Sivut kuvina
PDF
ePub

The rivers, lakes, and ocean, all stood still,
And nothing stirr'd within their silent depths;
Ships, sailorless, lay rotting on the sea,

And their masts fell down piecemeal; as they dropp'd,
They slept on the abyss without a + surge.

The waves were dead; the tides were in their grave;
The moon, their mistress, had expired before;
The winds were wither'd in the stagnant air,
And the clouds perish'd. Darkness had no need
Of aid from them. She was the universe.

BYRON.

LESSON CXXXIII.

CHARACTER OF THE PURITANS.

1. THE Puritans were men, whose minds had drawn a peculiar character from the daily contemplation of superior beings and eternal interests. Not contented with acknowledging, in general terms, an over-ruling Providence, they habitually ascribed every event to the Great Being, for whose power nothing was too vast, for whose inspection nothing was too minute. To know him, to serve him, to enjoy him, was, with them, the great end of existence.

2. They rejected, with contempt, the ceremonious homage which other sects substituted for the pure worship of the soul. Instead of catching occasional glimpses of the deity through an obscuring vail, they aspired to gaze full on the intolerable brightness, and to commune with him, face to face. Hence originated their contempt for terrestrial distinctions. The difference between the greatest and meanest of mankind seemed to vanish, when compared with the boundless interval which separated the whole race from him on whom their eyes were constantly fixed. They recog nized no title to superiority, but his favor; and confident of that favor, they despised all the accomplishments and all the dignities" of the world.

3. If they were unacquainted with the works of philosophers and poets, they were deeply read in the oracles of God. If their names were not found in the registers of heralds, they felt assured that they were recorded in the Book of Life. If their steps were not accompanied by a splendid train of menials, legions of ministering angels had charge over them. Their palaces were houses not made with hands; their diadems, crowns of glory which should never fade away!

4. On the rich and the eloquent, on nobles and priests, they looked down with contempt: for they esteemed themselves rich

in a more precious treasure, and eloquent in a more sublime language; nobles by the right of an earlier creation, and priests by the imposition of a mightier hand. The very meanest of them was a being, to whose fate a mysterious and terrible importance belonged; on whose slightest action the spirits of light and darkness looked with anxious interest; who had been destined, before heaven and earth were created, to enjoy a felicity which should continue when heaven and earth should have passed away.

5. Events, which short-sighted politicians ascribed to earthly causes, had been ordained on his account. For his sake, empires had risen, and flourished, and decayed. For his sake, the Almighty had proclaimed his will by the pen of the evangelist, and by the harp of the prophet. He had been rescued, by no common deliverer, from the grasp of no common foe. He had been ransomed, by the sweat of no vulgar glory, by the blood of no earthly sacrifice. It was for him, that the sun had been darkened, that the rocks had been rent, that the dead had arisen, that all nature had shuddered at the sufferings of her expiring God!

+

[ocr errors]

6. Thus, the Puritan was made up of two different men,- -the one, all self-abasement, penitence, gratitude, passion; the other, proud, calm, inflexible, sagacious. He prostrated himself in the dust before his Maker; but he set his foot on the neck of his king. In his devotional retirement, he prayed with convulsions, and groans, and tears. He was half maddened by glorious or terrible illusions. He heard the lyres of angels, or the tempting whispers of fiends. He caught a gleam of the beatific vision, or waked screaming, from dreams of everlasting fire. But when he took his seat in the council, or girt on his sword for war, these tempestuous workings of the soul had left no perceptible trace behind them. People who saw nothing of the Puritans but their uncouth visages, and heard nothing from them but their groans and hymns, might laugh at them. But those had little reason to laugh, who encountered them in the hall of debate or in the field of battle.

7. The Puritans brought to civil and military affairs a coolness of judgment and an immutability of purpose, which some writers have thought inconsistent with their religious zeal, but which were, in fact, the necessary effects of it. The intensity of their feelings on one subject, had made them tranquil on every other. One overpowering sentiment had subjected to itself, pity, hatred, ambition, and fear. Death had lost its terrors; and pleasure, its charms. They had their smiles and their tears, their raptures and their sorrows, but not for the things of this world. Enthusiasm had made them stoics, had cleared their minds from every vulgar passion and prejudice, and raised them above the influence of danger and of corruption. It sometimes might lead them to pursue

unwise ends, but never to choose unwise means. They went through the world, crushing and trampling down oppression; mingling with human beings, but having neither part nor lot in human infirmities; insensible to fatigue, to pleasure, and to pain; not to be pierced by any weapon, not to be withstood by any

barrier.

