Yet you muse again,--there are plenty of good people, as the times go,
who have their dislikes, and who speak them too. Even the sharp-talking
clergyman you have heard say some very sour things about his landlord,
who raised his rent the last year. And you know that he did not talk as
mildly as he does in the church, when he found Frank and yourself
quietly filching a few of his peaches through the orchard fence.
But your clergyman will say perhaps, with what seems to you quite
unnecessary coldness, that goodness is not to be reckoned in your
chances of safety; that there is a Higher Goodness, whose merit is
All-Sufficient. This puzzles you sadly; nor will you escape the puzzle,
until, in the presence of the Home altar, which seems to guard you, as
the Lares guarded Roman children, you _feel_--you cannot tell how--that
good actions must spring from good sources; and that those sources must
lie in that Heaven toward which your boyish spirit yearns, as you kneel
at your mother's side.
Conscience too is all the while approving you for deeds well done;
and--wicked as you fear the preacher might judge it--you cannot but
found on those deeds a hope that your prayer at night flows more easily,
more freely, and more holily toward "Our Father in Heaven.
Pages:
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83