aints. And
so with the doctrines they held. Severity characterized them.
Justice became cruelty, and faith superstition. They knew nothing
of progressive revelations. The old Sinaitic God still ruled; the
mountain was still terrible, and dark with the clouds of wrath.
Fatherhood in the Deity was an unknown attribute, and tenderness a
note never sounded in the creed they held. They had been bred on
meat, and they were strong men. They knew nothing of the tender
tones of Him whose feet became the throne of the outcast. Their
God was a consuming fire.

As Mr. Penrose looked into their faces, many bitter thoughts
poisoned the waters of his soul. He thought of Simon the Pharisee;
he thought, too, of St. Dominic; and of Calvin with the cry for
green wood, so that Servetus might slowly burn. He thought, too,
of the curse of spiritual pride--pride that enthroned men as
judges over the destiny of their fellows, and damned souls as
freely and as coolly as a commander marched his forlorn hope into
the yawning breach. And then, realizing that among such his lot
was thrown--realizing also the dead hand that rested on his
teaching and preaching--his heart went down into a sea of
hopelessness, and he felt the chill of despair.

The gong of the chapel clock announced the hour of nine, in thin,
metallic beats, and looking up, he noted the swealing tapers in
the candelabra over his head. In his over-wrought, nervous
condition, he imagined he saw in one of the flickering, far-spent
lights the waning life of Amanda Stott, and the horrible thought
of eternal extinction at death laid its cold hand on the larger
hope which he was struggling to keep aflame in his darkening soul.
Turning his glances towards the pulpit that rose gaunt and square
above the deacons' pew, and over which hung the old sounding-board,
as though to mock the voices, now for ever silent, that from time
to time had been wont to reverberate from its panels, he began to
wonder whether the message the Church called revelation was not,
after all, as vain as 'laughter over wine'; and as he looked on
the frowning galleries and the distant corners of the chapel,
gloomy and fearsome--the high-backed pews, peopled with shadows
thrown from the waning lights--he felt the force of the words of
one of his masters: 'What shadows we are, and what shadows we
pursue.'

Suddenly he was recalled to his position as the pastor of the
church by the voice of old Enoch, mellow as the tones