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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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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
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Citation
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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/
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