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To The Editor Of The Occident.
Reverend Sir:
Permit an occasional, and very humble contributor to
your pages, to transfer to them some most beautiful and excellent lines,
which may possibly not have met the eyes of many of your readers; and a
few reflections occasioned by the perusal of them. In the poor judgment of
your correspondent, these lines are well calculated by their deep and
tender sympathy, and their soul-strengthening suggestions, to encourage
the most desponding to aspire after the attainment of that “true
greatness” which is so forcibly, yet tenderly, set forth in them; and
therefore, though not of Jewish origin, may not be thought unsuitable to
appear in such a work as your “Occident.”
Accept, Reverend Sir, the best wishes for your health
and general welfare, of one to whom you have shown much kindness, and who,
to avoid what might now, perhaps, have the appearance of mock-modesty,
reluctantly retains her former signature.
An American Jewess.
Thoughts Suggested By The Perusal Of The
Following Lines, Entitled “True Greatness.”
“Ay, men may boast of conquerors,
and tell
Of trophies that adorned a Caesar’s car,
Spreading his glory to the world afar,
Until his name become a mighty spell
To wake the hearts of nations:—It is well
That souls should thus be roused; but are there not
Far nobler triumphs in the humble lot
Of him who turns, when passion’s hosts rebel,
Undaunted to the conflict? then the heart
Against itself in warfare must arise,
While one by one the joys of life depart;
And e’en the hope that nerved the spirit dies:
Yet not to him are earthly honours given.
Enough if conquest win th’ approving smile of Heaven.”
The smile of Heaven! what is it? Divest
it of all figure, and its plain meaning is the approbation of God. It is
not all poetry and imagination, this “smile of Heaven.” He who bravely
fights for it in the unseen and noiseless battle-fields of his spirit’s
daily life, must be under a thorough conviction that what he contends for
is not only real and attainable, but is worth all the sufferings,
the combats, the privations that he may be called upon to encounter,
without the hope of sympathy or fame, in his struggles for this great and
single object,—the approbation of God! In this battle-field
woman, too, may (and perhaps most often does) join the ranks; and with
true heroism and exhaustless, because faith-founded endurance,
self-sacrifice, and perseverance, devote the treasures of her life to the
true service of her Maker.
Most of us have but an indistinct idea
of the full meaning of these words, the approbation of God. Let us study it out and bring it clearly before us.
If we firmly believe that the
approbation of God is an attainable object, we must as firmly believe that
God, yes, the Great, Omnipotent, though Invisible Being, who gave us life,
and endowed us with all these faculties of mind and heart, which we
discover within us, who made us susceptible of enjoyments, and subject to
trials of which these faculties are alike the agents; is the constant and
only judge and witness of our real life. If this be not so, we can neither
hope for His approbation, nor fear His displeasure. If He is regardless of
the existence of the humblest individual, unobservant of his actions, or
unaware of their motives, it follows that there can be no connexion between
any man and his Maker, and God’s law. His promised blessings and His
threatened curses are as unreal as if they had never been revealed, are
vain and empty words. God must see and know each one at all tunes, or He
can neither approve and bless, nor disapprove and denounce punishment
against the offender. That grand peculiar, majestic attribute, His justice,
disappears entirely.
The words, the approbation of God,
include, then, an unrestrained acknowledgment of His existence, of His
omnipresence, of His omniscience, and of His unerring justice and
condescending mercy. We may ponder upon this as deeply as our powers will
enable us to penetrate. This great fact will stand the closest scrutiny,
the result of such meditations to each individual mind will be this, and
this only. “Yes! the invisible God is with me always; he knows me.
‘He understandeth my thought afar off.’”
Let it be our constant endeavour to
realize this great, strengthening, restraining, and consoling truth: and
the living and earnest hope for the approbation of God, the occasional
consciousness of having obtained it, will be sufficient incentives to the
most irksome and unceasing effort. God’s “ways are perfect:” that
is, the ways He has pointed out to us are perfect. Obedience to His
commandments will lead on to perfection. As years increase upon us, let it
be our prayer, seconded by an honest endeavour, that obedience and
submission may increase with them, until we become capable of resigning at
God’s bidding, with pure trustfulness, even with cheerfulness, all that
we have hitherto considered necessary to endear life to us; and in place
of the beloved treasures we have been called upon to renounce, we may find
ourselves moved by higher interests, and in the possession of a certain
degree of happiness which we can ascribe to nothing else than the unseen
impartings of God’s grace.
It is this truly Hebrew faith, this
genuine, ever-present, living and abiding faith in God’s nearness,
in His spiritual intercourse with man, and His mysterious interference in
human affairs, individual as well as general, that we, “His
witnesses,” are called upon to exhibit in our lives, and thus teach in
its purity to the nations of the earth, among whom we are dispersed. We
have, indeed, long disregarded with almost willful blindness, our
inconceivably high and holy mission, and bitter to us, as was foretold in
the powerful language of the Hebrew prophets, have been and are the
consequences of our unfaithfulness; but from these same prophets we
receive ample assurances that while we have thus, with such unutterable
folly and base ingratitude, forgotten the gracious God, our Father, who
has elected us above all other people; or remembered Him only with an
outward mockery of worship, that is almost worse than forgetfulness, He
ever has been and ever will be the Guardian of Israel; and, “blotting
out as a thick cloud our transgressions,” will yet fulfill the high
destinies of His people. “Remember this and show yourselves men; bring
it again to mind, oh ye transgressors.” “Know, therefore, that the
Lord thy God, He is the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy
with them that love Him and keep His commandments to a thousand
generations.—Wherefore it shall come to pass, if ye hearken to these
judgments, and keep, and do them, that the Lord thy God shall keep
unto thee the covenant and the mercy which he swore unto thy fathers, and
he will love thee and bless thee,” &c. Can such
language be misunderstood? Is it possible for one true inheritor of the
God-given and undying promises to doubt that the approbation and love of
God is an attainable object, or to be at a loss as to the means by which
he is to secure to himself this beautiful “smile of Heaven?”
November 4th, 1846.
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