Jeffersonian Republican. [volume] (Stroudsburg, Pa.) 1840-1853, 1852-01-29

/
: But, as for loving some half dozen you could
name, whose images drift through your
thought, in dirty, salmon-colored frocks, and
slovenly shoes, it is quite impossible; and sud-
denly this thought, coupled with lingering
remembrance of the pea-green pantaloons,
utterly breaks down your hopes.
Yet, you muse again-there are plenty of
good people as the times 60, who have their
dislikes, and who speak them too. Even the
sharp-talking clergyman, you have heard say
some very sour things about his landlord, who
raised his rent the last year. And you know
that he did not talk as mildly as he does in
the Church, when he found Frank and your
self quietly filching a few of his peaches,
through the orchard fences.
But your clergyman will say perhaps, with
what seems to you quite unnecessary GOODNESS,
that goodness is not to be reckoned in your
chances of safety that there is a Higher
Goodness, whose merit is All-Sufflcient This
puzzles you sadly; nor will you escape the
puzzle, until in the presence of the Home al
tar, which seems TO guard you, as the Lares
guarded Roman children, you feel-you can
not tell how,-that good actions must spring
from good sources; and that those sources
must lie in Heaven, toward which your boy
isi spirit yearns, as you knell at your moth
er's side.
Conscience, too, is all the while approving
you for deeds well done; and-wicked as you
| fear the preacher might Judge it-you can
not but found on those deeds, hope that
your prayer at night flows more easily,
more freely, and more holly toward g Our
Father in Heaven" Nor indeed later in
llte-whatever may be the ill-adyised ex-
pressions of human teachers-wiIl you ev-
er find that Duty PERFORMED, and generous
endeavor will stand one whit in the way eth
er of Faith or of Love. Striving to be good,
is a very. direct road toward Goodness and if
life be so tempered by high motive as to
make action always good, Faith is uncon-
sciously won.
Another notion that disturbs you very much,
is your positive dislike of long sermons of
such singing os they have when the organist
is away. You cannot get the force of that
verse of DR.. Watts which likens heaven to a
never-ending Sabbathe; you do hope-though
1t seems half wicked hope--that old Dr.
-, Will not De the preacher. You think
that your heart in It's best moments, Graves
for something moae lovable. You suggest
this perhaps to some Sunday teacher, who
only shakes MS head sourlo, ann tells you it
is thought that the Devil is putting in your
brain. 1t strikes you oddly that the Devil
Should be using verse of DR.. Watts to puz-
zle you! But ifit be so, he keeps itsticking
by your thought very pertinaciously, until
some simple utterancc of your mother about
the Love that reigns in the other world, seems
ON sudden to widen Heaven, and to watt
away your doubts like cloud.
1t exclteS your wonder not little, TO find
people whUtalk gravely and heartily of the
excellence of sermons and of Church-eoing,
do sometimes fall asleep under it all. And
you wonder-if they really like preaching so
well,-why they do not buy some of the min
lsters old manuscripts, and read them over
on weekdays or, invite the Clergyman to
preach to them in quiet way in private!
Ah, Clarence, you do not yet know the
moor won kpacc oPoyon ,,,turo.t III
the feeble gropings of the soul toward souls
paradise, in the best of the world You do
not yet know either that ignorance and fear
viii be thrusting their untruth and false show
into the very essentials of Religion.
Again, you wonder,-ifthe clergymen are
all such very good men as you are taught to
believe. why it is, that every little while peo-
pie will be trying to send them off; and very
anxious to prove that instead ofbeng SO good.
they are in fact, very stupid and bad men,
At that day, you have no clear conceptions of
the distinction between stupidity and vice
and think that good man must necessarily
say very eloquent things You will find your
self sadly mistaken on this point, before you
get on very fair in life.
Heaven, when your mother peoples it with
friends gone, and little Charlie, and that bet
ter Friend, who, she says, took Charlie in his
arms. and is now his Father, above the skies,
seems a place to be loved, and longed for
But-to think that Mr.. Snch-an-one, who is
only good on Sundays, viii be there too and
to think Of his talking as he does, of place
which you are sure he would spoil if he were
there puzzles you again; aud you relapse
into wonder, doubt and yearning.
And there Clarence, for the present shall
leave you. A wide, rich Heaven hangs a.
bove you but it hangs very high. A wide,