ual admission of such beliefs
as most violated the natural sensibilities of the heart. They were so
sure that affectionate instincts were by nature wrong in their
tendencies, so eager to cumulate evidences of the original depravity,
that, when their parson propounded a theory that gave a shock to their
natural affections, they submitted with a kind of heroic pride, however
much their hearts might make silent protest, and the grounds of such a
protest they felt a cringing unwillingness to investigate. There was a
determined shackling of all the passional nature. What wonder that
religion took a harsh aspect? As if intellectual adhesion to theological
formulas were to pave our way to a knowledge of the Infinite!--as if our
sensibilities were to be outraged in the march to Heaven!--as if all the
emotional nature were to be clipped away by the shears of the doctors,
leaving only the metaphysic ghost of a soul to enter upon the joys of
Paradise!

Within eight months after his loss, Mr. Johns thought of Rachel only as
a gift that God had bestowed to try him, and had taken away to work in
him a humiliation of the heart. More severely than ever he wrestled with
the dogmas of his chosen divines, harnessed them to his purposes as
preacher, and wrought on with a zeal that knew no abatement and no rest.

In the spring of 1825 Mr. Johns was invited by Governor Wolcott to
preach the Election Sermon before the Legislature convened at Hartford:
an honorable duty, and one which he was abundantly competent to fulfil.
The "Hartford Courant" of that date said,--"A large auditory was
collected last week to listen to the Election Sermon by Mr. Johns,
minister of Ashfield. It was a sound, orthodox, and interesting
discourse, and won the undivided attention of all the listeners. We have
not recently listened to a sermon more able or eloquent."

In that day even country editors were church-goers and God-fearing men.

XIII.

In the latter part of the summer of 1826,--a reasonable time having now
elapsed since the death of poor Rachel,--the gossips of Ashfield began
to discuss the lonely condition of their pastor, in connection with any
desirable or feasible amendment of it. The sin of such gossip--if it be
a sin--is one that all the preaching in the world will never extirpate
from country towns, where the range of talk is by the necessity of the
case exceedingly limited. In the city, curiosity has an omnivorous maw
by reason of position,