What grandeur in
every line transcendent! Yet what impenetrable mystery too, what menacing
ruin to the small remnant of human life still spared from the generations
in ages past, already swallowed up! Peering around in this pensive mood,
in which the joy of being mixed with the uneasy doubt of its tenure, my
eye fell at last on the spire of a little church, rising like a pencil of
light to heaven, out of the fathomless waste. And there my soul alighted
and found rest. Like some sea mark to the voyager, that slender shaft,
reared by the social religion of the world, stood to tell me where in the
universe I was; the common Christian consciousness reinforced my own, and
dark queries and agitating uncertainties subsided from my spirit, as the
deluge from the dove that Noah sent out to pluck the green branch of
promise. From the illimitable reaches of the huge, but dimly responding
creation around, the slight, frail temple for God's praise drew me to its
welcome and peaceful embrace. As I approached it, the tolling of the bell
struck on my ear in a touch of gladder tidings than I had received from
all the melody of the great wind-harp of the trees, with all the soft
accord of the tossing billows.
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