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God of this universe, filled with wonders! Let me
look into my soul, and, collecting such powers as Thou hast endowed it
with, concentrate them for a few moments upon contemplations of thy works
and ways. The revolving earth will soon bear me in sight of the glorious
and glory-spreading sun, whose appearance will gild with beauty this
hemisphere now hurrying to meet his beams, and will rouse to life and
action all its creatures. The holy mountains, in their majesty and
greatness, imperishableness and soul-elevating beauty, earth’s best
types of the Great Maker, whose attributes language cannot utter! are
first to catch his beams, and, casting them in multiplied reflection upon
the mists which hang lovingly about their mighty waists, bid them hurry
forth in clouds of incense to join in the morning worship that all nature
is offering to Thee. From the mountain forests, ever green and ever
bright, now hidden in the restless depths of this mist ocean, a solemn
anthem of praise arises, as the wind steals gently through the thick-set
foliage of the unseen trees, stilling the heart of the listener, and
summoning all his thoughts to the homage of the Holy and Omnipresent One.
There let me stand in vivid imagination, and gaze and listen, wrapped in
pure and unforced, involuntary and delighted contemplation of the Great
Supreme. All his known works pass in grand procession before me: the
untracked though ever traversed realms of space, filled with the
operations of His almighty Will, upon the preconceived designs of His
infinite Mind;—the mighty worlds, too huge in magnitude, too great in
distance, too vast in operation for man’s conception or inspection, but
not too great for childlike obedience to the laws of Him who brought them
into being, and the little Earth my home, which I may examine more
closely, and without effort take in the views of its varied surface, its
oceans, rivers, mountains, valleys, plains. Here at last I rest—hence
flow the sources of my inquiries—here lies my field of knowledge; here
alone is my present sphere of action. All around me, whether animate or
inanimate, teems with life. I see creatures great and small inhabiting all
the elements about me, with forms, and habits, and necessities of infinite
variety; but, among them all, there is one alone capable of knowing all
the others, and of ruling over them, and more than this, of knowing Him
who made them, and who has thus endowed both himself and them. Let me,
then, turn to thee, my brother man: impart to me this knowledge, and let
me judge of its correctness. Tell me whence it came. Thou hast a
history—in this must be found a record of its first impartings; perhaps
men of superior powers, sages and philosophers of old, have discovered and
disseminated all that we know of the Great Unseen. Let me throw my mind
back through the periods that the light of history brings forth from the
darkness of the past, and, looking among the generations of men, find the
great minds, whose learning and acuteness have pierced the barriers of
sense and matter, and disclosed to the astonished world the nature and
attributes of God, and His paternal relationship to man.
I visit first the countries most famed of old for
learning; but their sages, among the greatest minds that have ever lived,
profound philosophers, engaged in disputations upon all the mysteries of
nature, are still, on this great theme, wandering in darkness and error,
and leading their weaker followers astray. This great knowledge, then, has
not flowed from them, nor has the unassisted mind of man in any age been
able to attain unto it.
Let all the nations now pass in review before my
mental vision, until I find which among them were the receptacles and
disseminators of this wondrous knowledge, and in what way they received
it.
Adown the stream of time, surviving the fall of
empires, resisting the influences of all revolutions, whether natural,
political, or religious; unexterminated by the torch and sword of
persecution, for ages incessantly and mercilessly wielded against them,
the Children of Israel miraculously hold on their venerable course. I see
them, from their first origin, in a simple, untaught shepherd, increasing,
spreading, penetrating into all countries, mingling with all nations, an
ever-dividing yet pure and unmingled stream. They bear aloft a sacred
scroll, written in characters known only to themselves, and those who have
learned of them, in a language now passed away from the mouths of men, but
by them fully comprehended—the language of all their communings
with God! for this is the nation that God has chosen to hold intercourse
with, and to teach unto the nations that knowledge which the mind of man,
alone, can arrive at.
Yes!
they bear it aloft; this scroll, its characters unfaded by time, unstained
by the rivers of blood which they have shed in its defence; nor has it
been injured by the mould of the dark places in which, for safety, they
have often been forced to hide it; and now in all the congregations of
Israel, on all their Sabbaths and holy days, they elevate it above the
heads of their people, who, with one consent, rise to gaze upon the sacred
record, exclaiming in their own language, with one shout of devotional
triumph, “This is the law which Moses gave to the Children of Israel. It
is the inheritance of the congregation of Jacob.” Abraham, Israel,
Moses—these are the names to which the world is indebted, and in this
sacred scroll men of all nations and languages learn why. I am one of this
Congregation of Jacob—one of the God-chosen. Therefore do I delight in
contemplations of the God of my fathers as seen in his works and ways; and
though but one among the feeble daughters of Israel, I yet hope to help in
rousing my people to a sense of their high privileges, and to that
enjoyment of God’s unfailing promises which, in their glorious
fulfilment, await but Obedience to His Word.
Oct.
28th,1845.
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