Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 383, September 1847Various
General
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 383, September 1847
Various
England -- Periodicals; Scotland -- Periodicals
forced to brook the will of Turkish lords, growing up forgetful of that
faith, which became to them as an early, foolish vision; that so many once
happy boys should wear away their lives in bondage beneath that very air
which they had fancied holier than their own. Yet these had all issued
forth in joyous expectation, filled with the hope of heaven. For so it is
always on this earth, that happiness and goodness are really to be derived
for us human beings through the commonest things. Not far away, nor in any
thing which we cannot easily do, but nearer and nearer every day to home,
and what we are concerned with, is the Joy, the Peace which glimmers out
of every living thing. When you hear of God and heaven, you ought not to
think of these as having any meaning separated from direct, unhesitating,
simple life--since God is in every growing leaf about us, no less than in
the sky; and there is a part of heaven revealed in each right action of
this day, in each smile of approval from your parents, and in all
temperate earthly joys. Had these unhappy children continued but at home,
believing like children that what was good for those older than they was
good for themselves also,--looking through their parents at life and
death, the necessities of home would have ever drawn round them a line of
certainty, sufficient even amidst that unfavourable ancient time. But as
it was, they were plunged all at once into a state of complete
helplessness, where yesterday had no connexion with today's work, where
there was nothing to remind them of their former selves, only that their
wish to wander forth to fairer scenes now exchanged for a sick
heart-longing after Home, in which many pined away. However, there was One
of the captive youths at Tunis to whom this Thought of the spot he had so
foolishly left became gradually a sort of nourishment and support, as it
grew more clear and fond. Even after his religious belief, for want of the
due confirmation, had almost died away, or yielded to his Moorish master's
commands, yet the recollection of childish years came in its place,
growing and strengthening the more the longer his captivity endured. In
his master's train did this youth visit first Mecca, which followers of
the Prophet consider holy, and finally also Jerusalem itself. In the
latter place, which, so many years before, he and his companions had
ignorantly set out to reach, he now was struck with painful wonder, both
at all things there, and at himself. Nothing more beautiful or holy was
there here than elsewhere. The fields, the woods, and the hut where he was
born were, in his mind, fairer far than this pale, scattered city, with
its deep, dark valleys of tombs, into which the gray Desert crept. Almost
a scorn of all beliefs flashed upon him as he saw the dusty pilgrims
prostrate around a piece of silent stone in the church of the Sepulchre,
while the turbaned faces of the Moslem sneered behind. Only there still
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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