Ministering spirits.
What then? May we look among the band of ministering spirits for our own departed ones? Whom would God be more likely to send us? Have we in heaven a friend who knew us to the heart’s core? a friend to whom we have unfolded our soul in its most secret recesses? to whom we have confessed our weaknesses and deplored our griefs? If we areto have a ministering spirit, who better adapted? Have we not memories which correspond to such a belief? When our soul has been cast down, has never an invisible voice whispered, “There is lifting up”? Have not gales and breezes of sweet and healing thought been wafted over us, as if an angel had shaken from his wings the odors of paradise? Many a one, we are confident, can remember such things,—and whence come they? Why do the children of the pious mother, whose grave has grown green and smooth with years, seem often to walk through perils and dangers fearful and imminent as the crossing of Mohammed’s fiery gulf on the edge of a drawn sword, yet walk unhurt? Ah! could we see that attendant form, that face where the angel conceals not the mother, our question would be answered.
Influence of a mother’s prayer.
Something there is in the voice of real prayer that thrills a child’s heart, even before he understands it; the holy tones are a kind of heavenly music, and far-off in distant years, the callous and worldly man often thrills to his heart’s core, when some turn of life recalls to him his mother’s prayer.
Taught by suffering.
It sometimes seems to take a stab, a thrust, a wound, to open in some heartsthe capacity of deep feeling and deep thought. There are things taught by suffering that can be taught in no other way. By suffering sometimes is wrought out in a person the power of loving and of appreciating love. During the first year, Lillie had often seemed to herself in a sort of wild, chaotic state. The coming in of a strange, new, spiritual life was something so inexplicable to her that it agitated and distressed her; and sometimes, when she appeared more petulant and fretful than usual, it was only the stir and vibration on her weak nerves of new feelings, which she wanted the power to express. These emotions at first were painful to her. She felt weak, miserable, and good-for-nothing. It seemed to her that her whole life had been a wretched cheat, and that she had ill repaid the devotion of her husband. At first these thoughts only made her bitter and angry; and she contended against them. But, as she sank from day to day, and grew weaker and weaker, she grew more gentle; and a better spirit seemed to enter into her.
The object of life.
“The great object of life is not happiness; and when we have lost our own personal happiness, we have not lost all that life is worth living for. No, John, the very best of life often lies beyond that. When we have learned to let ourselves go, then we may find that there is a better, a nobler, and a truer life for us.” ... “If we contend with, and fly from our duties, simply because they gall us and burdenus, we go against everything; but if we take them up bravely, then everything goes with us. God and good angels and good men and all good influences are working with us when we are working for the right. And in this way, John, you may come to happiness; or, if you do not come to personal happiness, you may come to something higher and better. You know that you think it nobler to be an honest man than a rich man; and I am sure that you will think it better to be a good man than to be a happy one.”
Self-ignorance.
It is astonishing how blindly people sometimes go on as to the character of their own conduct, till suddenly, like a torch in a dark place, the light of another person’s opinion is thrown in upon them, and they begin to judge themselves under the quickening influence of another person’s moral magnetism. Then, indeed, it often happens that the graves give up their dead, and that there is a sort of interior resurrection and judgment.
Sympathy.
When we are feeling with the nerves of some one else, we notice every roughness and inconvenience.
Clairvoyance.
A terrible sort of clairvoyance that seems to beset very sincere people, and makes them sensitive to the presence of anything unreal or untrue.
Unacknowledged motives.
No, she did not say it. It would be well for us all if wedidput into words, plain and explicit, many instinctive resolves and purposes that arise in our hearts, and which, for want of being so expressed, influence us undetected and unchallenged. If we would say out boldly, “I don’t care for right or wrong, or good or evil, or anybody’s rights or anybody’s happiness, or the general good, or God himself,—all I care for, or feel the least interest in, is to have a good time myself, and I mean to do it, come what may,”—we should be only expressing a feeling which often lies in the dark back-room of the human heart; and saying it might alarm us from the drugged sleep of life. It might rouse us to shake off the slow, creeping paralysis of selfishness and sin before it is forever too late.
Aspiration.
That noble discontent that rises to aspiration for higher things.
The lesson of faith.
