heaven, the simple exercise of love, in thought and
action, could bring heaven down to man. To weary
and restless spirits He taught the great truth, that
happiness consists in making others happy. No
cloister for idle genuflections and bead counting,
no hair-cloth for the loins nor scourge for the limbs,
but works of love and usefulness under the cheerful
sunshine, making the waste places of humanity glad
and causing the heart’s desert to blossom.
Why, then, should we go searching after the cast-off
sackcloth of the Pharisee? Are we Jews, or Christians?
Must even our gratitude for “glad tidings of
great joy” be desponding? Must the hymn
of our thanksgiving for countless mercies and the,
unspeakable gift of His life have evermore an undertone
of funeral wailing? What! shall we go murmuring
and lamenting, looking coldly on one another, seeing
no beauty, nor light, nor gladness in this good world,
wherein we have the glorious privilege of laboring
in God’s harvest-field, with angels for our
task companions, blessing and being blessed?
To him who, neglecting the revelations of immediate
duty, looks regretfully behind and fearfully before
him, life may well seem a solemn mystery, for, whichever
way he turns, a wall of darkness rises before him;
but down upon the present, as through a skylight between
the shadows, falls a clear, still radiance, like beams
from an eye of blessing; and, within the circle of
that divine illumination, beauty and goodness, truth
and love, purity and cheerfulness blend like primal
colors into the clear harmony of light. The author
of Proverbial Philosophy has a passage not unworthy
of note in this connection, when he speaks of the
train which attends the just in heaven:—
“Also in the lengthening troop see I some clad
in robes of triumph,
Whose fair and sunny faces I have known and loved
on earth.
Welcome, ye glorified Loves, Graces, Sciences, and
Muses,
That, like Sisters of Charity, tended in this world’s
hospital;
Welcome, for verily I knew ye could not but be children
of the light;
Welcome, chiefly welcome, for I find I have friends
in heaven,
And some I have scarcely looked for; as thou, light-hearted
Mirth;
Thou, also, star-robed Urania; and thou with the curious
glass,
That rejoicest in tracking beauty where the eye was
too dull to note it.
And art thou, too, among the blessed, mild, much-injured
Poetry?
That quickenest with light and beauty the leaden face
of matter,
That not unheard, though silent, fillest earth’s
gardens with music,
And not unseen, though a spirit, dost look down upon
us from the stars.”
THE LIGHTING UP.
“He spak to the spynnsters
to spynnen it oute.”
Piers
ploughman.
This evening, the 20th of the ninth month, is the
time fixed upon for lighting the mills for night-labor;
and I have just returned from witnessing for the first
time the effect of the new illumination.
