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    SABBATH MUSINGS .

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    ( 684 )

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    No . V .

    Melancholy ever attends upon the contemplation of transition , whether the transition relates to an external or an internal state , whether it involves progression or decay . If Paul could have seated himself on the unroofed shrine of the Ephesian Diana , sighs for its fallen grandeur might have mingled with his praises for the overthrow of its ancient superstitions .

    If John could have returned from Patmos to lay his bones at the foot of the holy mountain , he would have wept over the rank grass of the temple courts , and the blackened rafters of the secret chambers , while he gloried in the fulfilment of the promises . From the same cause , it is natural that the bride should linger on the threshold of her native home , and that the

    most devoted martyr should stoop to the fading flowers at his feet , while the amaranth crown is within his reach . From the same cause , there must have been melancholy mingled with the holy triumphs of Jesus in every stage of his progression , if we may judge from our analogous expefience . In the transitions of opinion and emotion by which we are instructed in our destiny , we are each led up into a solitude where we must struggle with our longings , our regrets , our fears : and however triumphant may be the issue , there is need of ministerings from above to recompense the conflict through -which a state of higher responsibility is attained .

    Nor is the feeling lessened when the transition is the subject of retrospect instead of present experience ; and it is increased when the tendencies to change in the outward and inward world do not accord . Thus do I learn from the emotions of this hour . To stand in the same scene with an

    altered mind , makes us recognize the fulfilment of our childish desire to carry the same consciousness into alternating states of being : but this is less strange than to mark decay among the ancient materials of our thought , while the thought itself is proceeding in the growth of its immortality . If this garden had been what it was in the days when my spirit was weak in

    the infancy of its faith , it would have roused many emotions to look at it now with new eyes , to ponder it in another mood : but it is far more touching to feel that the external as well as the internal scene is another and yet the same , while the one tends to desolation and the other to a richer production of its fruits .

    How choice a retreat for the meditative was this place in former days ! How the gay also came to enjoy its brightness , and how various were its charms according to the moods of the " many-sided mind" ! The open plat where the shadows of the acacias danced to the music of the breeze , the lofty beechen covert where small white butterflies chased each other among the smooth stems , the bank sloping to the south where the beehives rested and where fragrant incense went up in the sultry noon , the green

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1831, page 684, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2602/page/32/