Newspapers / Western Carolinian (Salisbury, N.C.) / Aug. 27, 1822, edition 1 / Page 4
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i'lie Mi ! w Li"t V "'iu Mw inspires, , Mv HO'il til-- tuneful strain Klmirti,.,.niiT. The following beautiful suna arc taken out of an old Engliah Collection, and were written M long ago at 16J0, by Sir Hubert Ayton, at that time Secretary to Mary and Anne, Queens Scotland : GnY$an. TO A DESERTED FAIll ONE. I do confess thee awett and fair, And near I might hav gone to love Dice, Had 1 not found the slightest prayer Tliat lip should speak, had power to move '" , ',th ., , t, Dut 1 can let tliee now alone ' A worthy to be lovM by none. 1 did pronounce thee sweet, yet find Thee to regardless of thy sweets, Thy favors are too like the wind That kisscth every thing it meets i And since thou lovest with more than one, Thou art worthy to be loved by none. The morning rose, that untouched standi, Armed with her briars, how sweetly smells Sat, plucked and soiled by vulgar hands, Iter sweet no longer with her dwells, But Kent and beauty, both are gone, And leaves fall from her one by one. 8ucb fate ere long will thee betide, When thou hast handled been awliile, Like withered blossoms cast aside, , And I alull sigh, while some will smile To see thy love to every one Hath brought thee to be loved by none. IAututs rftc, &c. Variety's the very spice of Wc, That gives it all its Havor. AN IIOL.1 IN THE MANSE. , (Frosi "Light and Shadn$ ScittUh Life" la a few weeks the annual Sacra meat of the Lord's Supper was to be administered in the Paris of Dean side ; and the minister, venerable in old age, of authority by the power of his tal . ents and learning;, almost feared for his sanctity, yet withal beloved for gentle ness aad compassion that had never been found wanting, when required cither by the misfortunes or errors of any of his fi k, had delivered for sev eral successive Sabbaths, to full con gregations, sermons on the proper pre paration of communicants in thai aw ful ordinance. The old man was a fol lower of Calvin, and many, who had listened to him with a resolution in their hearts to approach the table of the Redeemer, felt so awe stricken and awakened at the conclusion of his ex hortations, that they gave their souls another year t meditate on what they hid heard, and by .. pure and humble course of. life, to render themselves !c& unworthy to partake the myste rious id holy bread and wine. Tr (rood old man received in the 2M-it fr a couple of hours every eve ning, such of his parishioners as came to signify thrir wish to partake of the a-r mcnt, and it was then noted, that th fi he In nowise departed, in his coav nation with them at such times, from the spirit of those doctrines which he had delivered from the pulpit, yet his manner was milder, and more toothing. and full of encouragement ; o that many who went to him almost with quaking hearts, departed in tran quility and peace, and looked forward to that mom impressive and solemn act cf th! christian religion, with calm and glad anticipation. The old man thought truly and justly, that few, if any, would tome to the manse, after having heard him in the kirk, without due and deep reflection, and therefore, though he al lowed none to pass through his hands without strict examination, he spoke to them all benignly, and with that sort cf paternal pity, which a religious man, about to leave this life, feels towards z his brt:hr:r. cf zukind, who arc entering upon, or engaged in its scenes of agitation trouble and danger. One of those evening, the servant showed into the minister's study a tall wjiu touting, uars visagca man, to tne prwnc of life, who, with little of the usual courteay, advanced into the mid dle of the room, and somewhat abrupt ly dftlarcd the secret purpose of his visit. But before he could receive a reply, he looked around and before him, and there was something so solemn in the old minister's appearance, as he sat like a ;irit, with tm unclouded ryes fixed up n the intruder, that that per son's coii. tnance fell, and his heart was inv- luntarily knocking against his An old large Bible, the same! tl.it he read from in the pulpit, wasly- ug open bclt.rc him. One ghmmer- top- candle snewea ni dcsuuiui aim itvery locks falling on his temples, as 113 beau nan stoo;cu over trie sacreu page ; a ucau silence was in me room dedicated to meditation and prayer; the old man, it was known, liau t r some time felt himtielf to be dying, and spoken of the sacrament ot this summer as the last he could ever hope to administer j so that altogether, in the silence, the dimness, the sanctity, the unworldliner.1 of the time, the plai e, and the being before him, the viaitcr toad like one abashed and appalled; and bowing more reverently, or, at least, respectfully, he said, with a hur ried and quivering voice, 44 bir, 1 come for your sanction to be admitted to the table of our Lord. The minister motioned to him with his hand to sit down, and it was a re lief to the trembling man to do so, for he was in the presence of otic who he fck saw into his heart. A sudden change from hardihood to terror, took place within his dark r.ature; he wish ed himself out of the insupportable sanctity of that breathless room ; and a remorse, that had hitherto slept or been drowned within him, now clutch ed his heart strings, as if with an al ternate grasp ot irost ana hre, and made his knees knock against each oth cr where he sat, and his face pale as ashes. 