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Show 244 UNCLE TOM'S CABIN: OR, cometh shall sit down with me on my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father on his throne." How long Tom lay there, he knew not. When he came to himself, the fire was gone out, his clothes were wet with the chill and drenching dews; but the dread soul-crisis was past, and, in the joy that filled him, he no longer felt hunger, cold, degradation, disappointment, wretchedness. From his deepest soul, he that hour loosed and parted from every hope in the life that now is, and offered his own will an unquestioning sacrifice to the Infinite. Tom looked up to the silent, everliving stars,- typos of the angelic hosts who ever look down on man ; and the solitude of the night rung with the triumphant words of a hymn, which he had sung often in happier days, but never with such feeling as now: "i'he earth shall be dissolved like snow, The sun shall cca.se to shine ; But God, who called me here below, Shall be forever mine. "And when this mortal lifo shall filii, And flesh and sense shall cea.ao, I shall possess within the \'Cil A life of joy and peace. " When we 'vc been there ttn thousand yeara, Bright shining like the sun, We •,·c no less days to sing God's prl\iso Than when we first begun." Those who have been familiar with the religious histories of the slave population know that relations like what we have narrated arc very common among them. We have heard some from their own lips, of a very touching and affecting character. The psychologist tells us of a state, in which the affections and images of the mind become so i LIFE AMONG THE LOWLY. 245 dominant and overpowering, that they press into their servico the outward senses, and make them give tangible shape to the inward imagining. Who shall measure what an all-pervading Spirit may do with these capabilities of our mortality, or the ways in which He may encourage the desponding souls of the desolate? If the poor forgotten slave believes that Jesus hath appeared and spoken to him, who shall contradict him? Did He not say that his mission, in nil ages, was to bind up the broken-hearted, and set nt liberty them that are bruised? When the dim gray of dawn woke tho slumberers to go forth to the field, there was among those tattered and shivering wretches one who walked with an exultant tread; for firmer than the ground he trod on was his strong faith in Almighty, eternal love. Ah, Legree, try all your forces now! Utmost agony, woe, degradation, want, and loss of all things, shall only hasten on the process by which ho shall be made a king and a priest unto God ! From this time, an inviolable sphere of peace encompassed the lowly heart of the oppressed one,- an ever-present Saviour hallowed it as a temple. Past now the bleeding of earthly regrets; past its fluctuations of hope, and fear, and desire; the human will, bent, and bleeding, and struggling long, was now entirely merged in the Divine. So short now seemed the remaining voyage of life, - so near, so vivid, seemed eternal blessedness,- that life's uttermost woes fell from him unharming. All noticed the change in his appea.-ancc. Cheerfulness and alertness seemed to return to him, and a quietness which no insult or injury could ruffic seemed to possess him. n What the devil's got into 'fom?" Legree said to Sambo. VOL. II. 21* |