Port Tobacco times, and Charles County advertiser. (Port Tobacco, Md.) 1845-1898, 1860-08-09

PIETY, PURITY. PURPOSE

Experience forces lis at last to this conclusion:
That, however rightly intentioned and naturally
good the heart may be, its stability cannot be
depended upon, unless some religious, some life
principle be taken UP early in life and steadily
followed For lack of this fell Byron and the
gifted Poetic Scottish Burns, and Ireland's
witty and dashing orator, Curran. But in none,
perhaps, was this want of life-princple-
purpose if we may term it)-more manifest
than in the character of the great master of the
French Tribunes-Mrabeau That his DISPOSE
| ton was generous and right, that his heart was
kind and good, we cannot doubt; but, owing to
the absence of those good qualities being duly
trained into a proper channel, they were great
ly nullified and it was purely from the reason
that we find in him settled, definite fixedness
of purpose, no unwaveringly devoted attachment
to the Upper Powers that we are constrained to
withhold from him the glorious epithet of Great
contenting ourselves with bestowing the bastard
one of Gigantic. Had Mirabeau been religious,
one sees not what dignifcd pinnacle in the fame
temple he had not occupied: whether Shaks-
peare or Luther, or Homer, had not paled be-
/ fore him? Mirabeau has his excuse for not
having been devotional 1t is because the love
of heaven and the heavenly was never grated
in his mind; but we, born in another nation,
and in less corrupt time--we have not that
excuse. Morning and evening, over town and
hamlet, booms forth the touching music of the
bells: the bells that rang out wedding peals and
funeral dirges in oldentimes chime there still if
not to summon us to the house they sound from,
at least to tell us there is God above us.
Gold is the heart that melts not at their mu-
sic; dull is the spirit that draws no lesson from
their chimes. What say they, as methinks l
hear them sweet-pealing from some old gray
tower. around whose base the Wondering dead
lie sleeping? "Sons Of man." runs the melody
"toil on, toll on, even So by an inscrutable de-
cree is your destination here. They tell you
you should not toll they tell you you should
| all battle and fight for what you have not for
what God. has. seen fit you should not have and
they pirate forever Of your rights! Heed them
not, they are false prophets; and your rights
are baseless chimeras not to be batted for; since
this earth is not place of right, of equality, OF
justice, but simply place Of sojournment, OF
probation, where no man has his deserts entire
ly, nor ever shall. It is a place of trial; and
whose endures that trial-be it of poverty, or
be it of wealth land both are trials -the most
plainingly, the most patiently, the most
vaiantly, that man is the saint of saints. In
this advanced century have we yet need to tell,
as with tongue of iron, that earth is but earth;
that the heaven is hereafter? The one unvari-
able law still remains, and must remain until
the end of time-it is, that earth is no luxury
couch, but fearful battlefield. Fight on then,
0, We heaven-conscripts fight on. The present
is confusion, and wounds, and toiling amid sor-
row, and sweat, and blood; the glory, the re-
ward, the eternal diadem-those are the great
's1o Come"
81 'sBrothers this is not our home;
Here Wrongs wild waves about roar:
Rude breakers, Kissing round us, foam,
And angry pillows flood the shore
But fear not, faint not from on nigh
Gods glory cleaves the frowning sky;
And Rest, though loud the tempests rave,
Beams, grandly bright, beyond the grave.'
w. H. nj.