Of the spiritual more grievously than of the intellectual life is it
true, that, "whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with
it." Here emphatically does the individual labor hardly, to digest
into his life the conclusions of reason and conscience, in advance of
the average understanding of the age. Professor Lyell, speaking of the
Millerite phrenzy, and how some men of pretty sound mind were carried
away with it, remarks to this effect: "Religious delusion is like a
famine fever, which attacks first the hungry and emaciated, but in its
progress cuts down many of the well-fed and robust."
So it is. So strong are our tendencies to one tone, that the
Christian, in setting to his worldly desires the bounds which his
religion exacts, feels to be exercising a self-denial--yielding the
temporal to the eternal. He scarce seems to himself to be acting the
part of true worldly wisdom. In reading the life of Dr. Payson, it is
obviously manifest, that his deeply spiritual views were not inwrought
harmoniously into his life's web, as would have been, if he had carried
along with him a whole community.
The materialism of this age must pass away, as has passed the quixotism
of the crusades.
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