And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.—I Corinthians, XIII.
THE MAJESTY OF THE OCEAN
By “Proteus”
My first view of it was on a clear, but gusty afternoon of autumn. The winds had been abroad for many hours; and as I looked seaward from the high promontory, and beheld the long, rough surges rushing towards me, and listened to their wild roar as they were flung back from the caverned battlements at my feet, I felt as if the pillars of the universe were shaken around me, and stood awed and abashed before the majesty of excited nature. Since then, I have been on lofty precipices while the thunder-cloud was bursting below me—have leaned over the trembling brink of Niagara, and walked within its awful chambers, but the thrill of that moment has never returned. The feeling of awe, however, gradually gave place to an intense but pleasing emotion, and I longed to spring away from the tame and trodden earth, to that wild, mysterious world, whose strange scenes broke so magnificently upon my vision. No wonder that our first roving impulses are towards the ocean. No wonder that the romance and adventurous spirit of youth deems lightly of hardship and peril, when aroused by its stirring presentations. There is something so winning in the multiplied superstitions of its hardy wanderers—something so fascinating in its calm beauty, and so animating in its stormy recklessness, that the ties of country and kindred sit looser at our hearts, as curiosity whispers of its unseen wonders. In after years, when the bloom of existence has lost much of its brightness, when curiosity has become enervated, and the powers of the imagination palsied, where do we sooner return to renew their former pleasing excitement, than to our remembered haunts by the ocean? We leave behind us all the splendor and magnificence of art, all the voluptuous gratifications of society—we break from the banquet and the dance, and fly away to the solitary cliffs, where the sea-bird hides her nest. There the cares, perplexities, and rude jostlings of opposing interests are for a while forgotten. There the turmoil of human intercourse disquiets no longer. There the sweat and dust of the crowded city are dispelled as the cool sea-breeze comes gently athwart our feverish brow. In the exhilaration of the scene, the blood gathers purer at the heart—its pulse-beat is softer, and we feel once more a newness of life, amounting almost to a transport. Delightful remembrances, that lie buried up under the dross of the past, are reanimated, and the charm, the peace, and the freshness of life’s morning innocence again finds in our bosom a welcome and a home. The elastic spring of boyhood is in our step as we chase the receding wave along the white beach, or leap wildly into its glassy depths. In the low, billowy murmur that steals out upon the air, our ear catches the pleasant, but long unheard music of other years, like the remembered voice of a departed companion; and while leaning over some beetling crag, glorious visions pass, thronging before our eyes, as, in fancy, we rove through the coral groves, where the mermaids have their emerald bower, or gaze at the hidden beauties, the uncoveted gems, and the glittering argosies that repose amid the stilly waters. The soul goes forth, as it were, to the hallowed and undefiled temples of nature, to be purified of its earthly contamination. She takes to herself wings, and flies away to the “uttermost parts of the sea,” and even there she hears the voice of the Divine, witnesses the manifestations of His power, experiences the kind guardianship of His presence, and returns cheered and invigorated to renew her weary pilgrimage.
THE GRAY DAYS
By Robert J. Burdette
You don’t love the gray days now. You want the sunshiny days, the roses and the carnations. Let me tell you, children, you will love the gray days just as well when they come. Some day, when the heart is wearied, when the eyes are hot and tired and dry with weeping, when the face is burned by the noonday sun, you will know how like a kiss of blessedness from heaven comes the soft, cool touch of the mist, creeping up out of the sea or coming down over the mountain, until it folds you as the wings of a dove, and shuts you in with peace and rest and hope, and the tenderness of God. Oh, you will thank God again and again for the gray days.
THE PRESENT CRISIS
By James Russell Lowell
When a deed is done for Freedom, through the broad earth’s aching breast