we must prefer our requests to an Ear more ready to
hear us and a Hand more ready to help. It is
not to Time that I shall apply to lead me through
life into immortality! And I cannot think of years
to come without going back to a greater poet, whom
we need not esteem the less because his inspiration
was loftier than that of the Muses, who has summed
up so grandly in one comprehensive sentence all the
possibilities which could befall him in the days and
ages before him. “Thou shalt guide me with
Thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory!”
Let us humbly trust that in that sketch, round and
complete, of all that can ever come to us, my readers
and I may be able to read the history of our Future
Years!
And now, friendly reader, who have borne me company
so far, your task is ended. You will have no
more of the recreations of A country
parson. Yet do not be alarmed. I trust
you have not seen the writer’s last appearance.
It is only that the essays which he hopes yet to write,
will not be composed in the comparative leisure of
a country clergyman’s quiet life. And not
merely is it still a pleasant change of occupation,
to write such chapters as those you have read:
but the author cannot forget that to them he is indebted
for the acquaintance of some of the most valued friends
he has in this world. It was especially delightful
to find a little sympathetic public, whose taste these
papers suited; and to which they have not been devoid
of profit and comfort. Nor was it without a certain
subdued exultation that a quiet Scotch minister learned
that away across the ocean he had found an audience
as large and sympathetic as in his own country; and
a kind appreciation by the organs of criticism there,
which he could not read without much emotion.
Of course, if I had fancied myself a great genius,
it would have seemed nothing strange that the thoughts
I had written down in my little study in the country
manse, should be read by many fellow-creatures four
thousand miles off. But then I knew I was not
a great genius: and so I felt it at once a great
pleasure and a great surprise. My heart smote
me when I thought of some flippant words of depreciation
which these essays have contained concerning our American
brothers. They are the last this hand shall ever
write: and I never will forget how simple thoughts,
only sincere and not unconsidered, found their way
to hearts, kindly Scotch and English yet, though beating
on the farther side of the Great Atlantic.
After all, a clergyman’s great enjoyment is
in his duty: and I think that, unless he be crushed
down by a parish of utter misery and destitution,
in which all he can do is like a drop in the ocean
(as that great and good man Dr.
Guthrie tells us he
was), the town is to the clergyman better than the
country. The crowded city, when all is said,
contains the best of the race. Your mind is stirred
up there, to do what you could not have done elsewhere.
The best of your energy and ability is brought out
by the never-ceasing spur.
