Ashtabula weekly telegraph. [volume] (Ashtabula, Ohio) 1853-1873, 1871-08-05
Thoughts.


that there never were such experiences
in life as his own. No joy was ever like
our joy, no sorrow ever like our sorrow.
Indeed, there Is a kind of Indignation
excited in us when one likens our grief
to his own. The sJul is jealous of Its ex-
periences, and does not like pride TO be
humblcd, by the thought that they are
common. For, though we know that
the world groans and travails in pain,
and has done SO for ages, yet groan
heard by onr ears is Il very different
thing from groan uttered by our mouth.
The sorrows of other men seem to us
like clouds ofrain that empty themselves
in the distance; and whose long travel
ing thunder comes to us mellowed and
subdned; but our own troubles are like
storm bursting right ovethe; d, and
sending down its bolts upon us with di-
rect plunge.
But th,re have been human hearts,
constituted just like ours, for six thou
sand years. The same stars rise and set
upon this globe that rose upon the plains
OF Shinar or along the Egyptian hills !;
and the same sorrows ris. and set in ev-
cry age, All that sickness can do, and
all that disappointment can affect, all
that blighted love. disappointed ambi-
tions, thwarted hopes, ever did, they do
still. Not a tear is wrung from eyes
now, that, for the same reason, has not
been wept over and over again in long
succession since the hour that the fated
prr stepped from paradise, aud gave
their postrrity TO a world of sorrow and
suffering, The head learns new thing s,
but the heart forevermore practices old
experiences. Therefore, our life is but
new form of the way men have lived
from the beginning.
When the laudsman first goes down
upon the deep,to see what storm.piough-
ing means, what furrows the wind draws,
secdless and implanted. he feels in every
shivering nerve that never was such
storm know before. Now, he bcthinks
himself with horror, there has come up
on the deep a fury never till then let
loose. But the clouds laugh, and the
winds know that ten thousand times be-
fore they have terrified just such inexpe-
rienced wretches. Yea, long ere a ship
dared the central ocean, stroms had nav
igated it, nor failed to pursue their
dreadful sport ever since keel crossed
the perlous deep.
Not only are such experiences the he
reditary legacy of men, rolled over and
over, and sent down in succession upon
every generation, but the methods bv
which men have met and conquered
troubles, or been slain by it, are the
same in every age. Some have fioated
OH the sea. and trouble carried them on
its surface as the sea carries cork. Some
have sunk at once to the bottom as
toundering ships sink Some have run
away from their own thoughts. Some
have coiled themselves up into stoical
Indifference. Some have braved the
trouble and dcGed it. Some have car
ried it as trees do i wound, until by new
wood il can overgrow and cover the old
cash. 4 few in every age have known
the divine art of carrying trouble as
some wonderful food; as an invisible
garment that clothes them with
strength; as mysterious Joy, so tha,
they suffered gladly, rejoicing in infnity
and holding up their heads with sacred
passages whenever times are dark and
troublous, let the light depart from their
eyes that they might by faith see nobler
things than sight could reach.
David has left no sweeter psalm that
the short twenty-thrd. 1t is but a mo-
ment's opening of his soul, but-as when
one, walking the winter street, sees the
door open for some one to enter, and the
red light streams moment forth, and
the forms of gay children are running
to greet the conner, and genial music
sounds, though the door shuts and leaves
the night black, yet it cannot shut back
again all that the eye, the ear, the heart,
and the immagination has seen-so in
this psalm, though it is but moments
opening of the soul, is emitted truth of
peace and consolation that will never be
absent from the world.
What would be said of pilgrim COM
missioned to travel up and down the
earth, singing a strange melody, which,
when one heard, caused him to forget
whatever sorrow he had And SO the
singing angel goes on bis way through
all lands, singing in the language of ev-
cry nation, driving away trouble by the
pulses OF the air which his tongue moves
with divine power. And there is just
such an one 1t has charmed more
griefs to rest than the philosophy of the
world. 1t has remanded to their dun
geon more felon thought, more black