doors be both of the understanding and
the heart, and all the windows supposed to be blocked up against the
light. The soul, blind and deaf as it may often be, cannot always resist
the intimations all life long, day and night, forced upon it from the
outer world; its very necessities, nobler far than those of the body,
even when most degraded, importunate when denied their manna, are to it
oftentimes a silent or a loud revelation. Then, not to feel and think as
other beings do with "discourse of reason," is most hard and difficult
indeed, even for a short time, and on occasions of very inferior moment.
Being men, we are carried away, willing or unwilling, and often
unconsciously, by the great common instinct; we keep sailing with the
tide of humanity, whether in flow or ebb--fierce as demons and the sons
of perdition, if that be the temper of the congregating hour--mild and
meek as Pity, or the new-born babe, when the afflatus of some divine
sympathy has breathed through the multitude, nor one creature escaped
its influence, like a spring day that steals through a murmuring forest,
till not a single tree, even in the darkest nook, is without some touch
of the season's sunshine. Think, then, of one who would fain be an
Atheist, conversing with the "sound, healthy children of the God of
heaven!" To his reason, which is his solitary pride, arguments might in
vain be addressed, for he exults in being "an Intellectual All in All,"
and is a bold-browed sophist to daunt even the eyes of Truth--eyes which
can indeed "outstare the eagle" when their ken is directed to heaven,
but which are turned away in aversion from the human countenance that
would dare to deny God. Appeal not to the intellect of such a man, but
to his heart; and let not even that appeal be conveyed in any fixed form
of words--but let it be an appeal of the smiles and tears of
affectionate and loving lips and eyes--of common joys and common griefs,
whose contagion is often felt, beyond prevention or cure, where two or
three are gathered together--among families thinly sprinkled over the
wilderness, where, on God's own day, they repair to God's own house, a
lowly building on the brae, which the Creator of suns and systems
despiseth not, nor yet the beatings of the few contrite hearts therein
assembled to worship Him--in the cathedral's "long-drawn aisles and
fretted vaults"--in mighty multitudes all crowded in silence, as beneath
the shadow of a thunder-cloud, to