Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/14

 Begun under these unfavorable auspices, the work was an object of pursuit with him through a long period of time; nor did his investigations proceed far, before he was fully assured that it was vast, beyond his highest expectations; and from that time the difficulty has been, not to meet the expectation of a large book, but to bring these immense materials within this limited space. Growing thus in his hands, through months and years, his subject soon increased also in its interest to him, till in the progress of time and various other contemporaneous occcupations, it rose from the character of a task to that of a delightful, a dignified, and dignifying pursuit; and he was soon disposed to look on it not as a labor, but as a recreation from avocations less congenial to his taste. It called him first from the study of a profession, sickening and disgusting in many of its particulars; and was his frequent resource for enjoyment in many a season of repose. His attention was often distracted from it, by calls to diverse and opposite pursuits; by turns to the public labors and responsibilities of an editor and an instructor,—but in the midst of these it was his solace and refreshment, till at last it wholly drew him away from everything besides itself, and became for months his sole, constant, absorbing and exhausting occupation. Too often, indeed, were the pursuits with which it was at first varied and interchanged, the occasion of disturbances and anxieties that did anything but fit him for the comfortable pursuit of his noble task; yet these evils themselves became the means of inspiring him with a higher and purer regard for it, because they drove him to this as an only consolation. As was most eloquently and beautifully said by the evangelical George Horne, at the conclusion of a similar task,—"And now, could the author flatter himself, that anyone would take half the pleasure in reading the work, which he hath taken in writing it, he would not fear the loss of his labor." Well would it be, both for the writer and his work, if he could truly add in the melodious sentence which Horne subjoins, that "the employment detached him from the bustle and hurry of life, and the noise of folly;"—that "vanity and vexation flew away for a season,—care and disquietude came not nigh his dwelling."