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    - —' This is what I was created for ; in this is my assurance , and my pledge of immortality / Men whose head is too strong for their hearts may talk against these things , and strive to proscribe them as morbid excitement , but nature is more powerful than perverted reason , and will vindicate its rights . He that has felt them

    once JVvilLencau rageJ ; hem ~ to-eom a happiness , which , for intensity , purity , and nobleness , is not to be paralleled jon earth : feeling that they are the best instructors of what his natufje may be , and , under God ' s goodness , will be ; and in this instruction the best support of his moral strength and the best refiner of his soul . The man whose mind has never been

    kindled with devout affection , can hardly do other than grovel ; he knows not that there is any thing better to live for than meat and drink , and failing of that joy and peace in a holy disposition which the religion of the heart gives , he is in danger of failing of immortal happiness . But so deeply planted in the heart is the necessity of loving something higher than this world gives , that though the nature be sluggish and cold , dissatisfaction will from time to time be felt ; whereas , in generous dispositions , that feeling

    will be lasting , painful , and harassing . It resembles that which is experienced by the traveller , who , in a distant land , and amid savage tribes , thinks of his native country ; or that which the youth feels , who has for months known nothing of homebut the mute expressions of love which can be transmitted over seas and continents . So strong is its necessity of loving , that the widowed heart will , as did Ruth , adopt a new land , and cleave to a new faith , rather than remain lone , cold , and dreary . The head will

    plead in vain against the adoption ; its reasonings are powerless before the impulses of the bosom . Flame blends with flame , and heart blends with heart . And so it happens , as I know it has happened in the Unitarian body , that the bosom which feels the chill of a cold , hastens to the welcome glow of a warmer clime , and the convictions of youth and the heritage of a century are melted away by the sunshine of a faith which has nothing but its heat to recommend it . And no wonder : throughout the whole of human affairs what is the ultimate end and the reward of all ,

    but those gratifications which have their seat in the heart . Why does the father toil ? but to see his family happy around him ;—why does the mother suffer and endure with patience untiring , and love which endurance does but make more tender ? but to bring on the time when her babe shall repay her , " first by its smile , arm then by its prattle , and then onward by budding and growing

    charms and virtues . It is the heart which gives friendship its cement and its charm . It is its workings that convert the intercourses of society from a showy form into a glad and useful reality . These , in a word , shed a perfume over the whole of life , imparting even to nature a richer attraction than the fragrance , and the light in which of itself it is bathed ; and these are the great end for

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    228 THE TRUTH TELLER .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Aug. 1, 1833, page 228, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2619/page/4/