Christianity is within a man, even as he is gifted with reason; it is associated with your mother's chair, and with the first remembered, tones of her blessed voice.
And in Life's noisiest hour,
There whispers still the ceaseless Love of Thee,
The heart's Self-solace and soliloquy.
You mould my Hopes, you fashion me within.
...in consequence of the film of familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have eyes yet see not, ears that hear not, and hearts that neither feel nor understand.
Finally, good sense is the body of poetic genius, fancy its drapery, motion its life, and imagination the soul that is everywhere and in each; and forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole.
Women have their heads in their hearts. Man seems to have been destined for a superior being; as things are, I think women generally better creatures than men. They have weaker appetites and weaker intellects but much stronger affections. A man with a bad heart has been sometimes saved by a strong head; but a corrupt woman is lost forever.
What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if,when you awoke,you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?
In what way, or by what manner of working, God changes a soul from evil to good, how He impregnates the barren rock--the priceless gems and gold--is to the human mind an impenetrable mystery, in all cases alike.
Seldom can philosophic genius be more usefully employed than in thus rescuing admitted truths from the neglect caused by the very circumstance of their universal admission.
I am never very forward in offering spiritual consolation to any one in distress or disease. I believe that such resources, to be of any service, must be self-evolved in the first instance. I am something of the Quaker's mind in this, and am inclined to wait for the spirit.