He thus describes his own
experience, when, as Canon of St. Paul's, he had presented a valuable
living to the friendless son of the deceased incumbent. He announced the
presentation to the stricken family.--
"They all burst into tears. It flung me also into a great agitation,
and I wept and groaned for a long time. Then I rose, and said I
thought it was very likely to end in their keeping a buggy, at which
we all laughed as violently. The poor old lady, who was sleeping in a
garret because she could not bear to enter into the room lately
inhabited by her husband, sent for me and kissed me, sobbing with a
thousand emotions. The charitable physician wept too.... I never
passed so remarkable a morning, nor was more deeply impressed with the
sufferings of human life, and never felt more thoroughly the happiness
of doing good."
Of all his various remedies against melancholy, the one on which he most
constantly and most earnestly insisted, was the wisdom of "taking short
views,"--
"Dispel," he said, "that prophetic gloom which dives into futurity, to
extract sorrow from days and years to come, and which considers its
own unhappy visions as the decrees of Providence. We know nothing of
to-morrow: our business is to be good and happy to-day."
_Our business is to be good and happy_. This dogma inevitably suggests the
question--What was Sydney Smith's religion? First and foremost, he was a
staunch and consistent Theist.
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