The Dairyman's Daughter, by the Reverend Legh Richmond
Created | Updated Feb 5, 2017
This month, the h2g2 Post Editor fulfills a personal promise [threat] to Guide Editor Bluebottle. Namely, to devote the month of February to a Literary Corner tribute to the literature connected to the Isle of Wight.
The Isle of Wight's literary connections are a fruitful source of inquiry, and we are grateful to Bluebottle for his Guide Entry and inspiration here.
The Dairyman's Daughter, by the Reverend Legh Richmond
Ed. Note: This uplifting excerpt comes from the Reverend Legh Richmond's popular book, The Dairyman's Daughter, first published in 1814. You can read the whole thing courtesy of Project Gutenberg. It's only 52 pages long. Go on, you might learn something. It's the biography of a person who became famous for being nice. How's that for unusual?
Thoughts on, er, thoughts
The mind of man is like a moving picture1, supplied with objects not only from contemplation on things present, but from the fruitful sources of recollection and anticipation2.
Memory retraces past events, and restores an ideal reality to scenes which are gone by forever3. They live again in revived imagery, and we seem to hear and see with renewed emotions what we heard and saw at a former period4. Successions of such recollected circumstances often form a series of welcome memorials. In religious meditations the memory becomes a sanctified instrument of spiritual improvement5.
Another part of this animated picture is furnished by the pencil of Hope6. She draws encouraging prospects for the soul, by connecting the past and present with the future7. Seeing the promises afar off, she is persuaded of their truth, and embraces them as her own.
The Spirit of God gives a blessing to both these acts of the mind, and employs them in the service of religion8. Every faculty of body and soul, when considered as a part of "the purchased possession" of the Saviour, assumes a new character. How powerfully does the apostle, on this ground, urge a plea for holy activity and watchfulness! "What! know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s." (1 Cor. vi. 19, 20).
The Christian may derive much profit and enjoyment from the use of the memory, as it concerns those transactions in which he once bore a part. In his endeavours to recall past conversations and intercourse with deceased friends in particular, the powers of remembrance greatly improve by exercise. One revived idea produces another, till the mind is most agreeably and usefully occupied with lively and holy imaginations9.
