts
every moral and spiritual sense. The envious is more fatally stricken than
the blind. He gazes upon untruth and thinks it true. He looks upon
confusion and thinks it order. Envy is colour-blind. It is like jealousy,
of which it is a blood-relation. It never sees anything in its natural
hues. It misinterprets everything.
No one can quench the unholy fire of envy but the mighty God Himself. It
is like a prairie fire: once kindled it is beyond our power to stamp it
out. But God's coolness is more than a match for all our feverish heat.
His quenchings are transformations. He converts the perverted and changes
envy into goodwill. The bitter pool is made sweet. For confusion He gives
order, for ashes He gives beauty, and in the face of an old enemy we see
the countenance of a friend.