Superficial Religion.

It is to me one of the most pitiful of sights to see men and women whipped into religion by misfortune, as idle boys of old time were whipped into their lessons, and as lazy men are scourged by poverty to manly industry and work. These persons endure for a time, but when money comes back, when new friends fill the aching void which old ones had left, the new religion is withered and dried up, because there was no deepness of earth. So Jonah's gourd sprang up in a single night, to shelter the prophet's head, but the morning sunbeam looked on it, and it melted down and was gone. Such persons set up religion in the day of their distress, as a man holds an umbrella over his head in a summer shower, but the storm passes by, and religion is cast aside as the umbrella, to lie with rubbish in a corner till the next storm comes, when it will be taken up again to shelter their heads, but poor and old, and dingy and rent, worthless as a shelter, and contemptible as an ornament. There are some homely lines which well describe the consciousness of such men:

"The Lord and the doctor we alike adore
Just on the brink of danger, not before;
When the danger is past, both alike are requited,—
The Lord is forgotten, and the doctor is slighted."

But with other persons, with great depth of soul, the occasion only is transient; the religion it wakens lasts for ever, and bears fruit continually. Now and then you see this in a nation, which persecution or war scourges into religion. It was so with the Hebrews, so with the founders of New-England. Have you never seen men and women whom some disaster drove to a great act of prayer, and by-and-by the disaster was forgot, but the sweetness of religion remained and warmed their soul? So have I seen a storm in latter spring; and all was black, save where the lightning tore the cloud with thundering rent. The winds blew and the rains fell, as though heaven had opened its windows. What a devastation there was! Not a spider's web that was out of doors escaped the storm, which tore up even the strong-branched oak. But ere long the lightning had gone by, the thunder was spent and silent, the rain was over, the western wind came up with its sweet breath, the clouds were chased way, and the retreating storm threw a scarf of rainbows over her fair shoulders and resplendent neck, and looked back and smiled, and so withdrew and passed out of sight. But for weeks long the fields held up their hands full of ambrosial flowers, and all the summer through the grass was greener, the brooks were fuller, and the trees cast a more umbrageous shade, because that storm passed by,—though all the rest of earth had long forgot the storm, its rainbows, and its rain.—Theodore Parker.

Not they who court the public applause get their names joined in stable wedlock with fame; but they who scorn that applause, and ask only for their own soul's approbation, and the praise of God. Their names it is that live for ever.—Ibid.