the more for that very faith to which, in his own person, he laid no
claim. Irreligious he was not, himself, though skeptical on the one great
tenet of Christianity. But, in Mary, it struck him it was right that she
should believe that which she had been so sedulously taught; for he did
not at all fancy those inquiring minds, in the other sex, that lead their
possessors in quest of novelties and paradoxes. In this humour, then, the
reader will not be surprised to hear that he imagined the deacon's niece
in her most pleasing attributes, and bedecked her with all those charms
that render maidens pleasant to youthful lovers. Had Mary been less
devout, less fixed in her belief that Jesus was the Son of God; strange as
it may seem, the skeptical young man would have loved her less.

And what was that rugged, uncultivated seaman, who stood near the two
officers, thinking of, all this time? Did he, too, bend his thoughts on
love, and profit, and the pleasures of this world? Of love, most truly,
was his heart full to overflowing; but it was the love of God, with that
affection for all his creatures, that benevolence and faith, which glow as
warmly in the hearts of the humblest and least educated, as in those of
the great and learned. His mind was turned towards his Creator, and it
converted the extraordinary view that lay before his sight into a vast,
magnificent, gorgeous, though wild temple, for his worship and honour. It
might be well for all of us occasionally to pause in our eager pursuit of
worldly objects, and look around on the world itself, considering it as
but a particle in the illimitable fields of creation,--one among the many
thousands of other known worlds, that have been set in their places in
honour of the hand that made them. These brief but vivid glances at the
immensity of the moral space which separates man from his Deity, have very
healthful effects in inculcating that humility which is the stepping-stone
of faith and love.