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it altogether. For I think he is the more violently positive from the very feeling he has, that there is an essential thing wanting. He tries in this way to stifle his feelings, and to convince himself that he wants nothing."

"I have seen something like this," said I," in other cases; but I should not suspect it in your father. How is it that he is thus prejudiced?"

"It is partly," she answered, "his misfortune, and partly his fault: His misfortune, because in early life he was thrown into the midst of fanaticism and bigotry, which disgusted him, and rendered the whole system incredible to him: His fault, because he suffered prejudice to sway him, and did not deliberately institute an inquiry which should separate the false from the true, and show him that the system itself may be true and excellent, notwithstanding the follies of its friends."

"Can you state to me at length,” said I, "the circumstances under which these indelible impressions were made?"

Before Charlotte could more than commence a reply to this question, Mr Garstone

came in, and conversation took a different turn. I returned home, deeply interested in what I had heard, and anxious to hear

more.

more.

CHAPTER XV.

What I had now heard interested me too much to suffer me to rest until I had learned The history of Mr Garstone I found to be this:-He was the son of parents, whose religion partook of the character of austerity and superstition. He was educated in the most rigid restraint, and imbued diligently with the dogmas of the Assembly's Catechism. When he had grown to years of understanding, being of a strong mind and peculiarly susceptible feelings, his reflections on the subject of religion became earnest in the extreme, and occupied him day and night. A fear of God, rather dreadful than pleasant, as he expressed it, had always oppressed him, and it now made him miserable. The doctrines which he had learned in childhood, he now began to

himself.

understand and reason upon, and apply to He saw that if they were true, he was condemned by his birth to an eternal curse, whch only the re-creating grace of God could remove. And this grace was appointed to visit only a chosen few. Was he one of these chosen? Should he ever taste this grace? Or was he to be abandoned by the discriminating spirit of God to his horrible destiny?

Beneath the agony of heart which this personal application of his creed produced, he struggled long and wretchedly. His misery, he told me, was indescribable. His life for months was a burden of terror and fear. Every thing lost its relish in the desperate attempt to gain satisfaction and hope from what appeared to him the sentence of despair a sentence, which he was sometimes tempted to pronounce inconsistent with every attribute of justice and goodness. But this temptation he was taught to reject as blasphemous, and a foul instigation of the devil. He strove to smother every feeling of this nature, and in spite of the clear demonstration, which the more he reflected

the more strongly was forced upon him, he compelled himself to believe, that all this might be so, and God still be just. In this tumult of contradictions, in this struggle of his mind to be reconciled to what he felt to be dreadful, and tried in vain to see to be right, two years of misery past away, and health and cheerfulness passed away with them. Reading, reflection, tears, prayers, were all in vain. The counsel of friends was also vain; for his state of mind was a cause of congratulation to them, being, as they supposed, the struggle of the natural man in the throes of the new birth, from which he would come forth regenerate and rejoicing. They rather increased than allayed his perplexity. They rebuked his attempts to reason on the subject, and told him it was vain to hope for satisfaction, except only in that prostrate faith, which God would give if he pleased, and when he pleased. They bade him therefore wait, and not be guilty of the blasphemy of trying God's ways by the rules of human reason. He did wait, but to no purpose. He humbled himself, and strove to quell what

was called his pride, and to believe the consistency of what appeared to him contradic. tory, and made it the burden of his prayer, that he might only find peace, and he would willingly sacrifice every other thing. It was all in vain. No peace came. But, not to prolong the story, the powers of his mind at last triumphed. He found it impossible, after every effort, to attribute to the government of God, what he had been taught to attribute to it. He gradually came to the determination that such a system could not be true, and he rejected it as contradicting almost every high and holy truth, which nature and common sense teach of the great Creator.

I could not help being deeply interested in this history. Unhappy man, thought I, thus driven away from the light and comforts of God's word! How different might have been the result, if he had been blessed with early opportunities like mine! He would have found help in his difficulties, as I did; he would have learned, that the gospel of God's love is not implicated with any of those dogmas," at which reason

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