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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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Untitled Article
- —' 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
Untitled Article
228 THE TRUTH TELLER .
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Citation
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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/
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