RELIGIOUS MEDITATION. "WHOSOEVER hath walked forth, like the patriarch, about the eventide, into the silent and retired places of nature, and seen the dusky mantle of twilight falling upon the earth, must have felt stealing over his own breast, a state of repose and a sober shade of thought in harmony with the aspect of nature around him; for there is a twilight of contemplation in the soul, midway between the excitement of action and the deadness of slumber: the stir of passion is at rest, and the noisy calls of interest have subsided: and a pensive mood cometh on rich with sober reflections: and the soul careth not for a companion to express herself before; and if, by chance, she hath one by her side, both she and her companion steal into themselves, and though they love each other dearly, they fear to intrude upon the sweet and unperturbed work, which the soul is carrying on in her sacred recesses and the soul being left alone peruseth herself, and meditates her condition, and the body keepeth harmony with the deep and solemn occupation of the mind by a slow and solemn pace; and the eye to catch no disturbance casteth itself upon the ground, and the ear is conscious only to the stillness of nature, and we seem to hear the stream of time flowing past us. When outward nature is so stripped of its gay colouring, and divested of its turbulent and noisy agitation, and the body hath also attuned itself to the mood of the soul, then cometh to the breast some of the most profitable and delightful moods which it ever partakes in this changeful being. The good and ill of the past come before us, dressed in sober colours, the gay divested of vain glory, the evil divested of remorse; everything sobered down like nature in its twilight, its splendours shaded, its defects veiled, its asperities smoothed, and softened and harmonized by the witching influence of the solemn hour; and our present occupation cometh up for judgment before us, and we meditate its usefulness and its end; then errors are not ashamed to confess themselves, and the soul not averse to consider them, and better purposes and resolutions are engendered. The vanity of life now showeth itself without a preacher, with its speedy passage, like a morning cloud, its disappointments, and its sorrows, and all its troubles. The soul becomes philosophical of her own accord, she wonders at her thoughtfulness, and the richness of her reveries afford her delight: then she ascendeth from herself to her Creator, from earth to heaven; and, haply, to assist her meditations, she strayeth to the sacred habitations of the dead, or wandereth beneath the lonely ruins of ancient temples, when the solemn moon, queen of silence, stealeth forth to rule the darkness of the night, and the stars come forth to attend her course. Then looking up unto the heavens, to the moon, and to the stars, which God hath ordained, we feel with the psalmist, "What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the Son of man that thou visitest him?" and when we look upon the earth, falling asleep under the watchful moon, the birds silent in their nests, and the beasts on their grassy couches, and the hum of busy men silenced by sleep, the sister of the grave; then, if ever, the voices of immortality lift themselves within the bosom of man, and he feeleth his dignity of nature, which the commerce of the world obscureth, and he calmly looketh forward to his change; his soul passeth upwards to the communion of God, and in this recess from worldly turmoil, he hath the presence of divine thought, and a sort of intermediate state between the activity of life, and the rest of the grave. "Our fathers perceiving the fitness of this did erect those ancient cathedral churches, monuments of their piety and art, and as it were a grove of stony arch work, where with the dead beneath your feet, and monuments of the worthy dead around the walls, and clustering arches over our head, with a dim religious light, like the light |