“I don’t think such a villain as Jackson would ever go to heaven,” I observed.
“‘Judge not, lest ye be judged,’” she answered; “that is a text that cannot be too often impressed upon persons anxious to condemn to eternal torment all those they believe to be worse than themselves. It is great presumption in us poor creatures of clay, to anticipate the proceedings of the Infinite Wisdom. Let us leave the high prerogative of judgment to the Almighty Power, by whom only it is exercised, and in our opinions of even the worst of our fellow-creatures, let us exercise a comprehensive charity, mingled with a prayer that even at the eleventh hour, they may have turned from the evil of their ways, and embraced the prospect of salvation, which the mercy of their Creator has held out to them.”
In this and similar conversations, Mrs Reichardt would endeavour to plant in my mind the soundest views of religion; and she spoke so well, and so convincingly, that I had little trouble in understanding her meaning, or in retaining it after it had been uttered.
It was not, as I have before stated, to religion only that she led my thoughts, although that certainly was the most frequent subject of our conversation. She sought to instruct me in the various branches of knowledge into which she had acquired some insight, and in this way I picked up as much information respecting grammar, geography, astronomy, writing, arithmetic, history, and morals, as I should have gained had I been at a school, instead of being forced to remain on a desolate island.
I need not say that I still desired to leave it. I had long been tired of the place, notwithstanding that, from our united exertions, we enjoyed many comforts which we could not have hoped for. Our hut we had metamorphosed into something Mrs Reichardt styled a rustic cottage, which, covered as it was with flowers and creepers, really looked very pretty; and the garden added greatly to its pleasant appearance: for near the house we had transplanted everything that bore a flower that could be found in the island, and had planted some shrubs, that, having been carefully nurtured, made rapid growth, and screened the hut from the wind.
I had built a sort of outhouse for storing potatoes and firewood, and a fowl-house for the gannets, which were now a numerous flock; and had planted a fence round the garden, so that, as Mrs Reichardt said, we looked as if we had selected a dwelling in our own beloved England, in the heart of a rural district, instead of our being circumscribed in a little island thousands of miles across the wide seas, from the home of which we were so fond of talking.
Although my companion always spoke warmly of the land of her birth, and evidently would have been glad to return to it, she never grieved over her hard fate in being, as it were, a prisoner on a rock, out of reach of friends and kindred; indeed, she used to chide me for being impatient of my detention, and insensible of the blessings I enjoyed.
“What temptations are we not free from here?” she would say. “We see nothing of the world; we cannot be contaminated with its vices, or suffer from its follies. The hideous wars—the terrible revolutions—the dreadful visitations of famine and pestilence—are completely unknown to us. Robbery, and murder, and fraud, and the thousand other phases of human wickedness, we altogether escape. There was a time, when men, for the purpose of leading holy lives, abandoned the fair cities in which they had lived in the enjoyment of every luxury, and sought a cave in some distant desert, where, in the lair of some wild beast, with a stone for a pillow, a handful of herbs for a meal, and a cup of water for beverage, they lived out the remnant of their days in a constant succession of mortifications, prayers, and penitence.
“How different,” she added, “is our own state. We are as far removed from the sinfulness of the world, as any hermit of the desert, whilst we have the enjoyment of comforts to which they were strangers.”
“But probably,” I observed, “these men were penitents, and went into the desert as much to punish their bodies for the transgressions of the flesh, as to acquire by solitary communion, a better knowledge of the spirit than they were likely to obtain in their old haunts.”