From Jest to Earnest

by Edward Payson Roe

"Well," said Lottie, rather brusquely, "I wouldn't feel so forlorn and miserable over that. I don't think it's much of a calling anyway."

"O Miss Marsden!" he ejaculated, in a shocked tone.

"I'm sincere in what I say," she continued earnestly, "Please don't misunderstand me. As far as I am a judge I think your sermon was well written, and it certainly was delivered effectively; for, though none of us liked it, we couldn't help listening. But its strongest effect was to make me wish I was an infidel and, like Mr. Harcourt, did not believe in anything. I honestly think that it will be a very poor calling to go out among the poor people on the frontier and preach such a gospel as you gave us this morning. In the name of pity, haven't they enough to contend with now? In addition to the scalping Indians, the border ruffians, the grasshoppers, and grinding poverty, are you going to give them a religion in which the furnace of affliction and the crucible of trial flame as the centre? Poor creatures! I suppose they are in hard and hot places most of the time, but don't make them think that God puts them there, and that there is no chance to get out till He is through with them. I can tell you beforehand, that people are not going to get into the fiery furnace and commence having a miserable time of it before they must. Let us be as comfortable as we can, while we can. If you feel that you have mistaken your calling—and I hope you have—I'm sure that father, at my request, will find you a better one in New York."

Poor Hemstead was as satisfied as Luther had been that this was a temptation of the devil; but before him was no such apparition as that against which the great reformer could hurl his ink-horn without leaving a spot.

With the lurid flash of Lucifer as he fell from heaven, the thought passed through his disquieted mind, "And in New York I might win the hand and heart of this beautiful girl." But every quality of his soul frowned so darkly on this thought, which held out Lottie Marsden as a bribe, that it soon skulked away. His mind reverted to the main difficulty, and he said, "Surely, Miss Marsden, I did not preach such a religion as you suggest."

"You surely did, Mr. Hemstead, as I could soon prove to you. I am glad you are so inconsistent a professor of your religion."

"Am I an inconsistent professor?" he asked sadly.

"Indeed you are," she replied; and both mischief and kindness lurked in her eyes. "You don't live up to your doctrines at all."

"Little wonder, then," he exclaimed, in bitter self-condemnation, "that all turn from my teaching."

She looked at him with a curious smile, as she thought, "What a child he is! He is but wax in my hands. If he should marry a cold-hearted, selfish woman, with a spice of petty, teasing malice in her nature, she could sit down quietly at his hearth and torture to death this overgrown man, with whole libraries in his brain. I could wring his soul now, by making him think that he had lived so unworthily that we could not listen to his most unworthy sermon."