The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. I., No. 11, July, 1835Various
General
The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. I., No. 11, July, 1835
Various
American literature -- 19th century -- Periodicals
Again, when we look abroad to animated creation, and see that man
alone has placed within him a principle which guides and directs him,
independently of instinct--a principle which, in spite of all the arts
of sophistry and self-delusion, tells him in language which cannot be
mistaken, that he is responsible for his acts; and when we further see
the immense amount of vice and wickedness in this world which does not
meet with its deserved punishment here, and virtue failing to receive
its reward;--when we behold all this, and reflect, as we cannot fail
to do, that the Creator of the world is a God of justice and
impartiality, we are at once driven into the belief that there must be
a hereafter, where all these things will be equalized. It is when we
see the wicked son, the unnatural father, and the fiendish
mother--when we peruse the histories of such monsters as Nero,
Caligula, Commodus, Louis XI of France, or Richard III of England--of
the Tullias, the Messalinas and the Macbeths, that we are forced to
acknowledge that there must be a _Tartarus_. Again, we meet with
humble virtue and piety in this world, possessed by those who labor
and toil through life, sometimes groaning under the oppression of a
cruel persecutor, who, bloated with vice, is nevertheless wallowing in
apparent luxury and ease, while the victims of his oppression are
overwhelmed with every calamity and misfortune "which flesh is heir
to"--each one of whom, in the hour of death, may truly say, in the
pathetic language of the patriarch of old, "short, but replete with
woe has been my day." When we contemplate this, the mind does not rest
satisfied, without an _elysium_ where the weary are to be at rest, and
the wicked to cease from troubling. "Wherefore do the wicked live,
become old--yea, are mighty in power? Is there no reward for the
righteous? is there no punishment for the workers of iniquity? is
there no God that judgeth in the earth?" It is only the awful
retribution of a hereafter which can satisfactorily explain to all
"Why unassuming worth, in secret lived
And died neglected; why the good man's share
Was gall and bitterness of soul;
Why the lone widow and her orphans pin'd
In starving solitude; while luxury,
In palaces, lay straining her low thought,
To form unreal wants; why heaven-born truth
And moderation fair, wore the red marks
Of superstition's scourge; why licensed pain,
That cruel spoiler, that imbosom'd foe,
Imbitter'd all our bliss."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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