inconceivable falsity will hardly be accepted by
any one in so many terms, seeing that there are few so utterly lost but
that they receive, and know that they receive, at certain moments,
strength of some kind, or rebuke from the appealings of outward things;
and that it is not possible for a Christian man to walk across so much
as a rood of the natural earth, with mind unagitated and rightly poised,
without receiving strength and hope from some stone, flower, leaf, or
sound, nor without a sense of a dew falling upon him out of the sky;
though, I say, this falsity is not wholly and in terms admitted, yet it
seems to be partly and practically so in much of the doing and teaching
even of holy men, who in the recommending of the love of God to us,
refer but seldom to those things in which it is most abundantly and
immediately shown; though they insist much on his giving of bread, and
raiment, and health, (which he gives to all inferior creatures,) they
require us not to thank him for that glory of his works which he has
permitted us alone to perceive: they tell us often to meditate in the
closet, but they send us not, like Isaac, into the fields at even, they
dwell on the duty of self-denial, but they exhibit not the duty of
delight. Now there are reasons for this, manifold, in the toil and
warfare of an earnest mind, which, in its efforts at the raising of men
from utter loss and misery, has often but little time or disposition to
take heed of anything more than the bare life, and of those so occupied
it is not for us to judge, but I think, that, of the weaknesses,
distresses, vanities, schisms, and sins, which often even in the holiest
men, diminish their usefulness, and mar their happiness, there would be
fewer if, in their struggle with nature fallen, they sought for more aid
from nature undestroyed. It seems to me that the real sources of
bluntness in the feelings towards the splendor of the grass and glory of
the flower, are less to be found in ardor of occupation, in seriousness
of compassion, or heavenliness of desire, than in the turning of the eye
at intervals of rest too selfishly within; the want of power to shake
off the anxieties of actual and near interest, and to leave results in
God's hands; the scorn of all that does not seem immediately apt for our
purposes, or open to our understanding, and perhaps something of pride,
which desires rather to investigate than to feel. I believe that the
root of almost eve