y, and with a full sense of what she is doing, the wife of one
who regards her God as merely a man--I care not how you qualify this
opinion, by saying a pure and sinless man; it will be man, still. The
difference between God and man is too immense, to be frittered away by any
such qualifications as that"

"But, if I find it _impossible_ to believe all you believe, Mary, surely
you would not punish me for having the sincerity to tell you the truth,
and the whole truth."

"No, indeed, Roswell," answered the honest girl, gently, not to say
tenderly. "Nothing has given me a better opinion of your principles,
Roswell--a higher notion of what your upright and frank character really
is, than the manly way in which you have admitted the justice of my
suspicions of your want of faith--of faith, as I consider faith can alone
exist. This fair dealing has made me honour you, and esteem you, in
addition to the more girlish attachment that I do not wish to conceal from
you, at least, I have so long felt."

"Blessed Mary!" exclaimed Roswell Gardiner, almost ready to fall down on
his knees and worship the pretty enthusiast, who sat at his side, with a
countenance in which intense interest in his welfare was beaming from two
of the softest and sweetest blue eyes that maiden ever bent on a youth in
modest tenderness, whatever disposition he might be in to accept her God
as his God. "How can one so kind in all other respects, prove so cruel in
this one particular!"

"Because that one particular, as you term it, Roswell, is all in all to
her," answered the girl, with a face that was now flushed with feeling. "I
must answer you as Joshua told the Israelites of old--'Choose you, this
day, whom you will serve; whether the gods which your fathers served, that
were on the other side of the flood, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose
land ye dwell: _but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord_.'"

"Do you class me with the idolaters and pagans of Palestine?" demanded
Gardiner, reproachfully.

"You have said it, Roswell. It is not I, but yourself, who have thus
classed you. You worship your reason, instead of the one true and living
God. This is idolatry of the worst character, since the idol is never seen
by the devotee, and he does not know of its existence."

"You consider it then idolatry for one to use those gifts which he has
received from his Maker, and to treat the most important of all subjects,
as a rational being, instea