Page:Calcutta Review Vol. II (Oct. - Dec. 1844).pdf/375

which strike deep into the soil that has been upturned under the husbandry of the Almighty Spirit of all grace, and the flowers and fruits of which, after beautifying and enriching for a season these wintry climes of earth, are destined to appear in richer and more beauteous forms, amid the never-withering flowers and fruits of Paradise. They feel themselves bound, by every obligation the most sacred and divine, to cultivate that poverty of spirit without which the kingdom of heaven is not theirs; that mourning for sin, without which they shall never be comforted; that meekness, without which they shall never inherit the earth; that hungering and thirsting after righteousness, without which they shall never be filled; that mercifulness, without which they shall never obtain mercy; that purity of heart, without which they shall never see God; that patience and forbearance, forgiveness and good-will, that shall ever prompt them to love their very enemies, to bless those that curse them, to do good to them that hate them, and to pray for those that despitefully use them and persecute them. Above all, they feel themselves bound to cultivate that charity, or heavenly love, of all the graces best, without which they know they may speak with the tongues of men and of angels, possess all faith, so that they would remove mountains, bestow all their goods to feed the poor, and give their body to be burned, and yet be nothing; that charity which suffereth long and is kind, which envieth not, which vaunteth not itself and is not puffed up, which rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth, which beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things; that charity, which, like “the immortal amaranth, a flower that once in Paradise, fast by the tree of life, began to bloom,” derives its origin from heaven, and, after temporarily gracing and adorning earth with its presence, thence returns to heaven again where first it grew, and there for ever grows, peering aloft, the richest and most beauteous flower in the garland of immortality. The thousands and the tens of thousands, who, amid many cleaving infirmities and many acknowledged imperfections, thus habitually strive, in humble dependence on Divine aid, to have the lower vestment of their practical life and conduct, which is of earthly texture, thus in-woven with the moral virtues, and the upper robe, which is of heavenly fabric, thus begemmed with the heavenly graces; these, constituting, as they do, at once the preservative “salt” and the irradiating “light” of British society, diffuse all round them the most healthful influences—influences, which circulate in multiplied reflections from the minds and characters of myriads more, that have little or no intrinsic savour and lustre of their own. It is the very nature of moral and spiritual good-