Often, too, in size and weight, that life suppos'd obscure.
For it isn't only the palpable stars; astronomers say there are dark,
or almost dark, unnotic'd orbs and suns, (like the dusky companions of
Sirius, seven times as large as our own sun,) rolling through space,
real and potent as any--perhaps the most real and potent. Yet none
recks of them. In the bright lexicon we give the spreading heavens,
they have not even names. Amid ceaseless sophistications all
times, the soul would seem to glance yearningly around for such
contrasts--such cool, still offsets.
Notes:
[42]In Walter Scott's reminiscences he speaks of Burns as having the
most eloquent, glowing, flashing, illuminated dark-orbed eyes he ever
beheld in a human face; and I think Elias Hicks's must have been like
them.
[43] The true Christian religion, (such was the teaching of Elias
Hicks,) consists neither in rites or Bibles or sermons or Sundays--but
in noiseless secret ecstasy and unremitted aspiration, in purity, in a
good practical life, in charity to the poor and toleration to all. He
said, "A man may keep the Sabbath, may belong to a church and attend
all the observances, have regular family prayer, keep a well-bound
copy of the Hebrew Scriptures in a conspicuous place in his house, and
yet not be a truly religious person at all." E. believ'd little in
a church as organiz'd-even his own--with houses, ministers, or with
salaries, creeds, Sundays, saints, Bibles, holy festivals, &c.
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