8. Such, we believe, to have been the character of the Puritans. We perceive the absurdity of their manners; we dislike the gloom of their domestic habits; we acknowledge that the tone of their minds was often injured, by straining after things too high for mortal reach; and we know, that they too often fell into the vices of intolerance and extravagant austerity. Yet, when all circumstances are taken into consideration, we do not hesitate to pronounce them a brave, a wise, an honest, and a useful body.

EDINBURGH REVIEW.

LESSON CXXXIV.

THE MEMORY OF OUR FATHERS.

1. WE are called upon to cherish with high veneration and grateful recollections, the memory of our fathers. Both the ties of nature and the dictates of policy, demand this. And surely, no nation had ever less occasion to be ashamed of its ancestry, or more occasion for gratulation in that respect; for, while most nations trace their origin to barbarians, the foundations of our nation were laid by civilized men, by christians. Many of them were men of distinguished families, of powerful talents, of great learning and of pre-eminent wisdom, of decision of character and of most inflexible integrity. And yet not unfrequently, they have been treated as if they had no virtues; while their sins and follies, have been sedulously immortalized in satirical anecdote.

2. The influence of such treatment of our fathers is too manifest. It creates, and lets loose upon their institutions, the vandal spirit of innovation and overthrow; for after the memory of our fathers shall have been rendered contemptible, who will appreciate and sustain their institutions? The memory of our fathers, should be the watchword of liberty throughout the land; for, imperfect as they were, the world before had not seen their like, nor will it soon, we fear, behold their like again. Such models of moral excellence, such apostles of civil and religious liberty, such shades of the illustrious dead, looking down upon their descendants with approbation or reproof, according as they follow or depart from the good way, constitute a censorship inferior only to the eye of God; and to ridicule them, is national suicide.

3. The doctrines of our fathers have been represented as gloomy, superstitious, severe, irrational, and of a licentious tendency. But when other systems shall have produced a piety as devoted, a morality as pure, a patriotism as disinterested, and a state of society as happy, as have prevailed where their doctrines have been most prevalent, it may be in season to seek an answer to this objection.

4. The persecutions instituted by our fathers, have been the occasion of ceaseless tobloquy upon their fair fame. And truly, it was a fault of no ordinary magnitude, that sometimes they did persecute. But let him whose ancestors were not ten times more guilty, cast the first stone, and the ashes of our fathers will no more be disturbed. Theirs was the fault of the age, and it will be easy to show, that no class of men had, at that time, approximated so nearly to just apprehensions of religious liberty; and that it is to them that the world is now indebted, for the more just and definite views which now prevail.

5. The superstition and bigotry of our fathers, are themes on which some of their descendants, themselves far enough from superstition, if not from bigotry, have delighted to dwell. But when we look abroad, and behold the condition of the world, compared with the condition of New England, we may justly exclaim, "Would to God that the ancestors of all the nations, had been not only almost, but altogether such bigots as our fathers were." DR. BEECHER.

LESSON CX X X V.

LANDING OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS.

1. THE breaking waves dashed high

On a stern and rock-bound coast,
And the woods against a stormy sky,
Their giant branches tossed;

2. And the heavy night hung dark,

The hills and waters o'er,

When a band of exiles +moored their bark
On the wild New England shore.

3. Not as the conqueror comes,
They, the true-hearted, came,

Not with the roll of the stirring drums,
And the trumpet that sings of fame.

4. Not as the flying come,

In silence, and in fear;

They shook the depths of the desert's gloom
With their hymns of lofty cheer.

5. Amid the storm they sang,

And the stars heard, and the sea;

And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang
To the anthem of the free

6. The ocean eagle soared

From his nest by the white wave s foam,
And the rocking pines of the forest roared;
This was their welcome home.

7. There were men with hoary hair,
Amid that pilgrim band,

Why had they come to wither there,
Away from their childhood's land?

8. There was woman's fearless eye,
Lit by her deep love's truth;
There was manhood's brow, serenely high,
And the fiery heart of youth.

9. What sought they thus afar?
Bright jewels of the mine?

The wealth of seas, the spoils of war?
They sought a faith's pure shrine!

10. Ay, call it holy ground,

The soil where first they trod!

They have left unstained what there they found!

Freedom to worship God!

HEMANS.

LESSON CXXXVI.

SONG OF EMIGRATION.

1. THERE was heard a song on the chiming sea,
A mingled breathing of grief and glee;
Man's voice unbroken by sighs was there,
Filling with triumph the sunny air;

Of fresh, green lands, and of pastures new,
It sang, while the bark through the surges flew.
But ever and anon

A murmur of farewell,

+

Told by its plaintive tone,

That from woman's lip it fell.

2. "Away, away o'er the foaming main!" This was the free and joyous strain

« EdellinenJatka »