Christianity: The Logic of Creation

a pallid face in prayer to God lest some hideous calamity engulf his fairest hopes. Few persons have maintained their natural naiveU and candour so unbronzed by contact with the world, as this great and hearty Thackeray, this huge, yet child- like, man; but if the secret bosom of men were canvassed, there would be none found who does not profoundly sympathize with him. We are all of us without real selfhood, without the selfhood which comes from God alone. We have only the shewy and fallacious one which inflows from the spiritual world, and which is wholly inadequate to guarantee us against calamity. We shiver in every breeze, and stand aghast at every cloud that passes over the sun. When our worthless ships (which we ought to be ashamed of building, which we ought in fact to hang our shipmasters for building) go down at sea, what shrieks we hear from blanched and frenzied lips peopling the melancholy main, perturbing the sombre and sympathetic air, for months afterwards ! When our children die, and take back to heaven the brimming innocence which our corrupt manhood feels no use for, and there- fore knows not how to shelter ; when our friends drop off ; when our property exhales ; when our reason totters on its throne, and menaces us with a downfall ; who then is strong ? Who, in fact, if he were left in these cases for a moment to him- self, that is, if he were not steadied in his own despite by the mere life of routine and tradition.