erself as a castaway, Jane's sensitive
spirit was gradually lapsing into the gloomy horrors of predestination.
But this blindness of the father to such a tendency was very natural
in a man to whose eye familiarity with the doctrine had removed its
deformity. The old man looked upon her countenance with an expression
of mute affliction almost verging on despair; for a moment he forgot the
situation of his wife and everything but the consequences of a discovery
so full of terror and dismay.

"Alas, my unhappy child," he exclaimed, "and is this, too, to be added
to your misery and ours? Now, indeed, is the cup of our affliction full
even to overflowing. O God! who art good and full of mercy," he added,
dropping on his knees under the bitter impulse of the moment, "and who
wiliest not the death of a sinner, oh lay not upon her or us a weight
of sorrow greater than we can bear. We do not, O Lord! for we dare not,
desire Thee to stay Thy hand; but oh, chastise us in mercy, especially
her--her--Our hearts' dearest--she was ever the child, of our loves; but
now she is also the unhappy child of all our sorrows; the broken idol of
affections which we cannot change. Enable us, O God, to acquiesce under
this mysterious manifestation of Thy will, and to receive from Thy hand
with patience and resignation whatsoever of affliction it pleaseth Thee
to lay upon us. And touching this stricken one--if it were Thy blessed
will to--to--but no--oh no--not our will, oh Lord, but Thine be done!"

It was indeed a beautiful thing to see the sorrow-bound father bowing
down his gray locks with humility before the footstool of his God, and
forbearing even to murmur under a dispensation so fearfully calamitous
to him and his. Religion, however, at which the fool and knave may sneer
in the moments of convivial riot, is after all the only stay on which
the human heart can rest in those severe trials of life which almost
every one sooner or later is destined to undergo. The sceptic may indeed
triumph in the pride of his intellect or in the hour of his passion;
but no matter on what arguments his hollow creed is based, let but the
footstep of disease or death approach, and he himself is the first to
abandon it and take refuge in those truths which he had hitherto laughed
at or maligned. When Mr. Sinclair arose, his countenance, through all
the traces of sorrow which were upon it, beamed with a light which no
principle, merely human, could communicate to