consideration of the deacon. His moral being was very strangely
constituted. From early childhood he had been accustomed to the cant of
religion; and, in many instances, impressions had been made on him that
produced effects that it was easy to confound with the fruits that real
piety brings forth. This is a result that we often find in a state of
society in which appearances are made to take the place of reality. What
is more, it is a result that we may look for equally among the formalists
of established sects, and among the descendants of those who once deserted
the homes of their fathers in order to escape from the impiety of so
meretricious an abuse of the substance of godliness. In the case of the
latter, appearances occupy the mind more than that love of God which is
the one great test of human conversion from sin to an improving state of
that holiness, without which we are told no man shall see his Creator;
without which, indeed, no man could endure to look upon that dread Being
face to face.

The deacon had all the forms of godliness in puritanical perfection. He
had never taken the "name of his God in vain," throughout the course of a
long life; but, he had abstained from this revolting and gratuitous sin,
more because it was a part of the teachings of his youth so to do, and
because the neighbours would have been shocked at its commission, than
because he felt the deep reverence for his Maker, which it became the
insignificant being that was the work of his hand to entertain; and which
would, of itself, most effectually have prevented any wanton use of his
holy name, let the neighbours feel or think as they might on the subject.
In this way Deacon Pratt might be said to have respected most of the
commands of the decalogue; not, however, because the spirit of God
impelled him, through love, to reverence and obey, but because he had been
brought up in a part of the country where it was considered seemly and
right to be moral, to the senses, at least, if not to the all-seeing eye