ist in
strength, where the situation is favourable as to solitude and as to
genial feelings, children have a specific power of contemplating the
truth, which departs as they enter the world. It is clear to me, that
children, upon elementary paths which require no knowledge of the world to
unravel, tread more firmly than men; have a more pathetic sense of the
beauty which lies in justice; and, according to the immortal ode of our
great laureate, [ode "On the Intimations of Immortality in Childhood,"] a
far closer communion with God. I, if you observe, do not much intermeddle
with religion, properly so called. My path lies on the interspace between
religion and philosophy, that connects them both. Yet here for once I
shall trespass on grounds not properly mine, and desire you to observe in
St Matthew, chap. xxi., and v. 15, _who_ were those that, crying in the
temple, made the first public recognition of Christianity. Then, if you
say, "Oh, but children echo what they hear, and are no independent
authorities!" I must request you to extend your reading into v. 16, where
you will find that the testimony of these children, as bearing an
_original_ value, was ratified by the highest testimony; and the
recognition of these children did itself receive a heavenly recognition.
And this could _not_ have been, unless there were children in Jerusalem
who saw into truth with a far sharper eye than Sanhedrims and Rabbis.

It is impossible, with respect to any memorable grief, that it can be
adequately exhibited so as to indicate the enormity of the convulsion
which really it caused, without viewing it under a variety of aspects--a
thing which is here almost necessary for the effect of proportion to what
follows: 1st, for instance, in its immediate pressure, so stunning and
confounding; 2dly, in its oscillations, as in its earlier agitations,
frantic with tumults, that borrow the wings of the winds; or in its
diseased impulses of sick languishing desire, through which sorrow
transforms itself to a sunny angel, that beckons us to a sweet repose.
These phases of revolving affection I have already sketched. And I shall
also sketch a third, _i. e._ where the affliction, seemingly hushing
itself to sleep, suddenly soars upwards again upon combining with
_another_ mode of sorrow; viz. anxiety without definite limits, and the
trouble of a reproaching conscience. As sometimes,[16] upon the English
lakes, waterfowl that have careered in the air