“Well, daughter,” said the deacon, “it’s a pity we should go through all we do in this world and not learn anything by it. I hope the Lord has taught me not to worry, butjust do my best, and leave myself and everything else in his hands. We can’t help ourselves,—we can’t make one hair white or black. Why should we wear our lives out fretting? If I’d a knownthatyears ago, it would a been better for us all.”
“All for the best.”
“She’s allers sayin’ things is for the best, maybe she’ll come to think so about this,—folks gen’ally does when they can’t help themselves.”
Sympathy.
Eyes that have never wept cannot comprehend sorrow.
Trust.
“Leave it!”
These were words often in that woman’s mouth, and they expressed that habit of her life which made her victorious over all troubles, that habit of trust in the Infinite Will that actually could and didleaveevery accomplished event in his hand without murmur and without conflict.
Power of sympathy.
Such is the wonderful power of human sympathy that the discovery even of the existence of a soul capable of understanding our inner life often operates as a perfect charm; every thought and feeling and aspiration carries with it a new value, from the interwoven consciousnessthat attends it, of the worth it would bear to that other mind; so that, while that person lives, our existence is doubled in value, even though oceans divide us.
Difficulty of inspiring others.
But he soon discovered, what every earnest soul learns who has been baptized into a sense of things invisible, how utterly powerless and inert any mortal man is to inspire others with his own insights and convictions. With bitter discouragement and chagrin, he saw that the spiritual man must forever lift the dead weight of all the indolence and indifference and animal sensuality that surround him,—that the curse of Cassandra is upon him, forever to burn and writhe under awful visions of truths which no one around him will regard.
Good wherever we seek it.
As a bee can extract pure honey from the blossoms of some plants whose leaves are poisonous, so some souls can nourish themselves only with the holier and more ethereal parts of popular belief.
Naïveté.
“Blessed are the flowers of God that grow in cool solitudes, and have never been profaned by the hot sun and dust of this world.”
Sorrow a preparation for love.
Never does love strike so deep and immediate a root as in a sorrowful and desolated nature; there it has nothing to dispute the soil, and soon fills it with its interlacing fibre.
Sunshine of the heart.
“He is happy, like the birds,” said Agnes, “because he flies near heaven.”
Dreams.
Dreams are the hushing of the bodily senses, that the eyes of the spirit may open.
Lost innocence irrecoverable.
When a man has once lost that unconscious soul-purity which exists in a mind unscathed by the fires of passion, no after-tears can weep it back again. No penance, no prayer, no anguish of remorse, can give back the simplicity of a soul that has never been stained.
The strongest passions.
No passions are deeper in their hold, more pervading and more vital to the whole human being, than those that make their first entrance through the higher nature, and, beginning with a religious and poetic ideality, gradually work their way through the whole fabric of the human existence. From grosser passions, whose roots lie in the senses, there is always a refuge in man’s loftier nature. He can cast them aside with contempt, and leave them as one whose lower story is flooded can remove to a higher loft, and live serenely with a purer air and wider prospect. But to love that is born of ideality, of intellectual sympathy, of harmonies of the spiritual and immortal nature, of the very poetry and purity of the soul, if it be placed where reason and religion forbid its exercise and expression, what refuge but the grave,—whathope but that wide eternity where all human barriers fall, all human relations end, and love ceases to be a crime.
Agony in the voice.
It is singular how the dumb, imprisoned soul, locked within the walls of the body, sometimes gives such a piercing power to the tones of the voice during the access of a great agony. The effect is entirely involuntary and often against the most strenuous opposition of the will; but one sometimes hears another reading or repeating words with an intense vitality, a living force, which tells of some inward anguish or conflict of which the language itself gives no expression.
A sympathetic God.
The great Hearer of Prayer regards each heart in its own scope of vision, and helps not less the mistaken than the enlightened distress. And for that matter, who is enlightened? who carries to God’s throne a trouble or a temptation in which there isnotsomewhere a misconception or a mistake?
Transient uplifting.
We hold it better to have even transient upliftings of the nobler and more devout element of man’s nature than never to have any at all, and that he who goes on in worldly and sordid courses, without ever a spark of religious enthusiasm or a throb of aspiration, is less of a man than he who sometimes soars heavenward, though his wings be weak and he fall again.
Coincidence.
When a man has a sensitive or sore spot in his heart, from the pain of which he would gladly flee to the ends of the earth, it is marvellous what coincidences of events will be found to press upon it wherever he may go.
Silence of deep emotion.
