There was something in the words in which this was couched, that, still more painfully than the taunt, affected the disconsolate penitent, and he burst into tears, taking hold of the minister’s right hand graspingly with his left, saying, ‘Spare me, doctor! O spare me, an it be possible—for the worm that never dieth hath coiled itsel within my bosom, and the fire that’s never quenched is kindled around me—What an it be for ever?’
‘Ye should na, Mr. Walkinshaw,’ replied the clergyman, awed by the energy and solemnity of his manner—‘Ye should na entertain such desperate thoughts, but hope for better things; for it’s a blithe thing for your precious soul to be at last sensible o’ your own unworthiness.’
‘Aye, doctor, but, alack for me! I was ay sensible o’ that. I hae sinned wi’ my e’en open, and I thought to mak up for’t by a strict observance o’ church ordinances.’
‘’Deed, Mr. Walkinshaw, there are few shorter roads to the pit than through the kirk-door; and many a Christian has been brought nigh to the death, thinking himsel cheered and guided by the sound o’ gospel preaching, when, a’ the time, his ear was turned to the sough o’ perdition.’
‘What shall I do to be saved?’ said the old man, reverentially and timidly.
‘Ye can do naething yoursel, Mr. Walkinshaw,’ replied the minister; and he proceeded, with the fearlessness of a champion and the energy of an apostle, to make manifest to his understanding the corruption of the human heart, and its utter unworthiness in the pure eyes of Him that alone can wash away the Ethiopian hue of original sin, and eradicate the leopard spots of personal guilt.
While he spoke the bosom of Claud was convulsed—he breathed deeply and fearfully—his eyes glared—and the manner in which he held his hands, trembling and slightly raised, showed that his whole inward being was transfixed, as it were, with a horrible sense of some tremendous apocalypse.
‘I fear, I fear, Doctor Denholm,’ he exclaimed, ‘that I can hae no hope.’
The venerable pastor was struck with the despair of the expression, and, after a short pause, said, ‘Dinna let yoursel despond; tak comfort in the mercy of God; surely your life has na been blacken’t wi’ ony great crime?’
‘It has been one continued crime,’ cried the penitent—‘frae the first hour that my remembrance can look back to, down to the vera last minute, there has been no break nor interruption in the constancy of my iniquity. I sold my soul to the Evil One in my childhood, that I might recover the inheritance of my forebears. O the pride of that mystery! and a’ the time there was a voice within me that would na be pacified wi’ the vain promises I made to become another man, as soon as ever my conquest was complete.’