father could have wished. A young Nazarene could not have been bred up
with more rigour. All that was evil was withheld from his observation--he
only heard what was pure in precept--he only witnessed what was worthy
in practice. But when the boy began to be lost in youth, the attentive
father saw cause for alarm. Shades of sadness, which gradually assumed
a darker character, began to overcloud the young man's temper. Tears,
which seemed involuntary, broken sleep, moonlight wanderings, and a
melancholy for which he could assign no reason, seemed to threaten at
once his bodily health and the stability of his mind. The astrologer
was consulted by letter, and returned for answer, that this fitful state
of mind was but the commencement of his trial, and that the poor youth
must undergo more and more desperate struggles with the evil that
assailed him. There was no hope of remedy, save that he showed steadiness
of mind in the study of the Scriptures. "He suffers," continued the
letter of the sage, "from the awakening of these harpies, the passions,
which have slept with him as with others, till the period of life which
he has now attained. Better, far better, that they torment him by
ungrateful cravings, than that he should have to repent having satiated
them by criminal indulgence." The dispositions of the young man were so
excellent, that he combated, by reason and religion, the fits of gloom
which at times overcast his mind; and it was not till he attained the
commencement of his twenty-first year, that they assumed a character
which made his father tremble for the consequences. It seemed as if the
gloomiest and most hideous of mental maladies were taking the form of
religious despair. Still the youth was gentle, courteous, affectionate,
and submissive to his father's will, and resisted with all his power the
dark suggestions which were breathed into his mind, as it seemed, by
some emanation of the Evil Principle, exhorting him, like the wicked
wife of Job, to curse God and die.