They both sat awhile in that kind of quietude which often falls between two who have stirred some deep fountain of emotion.
Innocence.
There is something pleading and pitiful in the simplicity of perfect ignorance,—a rare and delicate beauty in its freshness, like the morning-glory cup, which, once withered by the heat, no second morning can restore.
World conflicts.
“This is such a beautiful world,” said Agnes, “who would think it would be such a hard one to live in?—such battles and conflicts as people have here!”
Nervous sensibility.
As one looking through a prism sees a fine bordering of rainbow on every object, so he beheld a glorified world. His former self seemed to him something forever past and gone. He looked at himself as at another person, who had sinned and suffered, and was now resting in beatified repose; and he fondly thought all this was firm reality, and believed that he was now proof against all earthly impressions,able to hear and to judge with the dispassionate calmness of a disembodied spirit. He did not know that this high-strung calmness, this fine clearness, were only the most intense forms of nervous sensibility, and as vividly susceptible to every mortal impression as is the vitalized chemical plate to the least action of the sun’s rays.
Sorrow an educator.
Any mind that is capable of areal sorrowis capable of good.
Individuality.
Now, the reflections of two men, sitting side by side, are a curious thing,—seated on the same seat, having the same eyes, ears, hands, and organs of all sorts, and having pass before their eyes the same objects,—it is wonderful what a variety we shall find in these same reflections.
Inspiration.
By what strange law of mind is it that an idea, long overlooked, and trodden under foot as a useless stone, suddenly sparkles out in new light, as a discovered diamond.
Power of mind over body.
Sublime is the dominion of the mind over the body, that, for a time, can make flesh and nerve impregnable, and string the sinews like steel, so that the weak become so mighty.
True heroism.
Have not many of us, in the weary way of life, felt, in some hours, how far easier it were to die than to live?
The martyr, when faced even by a death of bodily anguish and horror, finds in the very terror of his doom a strong stimulant and tonic. There is a vivid excitement, a thrill and fervor, which may carry through any crisis of suffering that is the birth-hour of eternal glory and rest.
But to live,—to wear on, day after day, of mean, bitter, low, harassing servitude, every nerve dampened and depressed, every power of feeling gradually smothered,—this long and wasting heart martyrdom, this slow, daily bleeding away of the inward life, drop by drop, hour after hour,—this is the true searching test of what there may be in man or woman.
Moral atmosphere.
An atmosphere of sympathetic influence encircles every human being; and the man or woman whofeelsstrongly, healthily, and justly, on the great interests of humanity, is a constant benefactor to the human race.
Self-sacrifice.
There are in this world blessed souls, whose sorrows all spring up into joys for others; whose earthly hopes, laid in the grave with many tears, are the seed from which spring healing flowers and balm for the desolate and the distressed.
Strength of despair.
When a heavy weight presses the soul to the lowest level at which enduranceis possible, there is an instant and desperate effort of every physical and moral nerve to throw off the weight; and hence the heaviest anguish often precedes a return tide of joy and courage.
Self-forgetfulness.
“Thee uses thyself only to learn how to love neighbor, Ruth,” said Simeon, looking with a beaming face on Ruth.
Natural religious sensibility.
He had one of those natures which could better and more clearly conceive of religious things from its own perceptions and instincts than many a matter-of-fact and practical Christian. The gift to appreciate and the sense to feel the finer shades and relations of moral things often seems an attribute of those whose whole life shows a careless disregard of them. Hence, Moore, Byron, Goethe, often speak words more wisely descriptive of the true religious sentiment, than another man whose whole life is governed by it. In such minds, disregard of religion is a more fearful treason,—a more deadly sin.
Superstition.
No one is so thoroughly superstitious as the godless man. The Christian is composed by the belief of a wise, all-ruling Father, whose presence fills the void unknown with light and order; but to the man who has dethroned God, the spirit-land is, indeed, in the words of the Hebrew poet, “a land of darkness and the shadow of death,” without any order, where thelight is as darkness. Life and death to him are haunted grounds, filled with goblin forms of vague and shadowy dread.
The human soul.
After all, let a man take what pains he may to hush it down, a human soul is an awful ghostly, unquiet possession for a bad man to have. Who knows the metes and bounds of it? Who knows all its awful perhapses,—those shudderings and tremblings which it can no more live down than it can outlive its own eternity! What a fool is he who locks his door to keep out spirits, who has in his own bosom a spirit he dares not meet alone,—whose voice, smothered far down, and piled over with mountains of earthliness, is yet like the forewarning trumpet of doom!
Practical and ideal.
The divine part of man is often shame-faced and self-distrustful, ill at home in this world, and standing in awe of nothing so much as what is called common sense; and yet common sense very often, by its own keenness, is able to see that these unavailable currencies of another’s mind are of more worth, if the world only knew it, than the ready coin of its own; and so the practical and the ideal nature are drawn together.
Inexplicable preferences.
Sensitive people never like the fatigue of justifying their instincts. Nothing, in fact, is less capable of being justified by technical reasons than those fine insights into character whereupon affection is built. We have all had experience of preferences which would not follow the most exactly ascertained catalogue of virtues, and would be made captive where there was very little to be said in justification of the captivity.
Congeniality of opposites.
“Why, surely,” said Anne, “one wants one’s friends to be congenial, I should think.”
“So we do; and there is nothing in the world so congenial as differences. To be sure, the differences must be harmonious. In music, now, for instance, one doesn’t want a repetition of the same notes, but differing notes that chord. Nay, even discords are indispensable to complete harmony. Now, Nina has just that difference from me which chords with me; and all our little quarrels—for we have had a good many, and I dare say shall have more—are only a sort of chromatic passages,—discords of the seventh, leading into harmony. My life is inward, theorizing, self-absorbed. I am hypochondriac, often morbid. The vivacity and acuteness of her outer life makes her just what I need. She wakens, she rouses, and keeps me in play; and her quick instincts are often more than a match for my reason.”
Proof of heaven.
“How do you know there is any heaven, anyhow?”
“Know it?” said Milly, her eyes kindling, and striking her staff on the ground, “Know it? I know it by dehankering arter itI got in here;” giving her broad chest a blow which made it resound like a barrel. “De Lord knowed what he was ’bout when he made us. When he made babies rootin’ ’round, wid der poor little mouths open, he made milk, and de mammies for ’em too. Chile, we’s nothing but great babies, dat ain’t got our eyes open,—rootin’ ’round an’ ’round; but de Father ’ll feed us yet—He will so.”
Power of song.
As oil will find its way into crevices where water cannot penetrate, so song will find its way where speech can no longer enter.
Night resolutions.
What we have thought and said under the august presence of witnessing stars, or beneath the holy shadows of moonlight, seems with the dry, hot heat of next day’s sun to take wings, and rise to heaven with the night’s clear drops. If all the prayers and good resolutions which are laid down on sleeping pillows could be found there on awaking, the world would be better than it is.
Transition periods.
There are times in life when the soul, like a half-grown climbing vine, hangshovering tremulously, stretching out its tendrils for something to ascend by. Such are generally the great transition periods of life, when we are passing from the ideas and conditions of one stage of existence to those of another. Such times are most favorable for the presentation of the higher truths of religion.
Connection with the spirit world.
This life may truly be called a haunted house, built as it is on the very confines of the land of darkness and the shadow of death. A thousand living fibres connect us with the unknown and unseen state; and the strongest hearts, which never stand still for any mortal terror, have sometimes hushed their very beating at a breath of a whisper from within the veil. Perhaps the most resolute unbeliever in spiritual things has hours of which he would be ashamed to tell, when he, too, yields to the powers of those awful affinities which bind us to that unknown realm.
Suffering in silence.
It is the last triumph of affection and magnanimity, when a loving heart can respect the suffering silence of its beloved, and allow that lonely liberty in which only some natures can find comfort.
Joy in endurance.
And, as he sang and prayed, that strange joy arose within him, which, like the sweetness of night flowers, is born of darkness and tribulation. The soul has in itsomewhat of the divine, in that it can have joy in endurance beyond the joy of indulgence.
They mistake who suppose that the highest happiness lies in wishes accomplished—in prosperity, wealth, favor, and success. There has been a joy in dungeons and on racks passing the joy of harvest. A joy strange and solemn, mysterious even to its possessor. A white stone dropped from that signet ring, peace, which a dying Saviour took from his own bosom, and bequeathed to those who endure the cross, despising the shame.
Inward peace.
