The Hillsborough Recorder

RELIGION.

We pity the young man who has no religion in his heart—no high and irresistible yearning after a better and holier existence—who is contented with the sensuality and grossness of earth—whose spirit never revolts at the darkness of its prison house, nor exults at the thought of its final emancipation. We pity him, for he affords no evidence of his high origin—no manifestations of that intellectual prerogative, which renders him the delegated lord of the visible creation. He can rank no higher than animal nature—the spiritual could never stoop so low. To seek for beastly excitements—to minister, with abundant hand, to depraved and strange appetites—are the attributes of the animal alone. To limit our hopes and aspirations to this life, and world, is like remaining forever in the place of our birth, without ever lifting the veil of the visible horizon which bends over our infancy.

There is religion in every thing around us; a calm and holy religion in the unbreathing things of nature, which man would do well to imitate. It is a meek and blessed influence, stealing in as it were, upon the heart. It comes quietly and without excitement. It has no terror nor gloom, in its approaches. It does not rouse up the passions; it is untrammeled by the creeds and unshadowed by the superstitions of men. It is from the hands of the Author, and growing from the immediate presence of the great Spirit, which pervades and quickens it. It is written on the arched sky. It looks out from every star. It is on the sailing clouds and in the invisible wind. It is among the hills and valleys of the earth—where the shrubless mountain top pierces the thin atmosphere of eternal winter—or where the mighty forest fluctuates before the strong wind, with its dark waves of green foliage. It is spread out like a legible language upon the broad face of the unsleeping ocean. It is the poetry of nature. It is this which lifts the spirit within us, until it is tall enough to overlook the shadows of our place of probation—which breaks, link after link, the chains which bind us to materiality, and opens to our imagination a world of spiritual beauty and holiness.

Essex Gaz.