70
PUT GOD FIRST
in an effort to gain the world, have lost their souls. Alexander, at the age of 33, had conquered the known world. It shook beneath the tread of his mighty armies until he had planted his banne,rs on the ramparts of every city. But he died, it is said, in a drunken debauch, losing both his soul and the world. Caesar led his Roman legions triumphantly through every country and planted the eagles of Rome over ¡every capitol. He crossed the Rubicon and became Rome's mightiest citizen, but he sold his soul to the mad passions and ambitions of life until when he died at the hands of supposed friends, at the base of Pompey's statue, the great poet said of him: "Now lies he there, with none so poor to do him reverence." Napoleon defeated the Germans, twisted the British lion's tail, crossed the Alps with his brilliant soldiers, imprisoned a pope, jerked kings from their thrones and filled their palaces with his brothers and kindred; he drenched Europe in blood and tears, set up governments and knocked them down as men playing ten pins, but he sacrificed the wife of his bosom to promote his mad ambitions and died a lonely prisoner on Saint Helena. I might call the names of Hannibal, Byron, Edgar Allen Poe, Shakespeare and many others who, for a while, seemed to gain the whole world and lost it, with their souls. The story of the Tapestry Weavers on the other side of the sea beautifully illustrates man's work on earth and his reward in heaven: