And of all the throbbing heart’s high courage
Nothing will remain.
Martineau not only did important work in philosophy, but he was also eminent as a moral teacher. Taking together his originality, sublimity of soul, and beauty of expression, the sermons in Hours of Thought and other similar writings are the finest product of modern religious thought. They indeed stand among the best productions of our literature, and should be read even by those (if there are any such persons) who love literature and thought but are indifferent to religion. To illustrate this, I choose—almost at random—a passage where the thought itself has no interest outside religion (Hours of Thought, II. 334):—
Worship is the free offering of ourselves to God; ever renewed, because ever imperfect. It expresses the consciousness that we are His by right, yet have not duly passed into His hand; that the soul has no true rest but in Him, yet has wandered in strange flights until her wing is tired. It is her effort to return home, the surrender again of her narrow self-will, her prayer to be merged in a life diviner than her own. It is at once the lowliest and loftiest attitude of her nature: we never hide ourselves in ravine so deep; yet overhead we never see the stars so clear and high. The sense of saddest estrangement, yet the sense also of eternal affinity between us and God meet and mingle in the act; breaking into the strains, now penitential and now jubilant, that, to the critic’s reason, may sound at variance but melt into harmony in the ear of a higher love. This twofold aspect devotion must ever have, pale with weeping, flushed with joy; deploring the past, trusting for the future; ashamed of what is, kindled by what is meant to be; shadow behind, and light before. Were we haunted by no presence of sin and want, we should only browse on the pasture of nature; were we stirred by no instinct of a holier kindred, we should not be drawn towards the life of God.
GROWN UP.
My son is straight and strong,
Ready of lip and limb;
’Twas the dream of my whole life long