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Untitled Article
ble . Well may I who watched over her remember H all ;* - * the early days when she was wholly engrossed , and sickened at all that could not be brought into connexion with him , —the days of ample diaries and solitary walks , and social abstraction , and fitful devotion : —? the later times when ,
ceasing to be engrossed herself , she wan jealous of the very mention of his name by any but the few whom she admitted to private confidence , and when she was looked upon as one set apart by the possession of a mysterious joy with which none might intermeddle ;—the still later season when her benevolence flowed forth again , enriched and solemnized , when she smiled not the less for others because she bore traces of a tearful solitude , when the
flush and the start were controlled , and a dignified patience filled up the intervals of those vicissitudes which we all mourned , but could not prevent ; and lastly , the short period of smooth expectation which seemed too bright to be real , but which only vanished in the sober certainty so long looked for in vain , —the period of daily-growing tenderness to parents and sisters , and
of regretful love of persons and places which bad been looked upon almost with disgust when there was no prospect of leaving them * How increasingly solemn were her devotions in the church and the family all this time , from the alternate tears and coldness of the early days up to the lofty calmness of her worship the last time she went with her family to the house of God ! How vivid became her sensibility to nature , how generous her friendship , how melting her charity ! What wonder that her father's voice trembled when he gave her his blessing , and that her weeping sisters looked on her scarcely as one of themselves when she commended them to the love of her husband ? She entered upon a new life when her love began ; and it is as easy to conceive that there is one Life-Giver to the body and another to the spirit , as that this progression is not the highest work of God on earth and its results abounding to his praise .
No such progression could have gone on in this cell , —dark , while open to the summer ' s sun , and dreary , though encompassed with the glories and beauties of heaven and earth . How listless , how vacant must have been such a life L How little holy the longing for companionship , or the nervous dread of the human face , one or the other of which is the torment of all recluses . There , where a few yellow leaves lie to be the sport of the wintry winds , was the couch of the holy man . There , when the first crimson ray
of morning beamed upon him , he covered his face that he might sieep again , and defer for a while the weary day . When he came forth at length , far different were his orisons from those of the first dwellers in a paradise , who worshiped the more fervently because they knelt hand in hand . He looked with a dull eye upon the purple hills and shadowy lake , and the . gemmed herbage of the rock . He listened whh a languid ear to the plash of oars when the early fisherman began his , toil * With a slow step he we « $ to fill his bowl from the dripping ledge ,, pr to gather herbs from the moist crevices . When this was done , and all his petty , selfish wants supplied ,
Untitled Article
Sabbath Musing * . f ^/ J
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1831, page 767, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2603/page/43/
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