Mother beautiful and beloved! some
sweet, embryo joy fills the chambers of my heart as I contemplate
the scenes with which she is becoming familiar. Dead and dreary
winter robes the earth, and autumn leaves lie under the snow like
past hopes; but what of them? I see only the smile of God's
sunshine. I see in the advancing future, love and peace--only
infinite peace!
GREAT PRINCIPLES AND SMALL DUTIES.
IT is observable that the trivial services of social life are best
performed, and the lesser particles of domestic happiness are most
skilfully organized, by the deepest and the fairest heart. It is an
error to suppose that homely minds are the best administrators of
small duties. Who does not know how wretched a contradiction such a
rule receives in the moral economy of many a home? how often the
daily troubles, the swarm of blessed cares, the innumerable minutiae
of arrangement in a family, prove quite too much for the generalship
of feeble minds, and even the clever selfishness of strong ones; how
a petty and scrupulous anxiety in defending with infinite
perseverance some small and almost invisible point of frugality, and
comfort, surrenders the greater unobserved, and while saving money,
ruins minds; how, on the other hand, a rough and unmellowed sagacity
_rules_ indeed, and without defeat, but while maintaining in action
the mechanism of government, creates a constant and intolerable
friction, a gathering together of reluctant wills, a groaning under
the consciousness of force, that make the movements of life fret and
chafe incessantly? But where, in the presiding genius of a home,
taste and sympathy unite (and in their genuine forms they cannot be
separated)--the intelligent feeling for moral beauty, and the deep
heart of domestic love,--with, what ease, what mastery, what
graceful disposition, do the seeming trivialities of life fall into
order, and drop a blessing as they take their place! how do the
hours steal away, unnoticed but by the precious fruits they leave!
and by the self-renunciation of affection, there comes a spontaneous
adjustment of various wills; and not an innocent pleasure is lost,
not a pure taste offended, nor a peculiar temper unconsidered; and
every day has its silent achievements of wisdom, and every night its
retrospect of piety and love; and the tranquil thoughts, that in the
evening meditation come down with the starlight, seem like the
serenade of angels, bringing in melody the peace of God! Wherever
this picture is realized, it is not by microscopic solicitude of
spirit, but by comprehension of mind, and enlargement of heart; by
that breadth and nicety of moral view which discerns everything in
due proportion, and in avoiding an intense elaboration of trifles,
has energy to spare for what is great; in short, by a perception
akin to that of God, whose providing frugality is on an infinite
scale, vigilant alike in heaven and on, earth; whose art colours a
universe with beauty and touches with its pencil the petals of a
flower.
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