Sadie was the child
of many prayers, and her father's much-used Bible lay on her
dressing-table, speaking for him, now that his tongue was silent in
the grave; so she did not _quite_ yield to the enemy--but she was
walking in the way of temptation--and the Christian tongues around
her, which the grave had _not_ silenced, yet remained as mute as
though their lips were already sealed; and so the path in which Sadie
walked grew daily broader and more dangerous.
Then there was Dr. Douglass--not by any means the worst man that the
world can produce. He was, or fancied himself to be, a skeptic. Like
many a young man, wise in his own conceit, he had no very distinct
idea of what he was skeptical about, nor to what hights of illogical
nonsense his own supposed views, carried out, would lead him;
like many another, too, he had studied rhetoric, and logic, and
mathematics, and medicine, thoroughly and well; he would have
hesitated long, and studied hard, and pondered deeply, before he had
ventured to dispute an established point in surgery. And yet, with
the inconsistent folly of the age, he had absurdly set his seal to the
falsity of the Bible, after giving it, at most, but a careless reading
here and there, and without having ever once honestly made use of
the means by which God has promised to enlighten the seekers after
knowledge.
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