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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Untitled Article
forsaken them . It is awful to look abroad when the gloom of the night is drawing off , and to see thee still rolling , rolling below , and to know that it is thus when every human eye is closed . But what would it be to behold thee dead ! to strain the eye and ear to know if thy voice might not yet be overtaken afar ! How oppressive would be the silence , how stifling the expectation , how hopeless the blank , if we should call upon thee and find no answer !
How marvellous is the relation between material things , and the things of the spirit with which they are linked , we know not how ! Where any thing human intervenes , the connexion may be better understood than here , where all external things are as they would have been if I were Adam , a solitary living soul . In a churchyard , the remains of humanity tell of the destinies of humanity , and thoughts of life and death rise as " by natural exhalation "
from the ground we tread . Even now , the church-bell brought me tidings of the religious hopes and fears of many hearts : but , at this moment , when the wintry winds bear hither no human voices , and these everlasting rocks shew no impress of human foot , how mysterious is the power by which I gather from the scudding clouds the materials of prophecy , and find in the echoes new exponents of ancient truth !
Was it not thus , at least in part , that the chosen servants of God knew Him as the world knew Him not ? The divine impulse being once given , was it not thus strengthened , till their souls could grasp more than we know of the past , and the present , and of that which is to come ? When Christ spent the night in prayer , was he ministered unto by forms which we have not seen , or by those with which we are familiar , beheld by him in loftier grandeur and intenser beauty ? That which once appeared to his followers to be thunder , was to him an intelligible voice : and was it not thus also
when he was alone ? When he retired from the clamour of enemies and the narrow solicitudes of friends , was not the discord of the elements music to him because it told that his Father was with him ? When the lightnings of the hills played round his unsheltered head , were not they the messengers of peace who were sent to him ? If the place where Jacob rose up from sleep was to him the gate of heaven , because the Divine presence was made manifest , what must have been the mountain where Jesus watched and prayed ! More hallowed than Sinai , inasmuch as the new law was better than the old . More hallowed than even the Mount of Transfiguration ,
because the light disclosed beamed not on the gross , outward eye , but on the inner soul . And what a light ! When was it first given ? Did it come to him early , breaking afar off over the obscurity and perplexities of life , as yonder gleam touches the horizon beyond the gloom and turbulence of these waters ? Did the first consciousness of his destiny come to him from above , or from within , or from a peculiar interpretation of tidings given to all ? Was the mighty secret known to himself alone , or was there a mysterious sympathy with his mother ? Did she or did no one suspect his emotions when he
first distinctly apprehended the extent of his privilege , when he first said in his heart , *« The world hath not known thee , but I have known thee" ? There is a fullness of meaning , a fervour of gratitude in these words , of -which men seem not sufficiently sensible when they dwell on the griefs of Christ , of turn to the days of his glory for consolation . It is true , he was a man of sorrows , and it is natural in his case as in others , to mourn for the sufferer as well ast o reprobate the persecutors : but our sympathy ought to be regulated by the qualities of the mind with which we sympathize . While ,
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74 Sabbath Musings .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Feb. 2, 1831, page 74, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2594/page/2/
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