waves' immeasurable laugh,—how delighted are these little
children of God! Their life seems one continuous holiday,
the shoal waters a play-ground. Their food is plenteous
as the water itself. Society is abundant, and of the most
unimpeachable respectability. They have their little child's games which last all day. No one is hungry, ill-mannered, ill-dressed, dyspeptic, love-lorn, or melancholy. They fear no hell. These cold, white-fleshed, and bloodless little atomies seem ever full of joy as they can hold; wise without study, learned enough with no book or school, and well cared for amid their own neglect. They recollect no past, they provide for no future, the great God of the ocean their only memory or forethought. These little, short-lived minnows are to me a sermon eloquent; they are a psalm to God, above the loftiest hymnings of Theban Pindar, or of the Hebrew king.
On the land, see the joy of the insects just now coming into life. The new-born butterfly, who begins his summer life to-day, how joyous he is in his claret-coloured robe, so daintily set off with a silver edge! No Pharisee, enlarging the borders of his garments, getting greetings in the markets and the uppermost seat at feasts, and called of men "Kabbi," is ever so brimful of glee as our little silver-bordered fly. He has a low seat in the universe, for he is only a butterfly ; but to him it is good as the upper-most; and in the sunny, sheltered spots in the woods, with brown leaves about him, and the promise of violets and five-fingers by and by, the great sun gently greets him, and the dear God continually says to this son of a worm, "Come up higher!"
The adventurous birds that have just come to visit us, how delighted they are, and of a bright morning how they tell their joy! each robin and blackbird waking, not with a dry mouth and a parched tongue, but with a bosom full of morning psalms to gladden the day with "their sweet jargoning." What a cheap luxury they pick up in the fields; and in a clear sunrise and a warm sky find a delight which makes the pomp of Nebuchadnezzar seem ridiculous!
Even the reptiles, the cold snake, the bunchy and calumniated toad, the frog, now newly awakened from his hybernating sleep, have a joy in their existence which is