44 Norman Adams," saidst thou, that thou wilt take into that hand, and pp. into those lips the symbol of the blood that was shed for siunrrs, and of the body that bowed on the cross, and then gave up the ghost ? If so, let us spe.ik together, even as it thou wert com muning with thine own heart. Never again, may I join in that sacrament, for the hour cf my departure is at hand. Say, wilt thou eat and drink death to thine immortal soul? The terrified man found strength to rise from his seat, staggering towards the door, said, ' Pardon, forgive me, I am not worthy It is not 1 who can pardon, Norman." The power lies not with man ; but sit down you are deadly pale and though, I fear, an ill-living and dissolute man, greater sinners have repented, and been saved. Approach not now the table of the Lord, but confess all your sins before him in the silence of your own house, and upon your naked knees on the stone-Uoor every morning and every night ; and if this you do faithfully, his cell and come forth to execution, humbly, and with a contrite heart,! The minister fixed a stern eye upon come to me again when the sacrament I Norman, for from the poor girl's un is over, and I will speak words of com-! conscious words, it was plain that he fort to you, if, then, I am able to speak, ! was the guilty wretch who had wrought if, Norman, it should be on my death ' all this misery. ' You knew, did you bed. This will I do for the sake of not, that she bad neither father nor thy soul, and for the sake of thy father, Norman, whom my soul loved, and who was a support to me m my min istry for many long years, even for two score and ten, for we were at school together; and had your father been living now, he would, like myself, have finished his eightv-fifih year. , I send you not from me in anger, but in pity, and love. Go. mv son. and this verv night begin your repentance, for if that lace speak the trutn, your heart must be sorely charged. Just as the old man ceased speaking, and before the humble, or at least af frighted culprit had risen to go, anoth er visiter of a very different kind was snown into tne room. A young beau-; tifulgirl, almost shrouded in her cloak, with a sweet pale face, on which sad- ness seemed in vain to strive with the natural expression of the happiness of youth. " Mary Simpson," said the kind old man, as she stood with a timid courte sy near the door ; Mary Simpson, ap proach, and receive from my hands the token for which thou comtst. -Well dost thou know the history of thy Sa viour's life, and reioicest in the life and immortality brought to light by th gospel. Young and guileless, Mary, iit lowu, and uim as my memory now is of many things, yet do I well re member the evening, when first beside my knee, thou hcardst read how the TX' m r uivine iniant was laid in a manger how the wise men from the east came to the place of his nativity and how the angels were heard sineine in the fielJ of Bethlehem all the night long." Alas every word that had thus been uttered, sert a pang into the poor crea ture's heart, .Mid without lifting her eyes from the floor, and in a voice more faint and hollow than belonged o one so young, she said, . Oh ! sir, I come not as an intending communi r;int ; yet the Lord my God knows that I am rather miserbl than guilty, ar.d he will cot suffer my soul to ptrjsh, though a baby ij now within rrit, the ,:hiM of guilt, and sin, and horror This, my slume,' I come to tell you ; but for the father of my babe unborn, cruel though he has been to me, Oh! cruel, cruel indeed yet shall his name go down with me in silence to the grave. I must not, must not breathe his name in mortal ears: but I have ookeel round me m the wide moor, and when nothing that could under stand was by, nothing living but birds, and bees, and the sheep 1 was herding, often have I whispered his name in my prayers, andbesteched God and Jesus, to fonrive him all his sins. At these words, of which the pas sionate utterance seemed to relieve her heart, and before the pitying and be wildered old man could reply, Alary Simpson raised her eyes from the floor, and tearing to meet the lace ot the minister, which had heretofote never shone upon her but with smiles, and of which the expected frown was to her altogether insupportable, she turn ed them wildly round the room, as i for a resting place, and beheld Norman Adams rooted to his seat, leaning to wards her with his white ghastly coun tenance, and his eyes starting from their sockets, seemingly in wrath, ago ny, fear and remorse.- I hat terribl face struck poor Mary to the heart and she sank against the wall, and slip ped down, shuddering, upon a chair. "INorman Adams, 1 am old and weak, but do you put your arm around that por lost creature, and keep her from tailing down upon the hard floor I hear it is a stormy night and she has walked some miles hither; no wondc she is overcome. You have heard he confession. But it was not meant for your car; so, till I see you again, say nothing of what you have heard. O sir ! a cup of water, for my blood is either leaving my heart altogether or i is drowning it. ' Your voice, sir is going far away from me, and I am sinking down. Oh ! hold me hold me up ! is it a pit into which I am falling i Saw I not Norman Adams? Where u he now ? The poor maiden did not fall off the I chair, although Norman Adams sup- ported her not ; but her head lay back against the wall, and a sigh, long and dismal, burst from her bosom that deep ly affected the old man's heart, but struck that of the speechlesa and mo tionless sinner, like the first toll of the j prison bell that warns the lelon to leave mother, sister nor brother, scarcely one relation on earth to care for or watch over her; and yet you have used her so ? If her beauty was a temptation un to you, did not the sweet child's inno cence touch jour hard and sclfih heart with pity ; or her guilt and grief must surely now wring it with remorse. Look onher white cold breathless still as a cornse. and vet. thou bold bad man, thy footsteps would have ap- proached the I able of the Lord. The child now partly awoke from her swoon, and her dim opening eves met those of Norman Adams. She shut them with a shudder, and said. 