The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 7.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

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[275] sorrow, yearnings for lost peace, outgrushing gratitude of forgiven spirits, hopes and fears, which stretch beyond the horizon of time into eternity. Death is here. The graveyard utters its warning. Over all bends the eternal heaven in its silence and mystery. Nature, even here, is mightier than Art, and God is above all. Underneath the din of labor and the sounds of traffic, a voice, felt rather than heard, reaches the heart, prompting the same fearful questions which stirred the soul of the world's oldest poet,—‘If a man die, shall he live again’ ‘Man giveth up the ghost, and where is he’ Out of the depths of burdened and weary hearts comes up the agonizing inquiry, ‘What shall I do to be saved’ ‘Who shall deliver me from the body of this death’

As a matter of course, in a city like this, composed of all classes of our many-sided population, a great variety of religious sects have their representatives in Lowell. The young city is dotted over with ‘steeple houses,’ most of them of the Yankee order of architecture. The Episcopalians have a house of worship on Merrimac Street,—a pile of dark stone, with low Gothic doors and arched windows. A plat of grass lies between it and the dusty street; and near it stands the dwelling-house intended for the minister, built of the same material as the church and surrounded by trees and shrubbery. The attention of the stranger is also attracted by another consecrated building on the hill slope of Belvidere,—one of Irving's ‘shingle palaces,’ painted in imitation of stone,— a great wooden sham, ‘whelked and horned’ with