Vincent sat for a space very silent, revolving his step-mother’s words in his mind, then said, “If that be the case, I think that there are idols in this very house. Bella’s idol is Pride, Louisa’s is Pleasure, Aunt Selina’s—”
“Hush!” said Clemence gravely, laying her hand on the arm of Vincent; “it is worse than useless to find out the idols of our neighbours; our duty is to search for our own. The same volume in which we read, Judge yourselves, brethren, also bids us, in respect to others, Judge not, that ye be not judged.”
“I don’t think that I have any idol,” said Vincent, after another pause for reflection. Clemence Effingham remained silent.
“Do you think that I have?” said the boy.
“Are you willing to know, dear Vincent, or will you be vexed if I tell you the truth?”
“I wish to know it,” replied Vincent.
“Then it appears to me, dear boy, as though you had hitherto made an idol of Self-will. It appears to me that when any duty presents itself, ‘What do I like to do?’ not ‘What ought I to do?’ is usually your first consideration. You are ready for any kind, generous, noble act, if it accord with your own inclination; but if it run counter to that, duty is sacrificed at once. Is not this putting Self-will in the place of the law of God? is not this bowing to an idol that usurps the authority of God?”
“I never had it put to me in that way before,” replied Vincent. “I suppose that it was thinking of what I liked, instead of what I ought to do, that made me disobey you by going on the ice, and cost that noble old captain——but I do not like to speak of that,” said Vincent, interrupting himself, “and it makes you look so sad. I wonder,” he cried in an altered tone, “if you have an idol too, and if you try hard to put it away?”
Before Clemence had time to reply to the bright-eyed boy, the door opened, and Mr. Effingham entered. If the heart of Clemence enshrined an idol—if there were one being whose love was almost more precious to her than celestial hopes, whose approbation was almost more fondly sought for than that of her Lord, that idol was before her now!