Margaret would gladly have read the holy book to her lover, but she might as well have had a Hebrew edition before her, for not a word could she decipher. He could read, and her only way of inducing him so to do was by expressing her desire to hear him read. She found this, however, a difficult and dangerous task, for, independently of the distaste which the old woman had to the Bible, she found her lover very restless and feverish after any exertion of the kind. Where the spirit is unwilling, how irksome is the task!
“How plain is that description you read to me this morning of our first parents’ fall,” said Margaret one day, when the enemy was absent: “how plainly it shows us the necessity of our denying ourselves anything and everything which God has forbidden us!”
“It does, indeed, Margaret; but no man can help sinning!”
“I doubt that—I think Adam could have done so.”
“Then why did he sin, Margaret?”
“You read to me, that the woman tempted him or persuaded him, and that the serpent beguiled her into sin: so that the serpent was the author of sin.”
“Yes: and the woman was first deceived, and then deceived her husband. You must admit that she was the worst of the two.”
“I own that she was, and is the weakest; but her sorrows appear to have been the greater, and she has been little better than a slave to man ever since.”
“Well, Margaret, well, you have been very kind to me, and I know now that you are a good girl, and wish me to be good. I wish I may be better.”
“Do not only wish it, dear William, but pray to God to make you so, and I do think that He will.”