"I am not a wilful sinner," he muttered, from his heart. "I do love purity, goodness, holiness. I hate myself for my bad nature!" he exclaimed, bitterly.
"Ah, that will never do," replied the old man, softly and kindly. "My son, I feel for you. I feel with you. But the nature God has given you in his wisdom,—hate not that. It is the soil in which your soul is planted. You must be content with it for a season. It is a suicidal thought, to wish your roots plucked up, because they reach down amid weeds and rottenness. No; cultivate the soil. Carefully, prayerfully purify it, and subdue its rankness. Then shall your spirit, grafted with the scion of holiness, flourish like a goodly tree. It shall gather wholesome sustenance from below, and at the same time it shall blossom and bloom, and put forth green leaves, struggling upward, upward,—higher, higher, still—in the golden atmosphere; its fruits shall ripen in the beautiful sunlight of heaven, and it shall be blessed forevermore."
"But the flowers fade, the leaves fall, the fruit drops off and decays, and the tree is a naked, desolate object, when the storms of winter wheel and whistle around it," said Chester, darkly.
"Not so with the TREE OF LIFE," cried the old man, with fine enthusiasm. "Earth is but its nursery. In his own good time, the Husbandman transplants it into the pure soil of his eternal gardens."
"And the weeds are burned in everlasting fire!"
"The weeds—yes; let us hope so! Let us pray that the good God will deliver us from the weeds of all base passion, which continually spring up in the most carefully tended soil of earth. What remembrance do we need of this swamp-lot, when we are once out of its mud and mire?"
"I mean," said Chester, "those trees which the weeds do choke,—those wild crabs which bring forth no good fruit,—they are cast out."
"And can the good Husbandman plant them side by side with the better trees, in his garden?" asked the clergyman. "Indeed, would they flourish in a soil so different from that they loved here too well? Nor would they choose that soil. If they are not prepared for the companionship of the cultivated grafts, other and lower places will be found most appropriate for their unsubdued natures."
Chester remained very thoughtful. By this time they had come in sight of Mark's house,—a wood-colored building, situated on a pleasant rise of ground, in the midst of an orchard. Mr. Royden and Mark were already climbing the fence built about the inclosure, in the midst of which stood the barn and stables.