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poral . We only know that all is good . " Let us 6 e , " is therefore the only petition I can now offer . I know too little of the conditions of being to venture to prescribe them even to my own wishes . In this unconditional surrender merges that impulse of devotion in which a true and indispensable relief is found in some states of the spirit , but which must at some time die away . Confession of sin is the most gracious liberty which many a mourner
can exercise . What ease to the oppressed , what a dawn to the benighted , is given , —what a fair and verdant way out of the tangled wilderness is opened by the condescension which invites man to confide his spiritual as well as temporal griefs to Him who alone can understand them ! There is in some dark hours , in the dark hours of many years of every one's life , no other refuge from despair or from insensibility , no other support to struggles which with this support need never be impotent , no other way to outgrow the necessity which this permission is given to supply . But this necessity
must be outgrown . If there are hours even now when we can make an unconditional surrender of our temporal lot , may there not be moments when we can exercise a similar trust respecting our spiritual state ? Why not taste the perfect peace of a joyful acquiescence as to both ? Why make it a sin to complain of the evils of the one , and a virtue to complain of the evils of the other ? These evils , while evils , we cannot but feel ; we ought not to cease to struggle against ; but now—I might as well shudder at this low black cloud that comes hurrying towards me , as mourn over any other condition of my being .
While all here is still , as if the breezes had forgotten their accustomed haunt , how that single elm on the lawn shivers and stoops , as if an invisible giant were uprooting it for a trophy ! The gust is coming , lighting here and there on the tree-tops , and rolling blackness and tempest before it . Far off the commotion begins . How the roar swells as it approaches , rushing , driving athwart the ivied stems , and whistling among the tossing boughs above ! The terrified birds come fluttering each from its domestic tree . Ho \ v that boy ' s light laugh mingles with the uproar as he rocks fearlessly in
his lofty seat ! He feels not more than I that these are tokens of wrath around us , or that these heavy drops are signs of Nature ' s sorrow . Human joy overflows- in tears ; and why should not the oppression of her solemn joy be removed in like manner ? What a brimming shower ! and the sun already gleaming again on the thousand tricklings from the shining leaves which refuse to retain their liquid burden ! The whole grove glitters as if beneath the spray of Niagara . In a moment the chill is gone , and but for the pearls which gem those pendant crowns , the gust and the shower might be supposed the dream of a spring noon , the creation of preceding thoughts .
Thus may end , thus will end , the storms of the spirit ; and in bright and harmonious praise , like that which greets my senses now , shall man bear his part when the vicissitudes of his early day are passed . Praise , praise alone shall be the end , as it ought to be the beginning , of devotion , though praise must change and advance its character as the mind of the worshiper advances . The infant's first communion should be praise . He knows or ought to
know no fear ; he knows or ought to know no want : for what then should he petition ? When he learns that others have wants , he begins to petition for them , and in time for himself . When he becomes a subject of conscience , he is led to confession and to intercession . All this time praise should be the beginning and end of his communion : praise , first for the low good of which alone he is sensible ; then for each new glimpse of glory which his
Untitled Article
238 Sabbath Musings ,
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1831, page 238, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2596/page/22/
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