I believe that the first words I ever remembered
of any sermon were those contained in the grand, brief sentence,-
-"Socrates died like a philosopher; but Jesus Christ--like a
God!"
Very vivid, too, is the recollection of the exquisite little
prose idyl of "Moss-Side," from "Lights and Shadows of Scottish
Life." From the few short words with which it began--"Gilbert
Ainslee was a poor man, and he had been a poor man all the days
of his life"--to the happy waking of his little daughter Margaret
out of her fever-sleep with which it ended, it was one sweet
picture of lowly life and honorable poverty irradiated with
sacred home-affections, and cheerful in its rustic homeliness as
the blossoms and wild birds of the moorland and the magic touch
of Christopher North could make it. I thought as I read--
"How much pleasanter it must be to be poor than to be rich--at
least in Scotland!"
For I was beginning to be made aware that poverty was a possible
visitation to our own household; and that, in our Cape Ann corner
of Massachusetts, we might find it neither comfortable nor
picturesque.
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