How natural it is to say of some place sheltered, simple, cool, and retired, here one might find peace, as if peace came from without, and not from within. In the shadiest and stillest places may be the most turbulent hearts, and there are hearts which, through the busiest scenes, carry with them unchanging peace.
Grace in affliction.
I have read of Alpine flowers leaning their cheeks on the snow. I wonder if any flowers grow near enough to that snow to touch it. I mean to go and see. So I went; there, sure enough, my little fringed purple bell, to which I had give the name of “suspirium,” was growing, not only close to the snow but in it.
Thus God’s grace, shining steadily on thewaste places of the human heart, brings up heavenward sighings and aspirations, which pierce through the cold snows of affliction, and tell that there is yet life beneath.
God as an artist.
I was glad to walk on alone: for the scenery was so wonderful that human sympathy and communion seemed to be out of the question. The effect of such scenery to our generally sleeping and drowsy souls, bound with a double chain of earthliness and sin, is like the electric touch of the angel on Peter, bound and sleeping. They make us realize that we were not only made to commune with God, but also what a God He is with whom we may commune. We talk of poetry, we talk of painting, we go to the ends of the earth to see the artists and great men of this world; but what a poet, what an artist, is God! Truly said Michel Angelo, “The true painting is only a copy of the divine perfections—a shadow of his pencil.”
Soul-striving.
The human soul seems to me an imprisoned essence, striving after somewhat divine. There is strength in it, as of suffocated flame, finding vent now through poetry, now in painting, now in music, sculpture, or architecture; various are the crevices and fissures, but the flame is one.
Shadow.
What a curious kind of thing shadow is,—that invisible veil, falling so evenly and solightly over all things, bringing with it such thoughts of calmness and rest. I wonder the old Greeks did not build temples to Shadow, and call her the sister of Thought and Peace. The Hebrew writers speak of the “overshadowing of the Almighty;” they call his protection “the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.” Even as the shadow of Mont Blanc falls like a Sabbath across this valley, so falls the sense of his presence across our weary life-road.
Heimweh.
Why? why this veil of dim and indefinable anguish at sight of whatever is most fair, at hearing whatever is most lovely? Is it the exiled spirit, yearning for its own? Is it the captive, to whom the ray of heaven’s own glory comes through the crevice of his dungeon wall?
Seeing and feeling.
It is not enough to open one’s eyes on scenes; one must be able to be “en rapport” with them. Just so in the spiritual world, we sometimesseegreat truths,—see that God is beautiful and surpassingly lovely; but at other times wefeelboth nature and God, and O, how differentseeingandfeeling!
Longing for love in the unlovely.
There are hard, sinful, unlovely souls, who yet long to be loved, who sigh in their dark prison for that tenderness,that devotion, of which they are consciously unworthy. Love might redeem them; but who can love them? There is a fable of a prince, doomed by a cruel enchanter to wear a loathsome, bestial form, till some fair woman should redeem him by the transforming kiss of love. The fable is a parable of the experience of many a lost human soul....
Who can read the awful mysteries of a single soul? We see human beings, hard, harsh, earthly, and apparently without an aspiration for anything high and holy; but let us never say that there is not far down in the depths of any soul a smothered aspiration, a dumb, repressed desire to be something higher and purer, to attain the perfectness to which God calls it.
Seeing the bright side.
“She shall be called little Pussy Willow, and I shall give her the gift ofalways seeing the bright side of everything. That gift will be more to her than beauty or riches or honors. It is not so much matter what color one’s eyes are as what one sees with them. There is a bright side to everything, if people only knew it, and the best eyes are those which are always able to see this bright side.”
Reaction of harshness.
A conscientious person should beware of getting into a passion, for every sharp word one speaks comes back and lodges like a sliver in one’s own heart; and such slivers hurt us worse than they ever can any one else.
Man’s childish impatience.
Ah, the child is father of the man! when he gets older he will have the great toys of which these are emblems; he will believe in what he sees and touches,—in house, land, railroad stock,—he will believe in these earnestly and really, and in his eternal manhood nominally and partially. And when his father’s messengers meet him, and face him about, and take him off his darling pursuits, and sweep his big ships into the fire, and crush his full-grown cars, then the grown man will complain and murmur, and wonder as the little man does now. The Father wants the future, the Child the present, all through life, till death makes the child a man.
Discipline of patience.
The moral discipline of bearing with evil patiently is a great deal better and more ennobling than the most vigorous assertion of one’s personal rights.
