'l'HE LOCUST AS A SYMBOL.

2:3

what household fires will they not extinguish, leaving desolatehearths and homes behind ?

But that Power, who by the bridle of iustinct conductsthe migratory locust to perish in the waves, has set boundsalso to the career of the locust of society. lie is not impelledirresistibly, like his insect prototype, to his own destruction;but if he turn not from his course he is borne by the currentof vice into the gulf of perdition.

The analogy between locust legions and lovers of guiltypleasure holds good even after death. Cast up by the sea, andleft upon the shore—a bank of corruption—the insect remainsinfect the air, and complete by pestilence their previous workof destruction. And so, when swept by death from the faceof society, the moral locust fails not to leave behind the illodour and pestilential influence of corrupt example.