Riches and honour are with me; yea, durable riches and righteousness." Yes, I will try and listen to Lady Why: but what will happen if I do not?
That will happen to you, my child--but God forbid it ever should happen--which happens to wicked kings and rulers, and all men, even the greatest and cleverest, if they do not choose to reign by Lady Why's laws, and decree justice according to her eternal ideas of what is just, but only do what seems pleasant and profitable to themselves.

On them Lady Why turns round, and says--for she, too, can be awful, ay dreadful, when she needs-- "Because I have called, and ye refused; I have stretched out my hand, and no man regarded; but ye have set at nought all my counsel, and would have none of my reproof--" And then come words so terrible, that I will not speak them here in this happy place: but what they mean is this:-- That these foolish people are handed over--as you and I shall be if we do wrong wilfully--to Madam How and her terrible school-house, which is called Nature and the Law, to be treated just as the plants and animals are treated, because they did not choose to behave like men and children of God.

And there they learn, whether they like or not, what they might have learnt from Lady Why all along.

They learn the great law, that as men sow so they will reap; as they make their bed so they will lie on it: and Madam How can teach that as no one else can in earth or heaven: only, unfortunately for her scholars, she is apt to hit so hard with her rod, which is called Experience, that they never get over it; and therefore most of those who will only be taught by Nature and Law are killed, poor creatures, before they have learnt their lesson; as many a savage tribe is destroyed, ay and great and mighty nations too--the old Roman Empire among them.
And the poor Jews, who were carried away captive to Babylon?
Yes; they would not listen to Lady Why, and so they were taken in hand by Madam How, and were seventy years in her terrible school-house, learning a lesson which, to do them justice, they never forgot again.

But now we will talk of something pleasanter.