But then, is not all
celestial bliss burdened by this condition; nay, is not even our earthly
bliss, which is a foretaste of heaven, only a flower raised upon the
rottenness of other flowers--a type of the soul as it issues from
corruption? Yes, Aminadab could not get to the holy of holies except by
passing through Logie kirkyard, a small and most romantic Golgotha, on
the left of the road leading to Lochee, whose inhabitants it contained,
and which was so limited and crowded, that one might prefigure it as one
of those holes or dungeons in Michael Angelo's pictures, belching forth
spirits in the shape of inverted tadpoles, the tail uppermost, and yet
representing ascending sparks. The wickets that surrounded Logie
House--lying as it does upon the south side of Balgay Hill, and flanked
on the east by a deep gully, wherethrough runs a small stream, which, so
far as I know, has no name--were locked at night. The terrors of this
place, at the late hours when these said henchmen behoved to seek their
savoury rewards, were the only drawback to Aminadab's supreme bliss.
And if the time of these symposial meetings had been somewhat later in
the century, how much more formidable would have been a passage through
this contracted valley of tumuli and bones! No churchyard, except those
of Judea, was ever invested with such terrors--not the mystical fears of
a divine fate seen in the descending cloud, with Justice gleaming with
fiery eyes on Sin, and holding those scales, the decision of which would
destine to eternal bliss or eternal woe, and that Justice personified in
Him "whose glory is a burning like the burning of a fire,"--no, but the
revolting fears produced by the profanity of that poor worm of very
common mud, which has been since the beginning of time acting the God.
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