Ennobling power of sorrow.
When we look at the apparent recklessness with which great sorrows seem to be distributed among the children of the earth, there is no way to keep our faith in a Fatherly love, except to recognize how invariably the sorrows that spring from love are a means of enlarging and dignifying a human being. Nothing great or good comes without birth-pangs, and in just the proportion that natures grow more noble their capacities of suffering increase.
Line between right and wrong.
The line between right and wrong seems always so indefinite, like the line between any two colors of the prism; it is hard to say just where one ends and another begins.
Doubt.
“Doubt is very well as a sort of constitutional crisis in the beginning of one’s life; but if it runs on and gets to be chronic it breaks a fellow up, and makes him morally spindling and sickly. Men thatdoanything in the world must be men of strong convictions; it won’t do to go through life like a hen, craw-crawing and lifting up one foot, not knowing where to set it down next.”
Friends.
“I don’t think,” said she, “you should say ‘make’ friends,—friends arediscovered, rather than made. There are people who are in their own nature friends, only they don’t know each other; but certain things, like poetry, music,and painting, are like the free-masons’ signs,—they reveal the initiated to each other.”
Forgiveness of friends.
“Yes,” said Harry, “forgiveness of enemies used to be theultima thuleof virtue; but I rather think it will have to be forgiveness of friends. I call the man a perfect Christian that can always forgive his friends.”
Altruism.
Do not our failures and mistakes often come from discouragement? Does not every human being need a believing second self, whose support and approbation shall reinforce one’s failing courage? The saddest hours of life are when we doubt ourselves. To sensitive, excitable people, who expend nervous energy freely, must come many such low tides. “Am I really a miserable failure,—a poor, good-for-nothing, abortive attempt?” In such crises we need another self to restore our equilibrium.
Reproach.
The agony of his self-reproach and despair had been doubled by the reproaches and expostulations of many of his own family friends, who poured upon bare nerves the nitric acid of reproach.
Help from work.
Something definite to do is, in some crises, a far better medicine for a sicksoul than any amount of meditation and prayer. One step fairly taken in a right direction goes farther than any amount of agonized back-looking.
Praise and blame.
Praise is sunshine; it warms, it inspires, it promotes growth: blame and rebuke are rain and hail; they beat down and bedraggle, even though they may at times be necessary.
God working through man.
The invisible Christ must be made known through human eyes; He must speak though a voice of earthly love, and a human hand inspired by his spirit must be reached forth to save.
Inner life.
The external life is positive, visible, definable; easily made the subject of conversation. The inner life is shy, retiring, most difficult to be expressed in words, often inexplicable, even to the subject of it, yet no less a positive reality than the outward.
Peace through suffering.
For not alone in those old Eastern regionsAre Christ’s beloved ones tried by cross and chain;In many a house are his elect ones hidden,His martyrs suffering in their patient pain.The rack, the cross, life’s weary wrench of woe,The world sees not, as slow, from day to day,In calm, unspoken patience, sadly still,The loving spirit bleeds itself away;But there are hours, when from the heavens unfoldingCome down the angels with the glad release,And we look upward, to behold in gloryOur suffering loved ones borne away to peace.
For not alone in those old Eastern regionsAre Christ’s beloved ones tried by cross and chain;In many a house are his elect ones hidden,His martyrs suffering in their patient pain.The rack, the cross, life’s weary wrench of woe,The world sees not, as slow, from day to day,In calm, unspoken patience, sadly still,The loving spirit bleeds itself away;But there are hours, when from the heavens unfoldingCome down the angels with the glad release,And we look upward, to behold in gloryOur suffering loved ones borne away to peace.
For not alone in those old Eastern regionsAre Christ’s beloved ones tried by cross and chain;In many a house are his elect ones hidden,His martyrs suffering in their patient pain.The rack, the cross, life’s weary wrench of woe,The world sees not, as slow, from day to day,In calm, unspoken patience, sadly still,The loving spirit bleeds itself away;But there are hours, when from the heavens unfoldingCome down the angels with the glad release,And we look upward, to behold in gloryOur suffering loved ones borne away to peace.
For not alone in those old Eastern regions
Are Christ’s beloved ones tried by cross and chain;
In many a house are his elect ones hidden,
His martyrs suffering in their patient pain.
