“Turn to Him whose goodness and marcy may sarve you, Stephen,” she said, in a milder and more feminine tone than she had used now for years, making her more like herself than either her husband or Rose had seen her since the commencement of the late voyage; “my sayin' that I forget and forgive cannot help a man on his death-bed.”
“It will settle my mind, Molly, and leave me freer to turn my thoughts to God.”
Jack was much affected, more by the countenance and manner of the sufferer, perhaps, than by his words. She drew nearer to the side of her husband's pallet, knelt, took his hands, and said solemnly,
“Stephen Spike, from the bottom of my heart, I do forgive you; and I shall pray to God that he will pardon your sins as freely and more marcifully than I now pardon all, and try to forget all that you have done to me.”
Spike clasped his hands, and again he tried to pray; but the habits of a whole life are not to be thrown off at will; and he who endeavours to regain, in his extremity, the moments that have been lost, will find, in bitter reality, that he has been heaping mountains on his own soul, by the mere practice of sin, which were never laid there by the original fall of his race. Jack, however, had disburthened her spirit of a load that had long oppressed it, and, burying her face in the rug, she wept.
“I wish, Molly,” said the dying man, several minutes later, “I wish I had never seen the brig. Until I got that craft, no thought of wronging human being ever crossed my mind.”
“It was the Father of Lies that tempts all to do evil, Stephen, and not the brig which caused the sins.”
“I wish I could live a year longer—only one year; that is not much to ask for a man who is not yet sixty.”
“It is hopeless, poor Stephen. The surgeons say you cannot live one day.”
Spike groaned—for the past, blended fearfully with the future, gleamed on his conscience with a brightness that appalled him. And what is that future, which is to make us happy or miserable through an endless vista of time? Is it not composed of an existence, in which conscience, released from the delusions and weaknesses of the body, sees all in its true colours, appreciates all, and punishes all? Such an existence would make every man the keeper of the record of his own transgressions, even to the most minute exactness. It would of itself mete out perfect justice, since the sin would be seen amid its accompanying facts, every aggravating or extenuating circumstance. Each man would be strictly punished according to his talents. As no one is without sin, it makes the necessity of an atonement indispensable, and, in its most rigid interpretation, it exhibits the truth of the scheme of salvation in the clearest colours. The soul, or conscience, that can admit the necessary degree of faith in that atonement, and in admitting, feels its efficacy, throws the burthen of its own transgressions away, and remains for ever in the condition of its original existence, pure, and consequently happy.