'sickly and with a quivering voice, O spare, spare me, iorman; are wc - again in that dark, fearful wood.' remblcnotfor your life on earth, Nor- man, lor never, never, will 1 tea to mortal cars that terrrible secret; but spare me, spare roe, else our Saviour with all bis mercy, will never pardon your unrelenting soul. These are cru el looking eyes ; you will not surely murder poor Mary Simpson, unhappy as she is, and must forever be yet life is sweet! Shc'feesceches you on her knees to spare h'er life" and, in the intense fear of phantasy, the poor ere a turehstruggled off the chair, and fell down indeed in a heap at his feet. Canst thou indeed be the son of old Norman Adams, the industrious, the temperate, the mild, and the pious? Who so often sat in this very room which your presence has now polluted, and spake with me on the mysteries of life and f death. Foul ravisher, what stayed thy hand from the murder of thai child, when there were none near to hear her shrieks in the dark solitude of the great pine wood. Norman Adams smote his heart and fell down too on his knees beside the poor ruined orphan, lie put his arm rrnind her, and, raising her frotn the floor, said, No, no, my sin is great, too great for heaven's forgiveness ; but, O ! Sir, say not say not that I would have murdered her ; for, savage as my rime was, yet may Cod juug me less terribly than if I had taken her life.' In a little while they were both sea ted with some composure, and silence was in the room : no one spoke, and the old gray haired man sat with eyes fixed, without reading, on the open bi ble. At last he broke silence vith these words out of Isaiah, that seemed to have forced themselves on his heed- ess eyess Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow ; though they be red like crimsom, they shall be as wool.' Mary SimnHon wept aloud at these words ; and seemed to forget her, own wrongs and grief in commiseration of the agonies ol remorse and tear that were now plainly preying on the soul of ihe guilty man. -'I forgive you, Norman, and will be soon out of the way, no longer to anger you with the sight of me.' Then fixing her stream ing eyes on the minister, she besought him not to be the means of bringing him to punishment, and a shameful death, for that he might repent, and live to be a good man, and respected .1 t i . . l , in me parisu; dui mat sue was a poor orphan for whom few cared, and who, when dead,' would have but a small fu neral. .. 4 1 will deliver myself up into the hands of justice,' said the offender, 4 for I do not deserve to live. Mine was an inhuman crime, and let a vio lent and shameful death be my doom.' The orphan girl now stood up as if j her strength had been restored, and stretching out her hands passionately, with a flow of most affecting and beau tiful language, inspired by a meek, sin gle, and sinless heart, that could not bear the thought of utter degradation and wretchedness befalling any one of the rational children of God, implored and beseeched the old man to comfort a a tne sinner belore them, and promise that the dark transaction of guilshould never leave the concealment of their own three hearts. Did he not save the lives of two brothers once who were drowning in that black nvssy loch, when their own kindred, at work among the hay, feared the deep sulltfn water, and all stood aloof, shuddering and shrieking, till Norman Adams leapt into their rescue, and drew them by the dripping hair to the shore, and then lay down beside them on the hea ther, as like to death as themselves ? I myself saw it done ; I myself heard the mother call down the blessings of God on Norman's head, and then all the haymakers knelt down and prayed. When you, on the Sabbath, returned thanks to God for that they were saved, Oh ! kind sir, did you not n ime, in the full kirk, him who, under Providence, did deliver them from death, and who, you said, had thus showed himself to be a christian indeed? May his sins against me be forgotten, for the sake if those two drowning boys, and their mother, w ho blesses his name unto this day.' From a few questions solemnly ask ed, and solemnly answered, the minis ter fqund that Norman Adams had beenwon by the beauty and loveliness of this poor orphan khepherdess, as he had sometimes spoken to her when sit ting on the hill side with her flock, but, that pride prevented him from ever thinking of her in marriage. It ap peared that he had also been falsely informed, by a youth whom Mary dis liked for his brutal and gross manners, that she was hot the innocent girl that her seeming simplicity denoted. On returning from festive meeting, where this