boat gliding along at an easy rate, which permitted him to bestow nearly all his attention on his charming companion. Roswell Gardiner had sought this occasion, that he might once more open his heart to Mary, and urge his suit for the last time, previously to so long an absence. This he did in a manly frank way, that was far from being unpleasant to his gentle listener, whose inclinations, for a few minutes, blinded her to the resolutions already made on principle. So urgent was her suitor, indeed, that she should solemnly plight her faith to him, ere he sailed, that a soft illusion came over the mind of one as affectionate as Mary, and she was half-inclined to believe her previous determination was unjustifiable and obdurate. But the head of one of her high principles, and clear views of duty, could not long be deceived by her heart, and she regained the self-command which had hitherto sustained her in all her former trials, in connection with this subject.
"Perhaps it would have been better, Roswell," she said, "had I taken leave of you at the Harbour, and not incurred the risk of the pain that I foresee I shall both give and bear, in our present discourse. I have concealed nothing from you; possibly I have been more sincere than prudence would sanction. You know the only obstacle there is to our union; but that appears to increase in strength, the more I ask you to reflect on it--to try to remove it."
"What would you have me do, Mary! Surely, not to play the hypocrite, and profess to believe that which I certainly do not, and which, after all my inquiries, I cannot believe."
"I am sorry it is so, on every account," returned Mary, in a low and saddened tone. "Sorry, that one of so frank, ingenuous a mind, should find it impossible to accept the creed of his fathers, and sorry that it must leave so impassable a chasm between us, for ever."
"No, Mary; that can never be! Nothing but death can separate us for so long a time! While we meet, we shall at least be friends; and friends love to meet and to see each other often."
"It may seem unkind, at a moment like this, Roswell, but it is in truth the very reverse, if I say we ought not to meet each other here, if we are bent on following our own separate ways towards a future world. My God is not your God; and what can there be of peace in a family, when its two heads worship different deities? I am afraid that you do not think sufficiently of the nature of these things.
"I did not believe you to be so illiberal, Mary! Had the deacon said as much, I might not have been surprised; but, for one like you to tell me that my God is not your God, is narrow, indeed!" "Is it not so, Roswell? And, if so, why should we attempt to gloss over the truth by deceptive words? I am a believer in the Redeemer, as the Son of God; as one of the Holy Trinity; while you believe in him only as a man--a righteous and just, a sinless man, if you will, but as a man only. Now, is not the difference in these creeds immense? Is it not, in truth, just the difference between God and man? I worship my Redeemer; regard him as the equal of the Father--as a part of that Divine Being; while you look on him as merely a man without sin--as a man such as Adam probably was before the fall."
"Do we know enough of these matters, Mary, to justify us in allowing them to interfere with our happiness?"
"We are told that they are all-essential to our happiness--not in the sense you may mean, Roswell, but in one of far higher import--and we cannot neglect them, without paying the penalty."
"I think you carry these notions too far, dearest Mary, and that it is possible for man and wife most heartily to love each other, and to be happy in each other, without their thinking exactly alike on religion. How many good and pious women do you see, who are contented and prosperous as wives and mothers, and who are members of meeting, but whose husbands make no profession of any sort!"
"That may be true, or not. I lay no claim to a right to judge of any other's duties, or manner of viewing what they ought to do. Thousands of girls marry without feeling the very obligations that they profess to reverence; and when, in after life, deeper convictions come, they cannot cast aside the connections they have previously formed, if they would; and probably would not, if they could. That is a different thing from a young woman, who has a deep sense of what she owes to her Redeemer, becoming deliberately, 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, instead of receiving a creed blindly, and without thought?"
"If what you call thought could better the matter; if it were sufficient to comprehend and master this subject, there might be force in what you say. But what is this boasted reason, after all? It is not sufficient to explain a single mystery of the creation, though there are thousands. I know there are, nay there must be, a variety of opinions among those who look to their reasons, instead of accepting the doctrine of revelation, for the character of Christ; but I believe all, who are not open infidels, admit that the atonement of his death was sufficient for the salvation of men: now, can you explain this part of the theory of our religion any more than you can explain the divine nature of the Redeemer? Can you reason any more wisely touching the fall, than touching the redemption itself? I know I am unfit to treat of matters of this profound nature," continued Mary, modestly, though with great earnestness and beauty of manner; "but, to me, it seems very plain that the instant circumstances lead us beyond the limits of our means of comprehension, we are to believe in, and not to reason on, revelation. The whole history of Christianity teaches this. Its first ministers were uneducated men; men who were totally ignorant until enlightened by their faith; and all the lessons it teaches are to raise faith, and faith in the Redeemer, high above all other attainments, as the one great acquisition that includes and colours every other. When such is the fact, the heart does not make a stumbling-block of every thing that the head cannot understand."
"I do not know how it is," answered Roswell Gardiner, influenced, though
