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The volcano is quiet and silent for years. No fires and lava pour forth from its crater. Meanwhile people venture up its slopes, and lay out their gardens, and build their villas, and plant their vineyards; and flowers bloom, and fruits hand in purple clusters, and beauty covers the once fire swept, lava furrowed mountain slopes. But has the volcano really been tamed? Have its fires been put out? Is all permanently peaceful in the mountain’s heart?
It is otherwise in the breast of him who has merely trained himself into good moral and ethical habits? What the best mere self culture can do for a life is no more than the planting of flowers and vineyards on the volcano’s sides while all its fires still burn within, ready to break forth again any day in all their old fury. Good manners are not religion. The heart must be changed. The heart of stone must be made a heart of flesh. The heart that hates God, and goodness and holiness and purity, must become a heart that loves God, and loves His way and His will.