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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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sorrow lay on him,- he could not arise. He had one of those natures which could better and more clearly conceive of religious things from its own perceptions and instincts, than many a matter-of-fact and practical Christian. The gift to appreciate and the sense to feel the finer shades and relations of moral things, often seems an attribute of those whose whole life shows a careless disregard of them. Hence Moore, Byron, Goethe, often speak words more wisely descriptive of the true re- ligious sentiment, than another man, whose whole life is governed by it. In such minds, disregard of religion is a more fearful treason,- a more deadly sin. St. Clare had never pretended to govern himself by any religious obligation; and a certain fineness of nature gave him such an instinctive view of the extent of the requirements of Christianity, that he shrank, by anticipation, from what he felt would be the exactions of his own conscience, if he once did resolve to assume them. For, so inconsistent is human nature, especially in the ideal, that not to un- dertake a thing at all seems better than to undertake and come short. Still St. Clare was, in many respects, another man. He read his little Eva’s Bi- ble seriously and honestly; he thought more soberly and practically of his rela- tions to his servants,- enough to make him extremely dissatisfied with both his past and present course; and one thing he did, soon after his return to New Or- leans, and that was to commence the legal steps necessary to Tom’s emancipation, which was to be perfected as soon as he could get through the necessary formali- ties. Meantime, he attached himself to Tom more and more, every day. In all the wide world, there was nothing that seemed to remind him so much of Eva; and he |
