didn't get to the end of the search. Just listen to this, sir, and
say whether it be very far from Christian."

Donal opened his little volume, and sought his passage. The
minister but for curiosity and the dread of seeming absurd would
have stopped his ears and refused to listen. He was a man of not
merely dry or stale, but of deadly doctrines. He would have a man
love Christ for protecting him from God, not for leading him to God
in whom alone is bliss, out of whom all is darkness and misery. He
had not a glimmer of the truth that eternal life is to know God. He
imagined justice and love dwelling in eternal opposition in the
bosom of eternal unity. He knew next to nothing about God, and
misrepresented him hideously. If God were such as he showed him, it
would be the worst possible misfortune to have been created.

Donal had found the passage. It was in The Mask of Anarchy. He
read the following stanzas:--

Let a vast assembly be,
And with great solemnity
Declare with measured words that ye
Are, as God has made ye, free.

Be your strong and simple words
Keen to wound as sharpened swords,
And wide as targes let them be,
With their shade to cover ye.

And if then the tyrants dare,
Let them ride among you there,