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Untitled Article
nothing but fearful images ; and the objects on which her eye and ear loved commonly to dwell , now only nourished her sorrow . As she saw the herdsman following his kine down the valley , she had no benevolent thoughts to bestow on the wife and children who awaited him at his door . As she heard the horn of the hunter
or the song of the forester from under the shadows of the woods , she did not look with her wonted complacency on joys which she believed to be far inferior to those of the privileged state in which she had lived till now , and which she had hitherto regarded in somewhat the same manner as the philosopher watches the first flight of a brood of nestlings , or the gambols of lambs among the furrows . She had now no leisure for the recreation of
benevolent sympathies . Finding her individual lot involved in the revolution then taking place in the spiritual world of man , she gave herself up to amazement and grief that such a revolution should have been permitted : that the church of Christ and St . Peter should have been shaken to its very foundation , and that she , and hundreds as harmless as herself , should be driven from their retreats by the shock .
* He does all things well , ' thought she , * and therefore doubtless some mighty victory over the powers of hell is in preparation , of which their present portentous triumphs will but enhance the glory . But why , O why , is this daring heretic permitted to elude the arm of the church ? Why are the decrees of the Holy See of no avail against him ? And above all , why is he suffered to drag the innocent , the pious , down into the same destruction with the
blasphemer ? How many are there now within these walls who , but for him , might have lived holy and died assured of salvation , in whom vanity is already beginning to work , and who , in a few short weeks , will be tainted with the spirit of the world , and too probably , defiled with the heresy they now deplore ! What can be so acceptable to heaven as a life of devotion in a retreat like this ? Why , therefore , is it henceforth forbidden to us ? If we are driven from our chosen place of safety into a region of snares ,
with whom will rest the guilt of our destruction ? Not with Him whose kingdom is thus assailed . Heaven forbid the thought I It rests with him into whose hand the firebrand is given for a season , that he himself may be consumed at length . O , that this had been before or after my day , that I might not have mourned the going down of the sun as I mourn it now ! It is gone . The last ray is fading from yonder highest peak . My last day of peace is closing / And Liese laid down her head and wept .
She sat motionless till it was dark , and then one of the sisters asked admittance . It was Helena , the youngest of the nuns , and the one who had most intercourse with Liese . She « et down the lamp , and drawing Liese away from the window , placed her ± > eside her on the couch * M did not come sooner / she said , ' though many of the sitters , asked for you . I knew that their
Untitled Article
Liese ; dr , the Progress of Worship . 155
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1832, page 155, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1808/page/11/
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