abject person had made many mean insinuations against her virtue, Norman Adams met her returning to her master's house, in the dusk of the evening, on the foot path leading through a lonely wood ; and though his crime was of the deepest dye, it seem ed to the minister of the religion of mercy, that by repentance, and belief in the atonement that had once been made for sinners, he, too, might per haps hope for forgiveness at the throne of God. 4 1 warned you, miserable man, cf the fatal nature of sin, when first it bro't a trouble over your countenance, and broke in upon the peaceful integ rity of your life. Was not the silence of the night often terrible to you, when you were alone in the moors, and the whipers ol your own conscience told you, that every wickeu tnougnt was sacrilege to your father's dust? Step by step, and almost imperceptibly, per haps, did you advance upon the road that leadeth to destruction ; but look backr.ow, and what a long dark journey have you taken, standing, as you are, on the brick of everlasting death Unce yod were kind, gentle, gencroi: manly and tree, but you trusted to t: dcceitfulness of your own heart; yC estranged yourself from the house t the God of your fathers, and what h? your nature done for you at last, It. sunk you into a wretch, savage, selhV cruel, cowardly, and in good truth J slave? A felon are you, and forfeit f to the hangman's hands. Look up that poor innocent child, and thk what is man without God. Wis would you give now, if the last thr years of your reckless life had bee past in a dungeon dug deep into tl earth, with hunger and thirst gnawk at your heart, and bent down under cart load of chains ? Yet look not ghastly, for I condemn you not utte' ly, nor, thouch I know you guilt." can I know what good may yet be 1 uncorrupted and unextinguished' vour soul. Kneel not to me. Norms Hasten not so vour eyes upon me i t them upwards, and then turn them upon your own heart, for the recko ing dreadful is between it and God.' Mary Simpson had now recovert all her strength, and she knelt down ,r.l.- . T . .. . : tne siue oi uic groitncr. ascrp w;' the pity she now felt for him who her had shown no pity ; she did rfbt fuse to lay her light arm tenderly u on his neck. . Otten had she prayed God to save his soul, even among h rueful sobof shame in the solita glens, and now that she beheld his 4 punished with remorse more than could bear, the orphan would have wf lingly died to avert from his prostn j head the wrath of the Almighty, t A he old mnn wept at the sight of? much innocence, and so much gu' kneeling togctherbefore God, instrar union and fellowship of a common ing. With his own fatherly arms lifted up the ophan from her knt and said, Mary Simpson, my sw aad innocent Mary Simpson, for inn, cent thou art, the ciders will give th a jtoken, that will on Sabbath day af, mit thee (not for the first time, thou so young) to the communion table. Fear not to approach it ; look on t and on my face, when I bless the e ments, and be thou strong in t strength of the Lord. Norman A ams, return you home. Go into it room where your father died. 4 your knees wear out the part of r floor on which he kneeled. ' It is soi what worn already ; you have seen mark of your father's knees. knows, but that pardon and peace n? descend from Heaven even upon su a sinner as thou. On none such as tin have mine eyes ever looked, in knoi! edge, among all those w ho have and died under my care, for three ge erations. But great is the unknot guilt that may be hidden even in rf ihurchyard of a small quiet parish li' this. Dost thou feci as if God-fort ken? Or, Oh! say it unto me, cat thou, my poor son, dare to hope for f pentaneef ? The pitTul tone of the old jnaf trembling voice and the motion of t, shaking and withered hands as he I! ted them up almost in an attitude benediction, completed the prostratis of that sinner's spirit. All his bettf nature, which had too long been o pressed under scorn of holy ordini ces, and the coldness of infidelity, the selfishness of lawless designs fL insensibly harden the heart they do rt dissolve, now struggled to rise up 9 respect its rights. 4 When I remel ber what I once was, I can hope whl I think what I now am, I only, on! fear.' 7 j A stom of wind and rain had com on, and Mary Simpson slept in tl manse that night. On the ensuin Sabbath she partook of the sacramert" A woeful illness fell upon Norma! Adams ; and thn for a long time nl one saw him, or knew where he wat gone. It was said he was in a distan city, and that he was i miserable crea tlire. that nvF ln,in rnnlrl Innl- the sun. Uut it was otherwise ordcri ed. He returned to his farm greatlj changed in face and person, but evei; yet more changed in spirit. The old minister had more days a! lutted to him than he had thought, ami was not taken away for some summers Before he died, he had reason to know; that Norman Adams had repented ini tears of blood, in thoughts of faith! and in deeds of charity; and he did not fear to admit him, too, in good, time, to holy ordinance, along with; Mary Simpson, then his wife, and the' mother of his children. 1 . 1 Paftuian'.I cannot, says Cicero, see why? people arc ashamrd to acknowledge a pasoioJ tor popularity, i M love or popularity is the love of being beloved.
Western Carolinian (Salisbury, N.C.)
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Aug. 27, 1822, edition 1
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