The humble mind that seeketh to find favour in His sight, and
calmly examines its conduct when only His presence is felt, will
seldom form a very erroneous opinion of its own virtues. During
the still hour of self-collection the angry brow of offended
justice will be fearfully deprecated, or the tie which draws man
to the Deity will be recognized in the pure sentiment of
reverential adoration, that swells the heart without exciting any
tumultuous emotions. In these solemn moments man discovers the
germ of those vices, which like the Java
tree shed a pestiferous vapour around -- death is in the
shade! and he perceives them without abhorrence, because he feels
himself drawn by some cord of love to all his fellow-creatures,
for whose follies he is anxious to find every extenuation in
their nature -- in himself. If I, he may thus argue, who exercise
my own mind, and have been refined by tribulation, find the serpent's egg in some fold of my heart,
and crush it with difficulty, shall not I pity those who have
stamped with less vigour, or who have heedlessly nurtured the
insidious reptile till it poisoned the vital stream it sucked?
Can I, conscious of my secret sins, throw off my
fellow-creatures, and calmly see them drop into the chasm of
perdition, that yawns to receive them. -- No! no! The agonized
heart will cry with suffocating impatience -- I too am a man! and
have vices, hid, perhaps, from human eye, that bend me to the
dust before God, and loudly tell me, when all is mute, that we
are formed of the same earth, and breathe the same element.
Humanity thus rises naturally out of humility, and twists the
cords of love that in various convolutions entangle the heart.
