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    When we are very unhappy from any selfish sorrow or disappointment , how does the face of nature itself seem darkened , and liow do our daily and common blessings fade into insignificance in our estimation ; the heart is absorbed , is filled with

    6 n ~ e ^ dBep ~ griefrand * in ~ itsniepression or indulgence all our faculties and f eelings seem concentrated . To change this one unhappy circumstance , how often do we feel as if we could yield up , even unrepiningly , all our other earthly goods , and feel as if we made no sacrifice . To recall our friend

    from the untimely grave of his youth , to save the form dearest to us from a wasting disease , to arrest the footsteps of one we love , on the path to destruction , or to light up the changed and averted aspect of a beloved countenance onee again with the former smile of friendship and kindness , and

    regain the affection that is cold and dead , we feel thrat no offering would be too precious , no sacrifice too costly . But God is more merciful to us than we are to ourselves ; thankless , and even thoughtless as we are , he

    continues to shed down upon us with a gentle and constant influence , almost as silent and imperceptible as the dews of heaven , those uniform and common blessings , the deprivation of any one of which would place us in an immediate state of

    destitution ; our eyes , though dimmed with cares , still open to the pure and reviving influence of the morning sun , our returning wants meet each with their appropriate and unmerited gratification , and at the advance of n % ht , however we have past the short-lived day , whether in

    usefulness or idleness , the same tender care still draws softly around us the dark curtain of our repose , and still watches over us in insensibility and slumber . Were but the fate of any one individual , and that individual the best of human beings , to be Moulded according to his own wish at any period of his life , what strange

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    and unhappy mistakes would he noi make in his choice ! How would he soon , with bitter regret , learn the humbling but necessary lesson , that his destiny is in a wiser keeping than his own . And yet is not this wish , this presumptuous , this misguided wish , the secret source of all the dis--content-aTidT-epinmgs ^ whTeh ^ are ^ so prevalent upon earth ? Did we

    estimate as we ought our daily mercies , did we regard our duties as our best and noblest pleasures , did we feel as we ought , that we never could be permanently unhappy while we cultivated our communion with God , and a spirit of habitual and influential

    piety in our lives , we could not by any fortuitous concurrence of circumstances be placed at the mercy of events ; we might suffer indeed , with a feeling heart in a world like this we must suffer , but we should know that we had garnered up our hope 3 and placed our reliance where

    we could not meet with disappoint - ment , that by no possible calamity could we ever be made altogether and entirely unhappy . This can only be the case in an irreligious or illregulated mind , where the passions are indulged , and the imagination is morbid ; then indeed , when the fever

    and irritation of the spirit is superadded to the painful external excitement , the suffering is complete , and the fortitude is sunk . But where this is not the state of mind , where the

    hope of religion still survives all other hopes , and burns but the brighter in the desolation around , there are still open to the sufferer a thousand avenues of innocent pleasures , from which he will not tura

    away : the very change of the sea ~ sons in . their periodical : r / e volutio n ^ speak to him of the watchfulness of a Father and a friend ; he looks abroad on the rejoicing earth , mantled in the loveliness of spring ' s first tender green , he sees all nature springing into Ufe and bloom , and his heart must be dead indeed to pleasure , or cold in selfishness , if it feels

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    UNITARIAN CHfcONlCtfc * Ql

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    COMMON MERCIES .

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    Vol . II . G

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 1, 1833, page 81, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2609/page/17/