Palladium Of Virginia And The Pacific Monitor

MISCELLANEOUS.

TRUTH.

TRUTH is old as eternity. It is sublime as the nature of Deity. It is more powerful than the raging elements. It is fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners. It has a universal sway. It is "the strength, kingdom, power and majesty of all ages." With it, what can be compared? Its charms are inimitable and irresistible. Its excellence is unrivalled. Its influence is salubrious. Its benefits are unspeakable: its offsprings are divine.

It is this which gives worth to character, and value to a subject. It is this which, however strictly scrutinized, will endure the trial, and shines the most brightly in affliction's night. It is this which is the dearest companion in solicitude, and affords the sweetest consolations in the hour of adversity.

Its decisions are just; its sentence is righteous. The enemies of goods are the enemies of truth. Its opponents are apostates from virtue. Its antagonists, moved by a demoniac spirit, are the promoters of ruin and desolation.

Truth constitutes an essential part of everything that is amiable and entitled to praise. It is but a link of an endless chain of felicity and glory.

No language is equal to its panegyric—no tongue can describe its superiority—no imagination can paint, in sufficiently vivid colours, its beauty. It is a mirror in which the deformity of error is clearly seen, and excites disgust. It is the speculum in which falsehood appears more horrid than words can express.

It is the great touchstone from which wickedness shrinks, and retires to its dark and dismal retreats. Its visitations are accompanied with light to the mind; its kind, its life-giving touch, heals the maladies of the heart; its control transforms and ennobles the soul, and plants in it the seeds of ethereal beatitude. It is the basis of delightful permanent friendship; and produces love, which no vicissitudes can eradicate or subdue. It binds together in bands stronger than death's destroying power, the upright, whatever may be their various condition in society; and forms an indissoluble tie between "the King of kings and Lord of Lords," and his children on earth.

Under the whole canopy of heaven, there is nothing more commanding, more magnificent, more useful, more entire than truth. It is pure as innocence, as unsullied as sanctity: as profound as nature, as immeasurable as infinity, and as impregnable as "the Rock of Ages." It has been assailed by implacable and formidable foes, in vain: and will have an ultimate and universal triumph. The conquest of empires and kings are thrown into the shade, and are rendered imperceptible, when brought into competition with this mighty principle, which has its immovable foundation in the Divinity, and reigns completely in all holy intellectual beings. The laurels of the war, propelled by ambition, and stimulated by the mere desire of obtaining celebrity, fade and die before the victories of truth, between which and its opposite, the difference is that between light and obscurity. And these cannot co-exist in the same place, nor hold communication in the same breast.

There is no part of the universe which is beyond the reach of truth. There are no miracles of power which it cannot achieve. It can penetrate and dissolve the adamant, and hurl the mountains from their fixed positions. Its accents to friends are mild and gentle as peace: to others, its aspect and voice are, like terrific lightning, or the dreadful, appalling noise of destructive thunder. Immutability marks its visage, and its decrees are firm and irresistible as His who is "the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever." Falsehood and error dwindle at the approach of truth, and in its enchanting progress the lustre of day is emitted and diffused. The heavens are full of it, the earth bears incessant witness to its existence, and hell feels its inexorable and undiminished vengeance.

Happy, supremely happy that man, and that man only, who can say with the great apostle, "I have learned in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content." And the mind which is thus composed and at peace within himself, satisfied with that portion of enjoyments which a wise and good Providence appoints, is no longer at the mercy of all changes of this sublunary world; he has nobly emancipated himself from the general servitude to blind and capricious fortune. Equally "without a wish so mean as to be great, as unscared by the spectre of pale poverty," he is cool and tranquil enough to relish all the humble blessings of his own state of life. His bosom is at rest; not like the troubled sea, violent in its motions, and foul in its appearance, but like a gentle rivulet, all clear and serene, and exhibiting, as in a mirror, every beauty of the landscape around him, together with the splendor and magnificence of the heavens above.