The Ashland union. [volume] (Ashland, Ashland County, Ohio) 1854-1868, 1857-09-09
FoRsAKJNG GOD.

We have known men, upon whose
grounds waved magnificent trees of cen
turies' growth, lifted up into the air
with vast breadth, and full of twilight
at mid day-who cut down all these
M ighty monarchs, and cleard 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 forth
with set out q generation of thin, shad
owless sticks, piniDg and waiting till they
should stretch out their boughs With
protection, and darken the ground with
grateful shadow. Such folly is tLeirs
who refuse the tree of life, the shadow of
the Almighty and sit, instead, under the
feeble 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 remarkable figures of the Bible
are made to illustrate this sad truth.
The mountains lift their tops so high
in the sir 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, the rocks are always wet
The mountain moss is always green.
The seams and crevices are always drip.
ping, and rock-veins are throbbing full
pulse, while all the scene down below
faints for want Of moisture. In some
virgin gorge, unwedded by the sun. these
cold rills bubble up and issue forth upon
their errand. Could one who would
build his house upon the plain but meet
these springs in the mountain, and lay
his artificial channels to the very spring,
he would never know when drought
cometh. For mountain springs never
grow dry so long as clouds brood the
hill tops. Day and night they gush and
fall with liqui plash and unheard rnu
sic; except when thirsty birds-to whose
song the rivulet all day long has baen
bass-ssoop to drink at their crystal
edges And he who has put himself
into communication with these noun
tain springs shall never be unsupplied. !.
While artificial ciste.ns dry up,and crack
for dryness, this mountain fountain
comes night and day with cool abun-
dance. While others, with weary strokes,
force up from deep wells penurious
supply of turbid water. be that has join
ed 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 cheerful; running of its own accord
to serve, and singing at its work more
musical than any Lutte; and bringing in
its song suggestions of it's mountain
home-the dark recess. the rock which
was its father, the cloud which was its
mother, and the teeming heaven broad
above both rock and cloud
With such spring, near, accessible, ur-
giDg itself upon the eye and ear, how
great would be mis- folly who should
abandon it, and fill his attic with leaden
cistern, that for ever leaked when full
and was dry when it did not leak Listen,
then to the word of God: " My people
hare committed tloo evils: they hare
torsaken me, the fountain Of living sOa.
teys, and haze hesoed tAeus ont cisleras,
broken cisterns, that can hold no acater."
Man is not made to be Independent in
his powers. With all bis endowments,
he is made to lean on every side for sup
port, and should his connections on either
side be cut, hs would droop and wither
like q tree whose roots had been sun.
dered.
The eye carries no light with it, but
receives its sight from the luminous elc-
ment without. The ear hath no sound
within it, but only receives it from with
put. The tongue and throat beat uI on
the air for vibrations, as a musician
strikes for musical sounds; and if hin-
dered in their connections or broken
from their dependencies, eye, ear, and
tongue would fall back into voiceless
darkness. And every bodily funclioa is
directly or modiately joined to the ply
,ical world in snch way, that, while
man is lord of creation, he is also its
subject and dependent, and must ask
leave to exist from the earth, the air,
the sun, and the clouds.
These dependent relations symbolic
the yet more important relations which
the soul sustains to God. Man is not
made to exist in rounded, perfect, and