"When I fight for the Lord," the minister said, "I will use the weapons of the Lord."
He laid aside the first book, and took another. Again a few days, and yet he was not prepared to undermine his adversary.
"I am astonished at the ingenuity and subtlety of these writers," was the record he made in those days. "All the resources of minds richly dowered by nature, highly cultivated by education, and inspired by some strange infatuation for what they call the church, have been brought to bear upon this question of polemics. How skilfully they mingle truth with falsehood! What beautiful, what touching, what sublime sentiments they drop in places where one would not go save so lured! It reminds me of my boyish days, when the scarlet blossom of a cardinal-flower would entice me down steep banks, and into dangerous waters, or some bloomy patch of ripe berries would draw my feet into a treacherous swamp. I begin to perceive the attraction which the Roman Church exercises on the unwary."
It will be perceived that Mr. Southard had the rare courtesy not to use the word "Romish." He was so much a gentleman that he could not call nicknames, not even in theological controversy.
But as his days of study lengthened into weeks, a change came over him. The obstacles in his way made him nervous, feverish, and, it must be owned, rather ill-tempered. His political opposition to Mr. Lewis was expressed with unusual asperity. He was very haughty with Miss Hamilton. He entirely absented himself from luncheon, and he sometimes dined out, rather than sit beside that smiling papist who was doubtless triumphing over him in her heart, taking his silence for defeat. He groaned as he heard her light step pass his door every morning on her way to early mass. That step was his réveil. Should he, the Gospel watchman, sleep while the foe was awake and at work?
"Why cannot truth inspire as much ardor as error awakens?" he wrote one morning. "Why cannot we bring back the old days of faith, when God was to man a power, and not a name; when the tables of the law were stone to the touch; when he who made flood, and fire, and death was more terrible than flood, fire, or death? The author of Ecce Homo is right; no virtue is safe that is not enthusiastic. A cold religion is a worthless religion. O Lord! have mercy on Zion; for it is time to have mercy on it."
But, angry as he was with her every morning, when Mr. Southard met Margaret coming in again from mass, her face smiling, her cheeks red from the cold, he could but forgive her. It is hard to frown on a bright face, happiness looks so much like goodness.
Mr. Granger took notice of these early walks, Mr. Lewis alternately scowled upon and laughed at them. Mrs. Lewis and Aurelia exclaimed, How dared she go out alone before light!
The wicked people, if there were any, were all asleep, Miss Hamilton said, sitting down to breakfast with a most unromantic appetite, and a general preponderance of rose-color and sparkle in her countenance. At six o'clock on winter mornings no one was abroad but papists and policemen. It was the safest hour of the twenty-four.