Clearing

“ Night, dark and gloomy, slowly settled over the forest. Nothing was heard save the dull soughing of the wind through the tree-tops, or the occasional howl of the wolf in the distance, or perhaps the near scream of the panther. Heavy, tumultuous clouds were wheeling through the sky, rendering the inky darkness doubly intense, and shrouding even the clearings in impenetrable gloom.
By and by, the distant rumble of thunder came faintly through the air, and then a quivering fork of fire, like a stream of blood, trembled upon the edge of the dark storm-cloud for an instant. ”

“ Right principles and a regular conversation will stand the test even of the fiery trial; but, whatever we mix of baser alloy, though we be in the main sincere, we shall suffer loss by it, and though our persons be saved all that part of our work shall be consumed; and, if we ourselves escape, it will be with great danger and difficulty, as from a house on fire on every side. ”

“ We must not have recourse to cupping at the commencement of complaints, nor when the body is in a plethoric state, but when the general system has been evacuated, and when there is no defluxion any longer to the part, and especially when there is a necessity of removing, dislodging, and determining something outwardly. ”

“ The safest conclusion, if conclusions are to be drawn at all, is that what has hitherto been, will, in the nature of things, continue,—that whatever separations exist will be marked by zones of latitude. For other evidence we must search in vain. ”

“ And however one indicates one’s impression of the clearance, the clearance itself, in its completeness, with the innumerable odd connected circumstances that bring it home, represents, in the history of manners and morals, a deviation in the mere measurement of which hereafter may well reside a certain critical thrill. I say hereafter because it is a question of one of those many measurements that would as yet, in the United States, be premature. Of all the solemn conclusions one feels as “barred,” the list is quite headed, in the States, I think, by this particular abeyance of judgment. ”

“ If thou have reason to think that thy silence will be deemed an evidence of the weakness of thy cause, or of thy own weakness, in such a case answer him, and let it be an answer ad hominem—to the man, beat him at his own weapons, and that will be an answer ad rem—to the point, or as good as one. ”

“ Who knows how many links we may have to ascend in the vast cycle of worlds around, ere we arrive at the one which is knowledge—where we may look before, and after, and judge of the whole? How many stages of probation may we yet have to pass! ”

“ Outlines of the mysterious mechanism of our clay-temple, we ought certainly to study, that we need not through ignorance interfere with those laws on which its organization depends. Rendered precious, by being the shrine of an undying spirit, our ministrations for its well-being, assume an almost fearful importance. ”

“ While the young men and women sat watching me, with what eagerness I could well imagine—as their safety hung on my calculations—I took my figures and data and soon had them in excellent order. Soon, I say, but that word is used in a comparative sense. To work out the intricate problem before me required time, but not so much time as another—say Mr. Quaintance—would have required. ”

“ Thus you take a little bit of each, and the only object of this is to make the necessary preliminary trial, for by this trial you find out which run easy and which run hard, because it is very necessary that they should all run alike; for if some run too slowly and others too fast they would spoil each other, and you would make a mess of your work. ”

“ Sully says, in speaking of the judgment, 4 — "This process of judging illustrates the two fundamental elements in thought activity, viz., analysis and synthesis." "To judge is clearly to discern and to mark off as a special object of thought some connecting relation." "To begin with, before we can judge we must have the requisite materials for forming a judgment." "In the second place, to judge is to carry out a process of reflection on given material." "In addition to clearness and accuracy, our judgments may have other perfections. ”

“ It will be insinuated to us with a plausible affectation of wisdom and concern, how prudent it is to please the powerful—how dangerous to provoke them—and then comes in the perpetual incantation, that freezes up every generous purpose of the soul, in cold—inactive—expectation "that if there is any request to be made, compliance will obtain a favourable attention." ”

“ All the former vigor remains, or appears to be intact; judgment and reason display vigor and clearness in criminal acts and conduct. Motives and purposes of life have changed, although the form and semblance of the past conduct remain. ”

“ The same principle will hold, of course, in a myriad cases; if we have to-morrow, or even at a later date, to plead a cause, to make an after-dinner speech, to write a report or an article, to learn a lesson, to entertain guests, to handle a difficult case of discipline, we have only to take this counsel of our pillow, to reënforce it with our first morning thought, and we shall find ourselves making a new record of success. ”

“ If we are no longer allowed to say, ‘This exists,’ or ‘This is true’—or, at any rate, not allowed to say it without a great deal of qualification, a very great deal of qualification—what can we say? Oh, it is all right, my dear sisters and brothers, we have just one little plank saved to us from the wreck. ”

“ The process by which principles are discovered and appropriated is other than that by which, in practice, they are applied; and our most sacred and disinterested convictions ought to take shape in the tranquil regions of the air, above the tumult and the tempest of active life. ”

“ Foresight of possible consequences leads to more careful and extensive observation of the nature and performances of the things he had to do with, and to laying out a plan—that is, of a certain order in the acts to be performed. ”

“ In things that can not be denied, we must endeavor to show that they are greatly short of what they are reported to be, or that they have been done with a different intention, or that they do not in any wise belong to the present question, or that repentance will make sufficient amends for them, or that they have already received a proportionate punishment. ”

“ Becoming covers such cases as, for example, the filling of a vessel into which a liquid is poured. But this becoming takes place in a manner which has its law in the person that fills the vessel; and the filling therefore may be considered not so much a becoming as the effect of a becoming, that is, as the result of that act which is being performed by man. ”

