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Untitled Article
grees of love , is the appointed nature of the service , and the proportionate intensity of the devotion , which man owes to God . The infant who chelishes the fledgling in her bosom , may claim sisterhood with the wakeful Samuel : and they who see the sportive boy with bis finger on his lips beside the cradle , are slow of heart if they perceive not that he is ?* about
his Father ' s business . " Many are the gradations through which this service rises till that is reached on which God has bestowed his most manifest benediction , on which Jesus smiled at Cana , but which the devotee presumes to decline . Not more express were the ordinances of Sinai than the divine provisions for wedded love ; never was it more certain that
Jehovah benignantly regarded the festivals of his people , than it is daily that He appointed those mutual rejoicings of the affections * which need but to be referred to Him to become a holy homage . Whence arose the passion , if He did not bid it spring to birth ? Why is there happiness in it , if He has not smiled upon it ? Whence is its might , for good or for evil , if it did not derive its vigour from Him ? And why does its matchless power
ever achieve the loftiest and purest aims , if it be not guided by His hand and obedient to His voice ? Yet , in the face of these evidences of divinity , in the absence of all the intimations which here and there undoubtedly exist , that service of a different kind is required of individuals , in the midst of the proofs which every where abound of what love can do and bear for the sake of God and man , there have been many who pronounce
common that which God has purified , and reject or disdain that which He has proffered and blessed . —How ignorant must such be of the growth of that within ! How unobservant of what passes without ! Or , if not so , yet worse ; how mistaken in their views of the Father of spirits and of the providence by which he ministers to them ! Could such have been with
me at the scene of which my heart is yet full , could they have watched as I have the course of that love which , after many troubles has found its rest in marriage , they would no longer - —and yet perhaps they would still doubt ; for similar evidence has—blessed be God !—always been before men ' s eyes , to convince the teachable of the wisdom of His purposes through the benignity of His ordinances .
Marriage is an occasion on w hich none refuse to sympathize . Would that all were equally able and willing to understand ! Would that all could know how , from the first flow of the affections till they are shed abroad in all their plenitude , the purposes of their creation become fulfilled . They were to life , like a sleeping ocean to a bright but barren and silent shore .
When the breeze from afar wakened it , new lights began to gleam , and echoes to be heard ; rich and unthought of treasures were cast up from the depths ; the barriers of individuality were broken down ; and from henceforth , they who choose may " hear the mighty waters rolling evermore . " Would that all" could know how , by this mighty impulse , new strength is given to every power ; how the intellect is vivified and enlarged ; how the
Untitled Article
Sabbath Musings , 765
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1831, page 765, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2603/page/41/
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