Victorian Religion/A passage from GoughPrevious | Home | NextTranscript from original newspaper article: - |
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A PASSAGE FROM GOUGH.
– We had the pleasure of listening to Mr. Gough’s masterly
address, delivered in the city of Albany, on the 24th of October 1855.
He concluded with this beautiful and inspiring passage. Let every worker
read it, and go the work anew: - “Of those who began this work,
some are living to-day; and I should like to stand now and see the mighty
enterprise as it rises before them. They worked hard. They lifted the
first turf – prepared the bed in which to lay the corner stone.
They laid in amid persecution and storm. They worked under the surface
and men almost forgot that they were busy hard laying the solid foundation
far down beneath. By-and-by the got the foundation above the surface,
and there commenced another storm of persecution. Now you see the superstructure,
pillar after pillar, tower after tower, column after column, with the
capitals emblazoned – “Love, truth, sympathy, and good will
to all men.” Old men gaze upon it as it grows up before them. They
will not live to see it completed; but they see in faith the crowning
copestone set upon it. Meek eyed women weep as it grows in beauty; children
strew the pathway of the workmen with flowers. We do not see its beauty
yet – we do not see the magnificence of the superstructure yet –
because it is in course of erection. Scaffolding, ropes, ladders, workmen
ascending and descending, mar the beauty of the building; but by-and-by,
when the hosts who have laboured shall come up over a thousand battle-fields
waving with bright grain, never again to be crushed in the distilled –
through vineyards, under trellised vines with grapes hanging in all their
purpled glory, never again to be pressed into that which can debase and
degrade mankind: when they shall come through orchards, under trees hanging
thick with golden pulpy fruit, never to be turned into that which can
injure and debase – which they shall come up to the last distillery
and destroy to the last stream of liquid death and dry it up, to the last
weeping wife and wipe her tears gently away, the last little child and
lift him hp to stand where God meant that mankind should stand; to the
last drunkard and nerve him to burst the burning fetters, and make a glorious
accompaniment to the song of freedom by the clanking of his broken chains
– then, ah! they will the cope-stone be set upon it, the scaffolding
will fall with a crash, and the building will start in its wondrous beauty
before an astonished world.”
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