The rack, the cross, life’s weary wrench of woe,
The world sees not, as slow, from day to day,
In calm, unspoken patience, sadly still,
The loving spirit bleeds itself away;
But there are hours, when from the heavens unfolding
Come down the angels with the glad release,
And we look upward, to behold in glory
Our suffering loved ones borne away to peace.
The spirit within.
As some rare perfume in a vase of clayPervades it with a fragrance not its own,So, when Thou dwellest in a mortal soul,All heaven’s own sweetness seems around it thrown.
As some rare perfume in a vase of clayPervades it with a fragrance not its own,So, when Thou dwellest in a mortal soul,All heaven’s own sweetness seems around it thrown.
As some rare perfume in a vase of clayPervades it with a fragrance not its own,So, when Thou dwellest in a mortal soul,All heaven’s own sweetness seems around it thrown.
As some rare perfume in a vase of clay
Pervades it with a fragrance not its own,
So, when Thou dwellest in a mortal soul,
All heaven’s own sweetness seems around it thrown.
The calm of God’s love.
When winds are raging o’er the upper ocean,And billows wild contend with angry roar,’Tis said, far down beneath the wild commotion,That peaceful stillness reigneth evermore.Far, far beneath, the noise of tempest dieth,And silver waves chime ever peacefully;And no rude storm, how fierce soe’er he flieth,Disturbs the Sabbath of that deeper sea.So to the soul that knows thy love, O Purest,There is a temple peaceful evermore!And all the babble of life’s angry voicesDie in hushed stillness at its sacred door.
When winds are raging o’er the upper ocean,And billows wild contend with angry roar,’Tis said, far down beneath the wild commotion,That peaceful stillness reigneth evermore.Far, far beneath, the noise of tempest dieth,And silver waves chime ever peacefully;And no rude storm, how fierce soe’er he flieth,Disturbs the Sabbath of that deeper sea.So to the soul that knows thy love, O Purest,There is a temple peaceful evermore!And all the babble of life’s angry voicesDie in hushed stillness at its sacred door.
When winds are raging o’er the upper ocean,And billows wild contend with angry roar,’Tis said, far down beneath the wild commotion,That peaceful stillness reigneth evermore.Far, far beneath, the noise of tempest dieth,And silver waves chime ever peacefully;And no rude storm, how fierce soe’er he flieth,Disturbs the Sabbath of that deeper sea.So to the soul that knows thy love, O Purest,There is a temple peaceful evermore!And all the babble of life’s angry voicesDie in hushed stillness at its sacred door.
When winds are raging o’er the upper ocean,
And billows wild contend with angry roar,
’Tis said, far down beneath the wild commotion,
That peaceful stillness reigneth evermore.
Far, far beneath, the noise of tempest dieth,
And silver waves chime ever peacefully;
And no rude storm, how fierce soe’er he flieth,
Disturbs the Sabbath of that deeper sea.
So to the soul that knows thy love, O Purest,
There is a temple peaceful evermore!
And all the babble of life’s angry voices
Die in hushed stillness at its sacred door.
God’s comfort.
Think not, when the wailing winds of autumnDrive the shivering leaflets from the trees,—Think not all is over: spring returneth;Buds and leaves and blossoms thou shalt see.Think not, when thy heart is waste and dreary,When thy cherished hopes lie chill and sere,—Think not all is over: God still loveth;He will wipe away thy every tear.
Think not, when the wailing winds of autumnDrive the shivering leaflets from the trees,—Think not all is over: spring returneth;Buds and leaves and blossoms thou shalt see.Think not, when thy heart is waste and dreary,When thy cherished hopes lie chill and sere,—Think not all is over: God still loveth;He will wipe away thy every tear.
Think not, when the wailing winds of autumnDrive the shivering leaflets from the trees,—Think not all is over: spring returneth;Buds and leaves and blossoms thou shalt see.Think not, when thy heart is waste and dreary,When thy cherished hopes lie chill and sere,—Think not all is over: God still loveth;He will wipe away thy every tear.
Think not, when the wailing winds of autumn
Drive the shivering leaflets from the trees,—
Think not all is over: spring returneth;
Buds and leaves and blossoms thou shalt see.
Think not, when thy heart is waste and dreary,
When thy cherished hopes lie chill and sere,—
Think not all is over: God still loveth;
He will wipe away thy every tear.