a doubter. I was perhaps becoming so when, two
years ago, I became an idolater, and my idol crumbled to pieces at my
feet. That transient vision of the beautiful half reclaimed me from my
doubts; the darkness of the succeeding night taught me juster views
of the miseries of man and the incomprehensible riddle of his existence;
and I half blushed at my glimpse of selfish happiness."

So saying, he suddenly left the room. Some part of the mystery I felt
was unravelled. Alas! the logic of the head,--how fatally fortified by
the logic of the heart! And so, thought I to myself, even Harrington
too is in part the dupe of that cunning spirit of delusion which in
various forms is resolved to cast God and a Redeemer and Immortality
out of the universe, in compliment to man's wonderful elevation,
purity, unselfishness, and philanthropy! One man tells me, with
Shaftesbury, that he does not want any "immortal hopes," or any such
"bribes" of "prudence" to make him virtuous or religious,--delicate,
noble-minded creature!--that he can serve and love God equally well,
though he were sure of being annihilated to-morrow morning! Another
declares that he would not accept heaven itself if purchased by a
single pang, voluntary or involuntary, endured by any other being in
God's universe? Another swears that such is his sympathetic benevolence,
that he "would not accept that same heaven if he thought any other
being was to be shut out of it"; I wonder whether he condescends to
accept any blessing now, while a single fallow-creature remains
destitute of it? A fourth (a lady too) declares "there is no theory
God, of an author of nature, of an origin of the universe which is
not utterly repugnant to her faculties, which is not (to her feelings)
so irreverent as to make her blush, so misleading as to make her
mourn"; and now Harrington, instead of being thankful for his glimpse
of happiness, and yielding to the better instincts and convictions
it partly awakened, and learning patience, submission, and faith
under his shattered hopes, is taken captive on the same weak side;
and (all unconscious that he shares in the prophet's feeling, "I
do well to be angry") fancies that his present gloom is more truly
in unison with the condition of the universe, and that he is bound
to be most philanthropically misanthropical. O, well does the Book
say of this heart of ours, "DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS"! Such are
our mingled follies and wickedness, so ludicro