Fremont journal. [volume] (Fremont, Sandusky County [Ohio]) 1853-1866, 1857-10-16
FORsAKING GOD.
BY Henry Ward Boechsr, for the Independent.

les grown, llJeu up iuIO bho "h WIN 'o'O
breadth, and full of twilight at midday
who cut down all these mighty monarcbs,
md cleared the ground bare; and then,
when the desolation was complete, and the
fierce summer gazed full into their faces
with its fire, they bethought themselves of
shade, and forthwith set out generation of
thin, shadowless sticks, pining and waiting
till they should stretch out their boughs
with protection, and darken the ground with
grateful shadow. Such folly is theirs who
refuse the tree of life, the shadow Of the
Almighty, and sit, instead, under the fee
bio trees of their own planting, whose tops
will never be broad enough TO shield them,
and whose boughs will never voice to them
the music of the air. Some of the most re-
markable figures Of the Bible are made tol
illustrate this sad truth.
The mountains lift their tops so high in
the air that towering clouds, which have no
rest in the sky, love TO come to them, and
wrapping about their tops, distill their
moisture upon them. Thus mountains
hold commerce with Gods upper ocean,
and like good men, draw supplies from the
invisible. And so It is, that in the times of
drought, in the valves below, tho rocks are
always wet. The mountain moss is always
green. The seams and crevices are always
dripping, and rock-vcins are throbbing al
full pulse, while all the scene down below
faiuts for want of moisture. In some vlr-
gin gorge, unwodded by the sun, these cold
rills bubble up and issue forth upon their
erraud. Could one who would build his
house upon tho plain but meet these springs
in the mountain, and lay his artificial chan
nels to the very spring, he would never
know when drought cometh. For noun
tain springs never grow dry SO long as
clouds brood the hill tops. Day and night
they gush and fall with liquid plash and un-
heard music; except when thirsty birds-to
whose song the rivulet all day long has
been bass-stoop to drink at their crystal
edges And he who has put himself into
communication with these mountain springs
shall never be unsupplied. While artificial
cisterns dry up, and crack for dryness, this
mountain fountain comes night and day
with cool abundance. While others, with
weary strokes, force up from deep wells a
pcnurious supply of turbid water, he that
has Joined himself to the mountain spring,
has its voice in his dwelling night and day,
summer and winter, without work or stroke
of laboring pump, clear, sweet and cheer
full; running of its own accord to serve, and
bringing in its song suggestions of its noun
tain home-the dark recess, the rock which
was its father, the cloud which was it:
mother, and the teeming heaven broad
above both rock and cloud.
With such spring, near, accessible, ur
ging itself upon the eye and car, how grea
would be his folly who should abandon it
; and fill his attic with leaden cistern, that
for over leaked when full, and was dry wher
, it did not leak! Listen then, to the wore
of God: "Ky people hare committed t,oc
: evils: they have torsaken me, the fountain
, of living waters, and hare heUed them on
cisterns, broken c,sterns, that can hold nc
water."
t Man is not made to he independent il
+ his powers. With all his chdowments, h
: is inade to lean on every side for support
n and should his connections either side b
cut, ho would droop and wither like tire
whose roots have been sundered.
Q Tho eye carries no light with it, but IT
r ceives its sight from the luminous elemer
: without. The ear hath no sound within j
Q but only receives it from without. Th
tongue and throat beat upon the air for v
J, brations, as a musician strikes for music'
Is sounds; and if hindered in their connection
D or broken from their dependencies, eye, ca
and tongue would fall back into voicele
darkness. And every bodily function
ID directly or mediately joined to tho physic
70 world in such way, that, while man is lo
of creation, he is also its subject or depen
= ent, and must ask leave TO exist from q
2, earth, the air, the sun, and the clouds.
2 These dependent relations symbolic Il
e yet more important relations which Il
1t soul sustains to Cod Man is not made
exist in rounded, perfect, and independe
Ii spiritual life, in his own right snd natur
Is He only is a perfect man who has hims'
to in the embrace of God. The soul divine
IL brooded receives its power. Our facultiC
e. like the eye that must be filed with lig
ty from without wait for their power fro
ar above. 1t is the divine energy, actiI
ds through the human faculty, that gives
n man his real existence. Nor does any m
know his power, his nature, his richness
ID emotion, the hight and depth Of his beil
lis until he unfolds under the stimulus of Go
is imbreathed influence. q
What is that influence? What is this sp
it which acts within or upon the soul
will tell you when you will tell me what it
~ in light and heat that work upon the rC
is to bring forth the stem; what it is ii
works within the stem to bring forth t
st bud; what it is that works upon the bud
" persuade it into blossom; and what Il
lb mysterious spirit is, that dismissing t
of beauty Of the bloom, holds back its life
ne the new form of fruit. 1t is light, it
IN heat, it is moisture, it is tho soil, it is
sn plant, il is tho vital energy of NATURE
k Thus we stand throwing words at a IN
I'd velous change, whose interior nature we CT
I'd not search nor find out. $50 is every q
'st that is born Of the spirit"
he But of tho fact itself, it is full Of bless,
NJ ness to know that tho soul has relati,
Is ship to God, personal, direct, sital, that
10 grows and blossoms by it, while il langui
nd es and dwarfs without il.
W. The body grows by its true connectiC
= with material nature; the social atfectic
grow by their true relations TO men and
ciety and the spiritual powers must gr'
by their true relations to God. In the nj
rial world fhn ,.oafa ,f f,aau ara in 4