d that some of the religious views which he held in common
with his brethren were dishonouring of God, and therefore could not be
elevating to the creature. But when she saw these and other like facts,
they gave her no shock--they left the reflex of the man in her mind
still unspotted, unimpaired. How could this be? Simply because they
left unaltered the conviction that this man believed in God, and that
the desire of his own heart brought him into some real, however
undefinable, relation to him who was yet nearer to him than that desire
itself, and whose presence had caused its birth.

He chose for his text these words of the Psalmist: "The wicked shall be
turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God." His sermon was
less ponderous in construction and multitudinous in division than
usual; for it consisted simply of answers to the two questions: "Who
are the wicked?" and "What is their fate?" The answer to the former
question was, "The wicked are those that forget God;" the answer to the
latter, "The torments of everlasting fire." Upon Annie the sermon
produced the immediate conviction that she was one of the wicked, and
that she was in danger of hell-fire. The distress generated by the
earlier part of the sermon, however, like that occasioned by the
chapter of prophecy, was considerably mitigated by the kindness of an
unknown hand, which, appearing occasionally over her shoulder from
behind, kept up a counteractive ministration of peppermint lozenges.
But the representations grew so much in horror as the sermon approached
its end, that, when at last it was over, and Annie drew one long breath
of exhaustion, hardly of relief, she became aware that the peppermint
lozenge which had been given her a quarter of an hour before, was lying
still undissolved in her mouth.

What had added considerably to the effect of the preacher's words, was
that, in the middle of the sermon, she had, all at once, caught sight
of the face of George Macwha diagonally opposite to her, his eyes
looking like ears with the intensity of his listening. Nor did the
rather comical episode of the snuffing of the candles in the least
interfere with the solemnity of the tragic whole. The gallery was
lighted by three _coronoe_ of tallow candles, which, persisting in
growing long-nosed and dim-sighted, had, at varying periods, according
as the necessity revealed itself to a certain half-witted individual of
the congregation, to be _snodded_ labori