“ I felt that if I ever got a hearing I must succeed, for I had the most efficient company that perdition could furnish. Night after night we have shivered around through these mildewed halls, dragging chains, groaning, whispering, tramping up and down stairs, till to tell you the truth I am almost worn out. ”

“ But before I enter upon this subject, I must inform the Reader of two facts, which it is necessary he should know, at the same time that they are undeniable, and confirmed by [21] every day’s practice. The first is, that Penitents, as we have above-mentioned, both inflict those Disciplines on themselves with their own hands, and receive the same from other persons, either with scourges, or rods, or whip-cords. ”

“ When we look back upon events that have happened, we stand in a different position; we behold with a clearer vision as we embrace within our glance the beginning and the end, the act and the consequences. But the man who is doing the act may contemplate a very different result. ”

“ For it hath been proved by experience in the world that in the case of such matters of conscience laceration causeth healing; censure produceth increased diligence; prohibition induceth eagerness; and intimidation createth avidity. The root is hidden in the very heart, while the branch is apparent and evident. When one branch is cut off other branches grow. ”

“ If some smaller difficulties be got over, and prevail not to break her measures, God will raise greater, for he will overcome when he judges. It shall be such a hedge, and such a wall, that she shall not find her paths. The change of the person here, I will hedge up thy way, and then, She shall not find it, is usual in scripture, especially in an earnest way of speaking. ”

“ Lord, in which the objects, or agents, of one class are, without any formal notice, employed in the place of the persons or things of which the passages in which they occur treat; and they are exhibited either as exerting, or as subjected to an agency proper to their nature, in order to represent by analogy, the agency which those persons are to exert, or of which those things are to be the subjects. ”

“ These are qualifications with which the seer or seeress should be invested, and if with these the quest of the vision is unsuccessful after a period of earnest trial, it must be taken as sufficient warrant that the faculty of clairvoyance is not in the category of one's individual powers. ”

“ What must I do to be saved? is the important question< which it becomes every human being to study from the first hour of reason to the last; but which we, many fellow prisoners, ought to consdier with particular diligence and intenseness of meditation. ”

“ We see the effects of the understanding alone, not the understanding itself, and however various a burning city, cast iron, a burn, and steaming water may be, we recognize that in spite of the difference of effect, the same fire has brought about all these results. ”

“ But what does strike one as astonishing, or might do so if the circumstance were not still so common, is the evidence of the difficulty men experienced in really seeing things as they were, and of distinguishing the fundamentally important from the trivial or even irrelevant. ”

“ I have spoken of certitude as being assigned a definite and fixed place among our mental acts;—it follows upon examination and proof, as the bell sounds the hour, when the hands reach it,—so that no act or state of the intellect is certitude, however it may resemble it, which does not observe this appointed law. ”

“ No circumstance is so trifling as to be passed by, every detail is carefully studied with the object of discovering what the criminal is and how he came to be such, what are his possibilities, and by what methods those possibilities may be reached. ”

“ He bottles them all up, and will not suffer one of them to fall to the ground unregarded. I hope that these trials, which, like Job’s messengers, come one upon the back of another, by being sanctified, will make your soul as a watered garden. ”

“ Whether a scientific characterization of inclination is possible, whether the limits of this concept can be determined, and whether it is the result of nature, culture, or both together, are questions which can receive no certain answer. We shall not here speak of individual forms of inclination, i.e., to drink, to gamble, to steal, etc., for these are comparatively the most difficult of our modern problems. We shall consider them generally and briefly. Trees and men, says the old proverb, fall as they are inclined. ”

“ Now, when we are inclined to complain of the trials and hardships of the present, it is sometimes the part of wisdom for us to recall for a moment the conditions and circumstances which surrounded us in the past. ”

“ Nothing, therefore, would be more urgently required than calm reflection, a quiet survey of the whole field, so as to ascertain what there is calling for transformation, and what the means are, and where and how proper material can be found, to execute it. ”

“ The Processes implied in a ‘Conscientious’ Decision.—​Therefore, it is plain that before conscience is in a position to pronounce its verdict on the facts of a given case, the cultivated reason must review the pros and cons; the practised judgment must balance these, deciding which have the greater weight. ”

“ And, lastly, Judgment,—to decide how and where, and in what degree, each of these faculties ought to be exerted; so that the less shall not be sacrificed to the greater; nor the greater, slighting the less, arrogate, to its own injury, more than its due. ”

“ If an act require for its execution a chain, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, etc., of successive nervous events, then in the first performances of the action the conscious will must choose; each of these events from a number of wrong alternatives that tend to present themselves ”

“ In all cases therefore, the probability of compliance is much greater when nothing but compliance is expected, than when a thought of the contrary is, by some inauspicious word, or a mere look of doubt and anxiety, suggested. ”

“ This will appear from an examination of a few of the strongest cases on each side of the question.'
He then goes into an examination of the decided cases, for which it is only necessary to refer to the case itself. ”

“ The idea that man will have to render account concerning these three things in the order described, is expressed by our Sages in the following passage: “When man comes to the trial, he is first asked, ‘Hast thou fixed certain seasons for the study of the Law? Hast thou been engaged in the acquisition of wisdom? ”

“ In like manner as the field of investigation is somewhat shifted in the second petition, so the manner of investigation is correspondingly different. 'Search' is the divine scrutiny of the inner man by the eye; 'test' is the trial as metals are tried and proved by the fiery furnace. ”