And from this
self-employment--or was it demon-employment?--there swept through the
consciousness a vague delirium of excitement. In all that assembly a
single pulse beat feverish measures. The climax was reached. Without was
the soft spring night veiling the scarcely touched range of knowledge
and beauty offered to the healthy energies of man; within were dazed
wanderers in a region of morbid emotion, seeking to intensify the colors
of Nature, willing to waste precious vitality in conjurations of the
dead.
The wretched thraldom was over,--and what had it left?
An exquisite sensitiveness of the nerves of sense, imagination exalted,
memory goaded, reason and judgment overthrown.
III.
In his Fast-Day sermon Dr. Burge delivered himself of much weighty
testimony against those thaumaturgical incantations of heathenism which
had been revived among us. With his splendor of clerical pause and
emphasis he read the denunciations against a sinful nation to which the
prophet Isaiah has affixed the awful words,--"Saith the Lord, the Lord
of Hosts."
"And they shall fight every one against his brother, and every one
against his neighbor, city against city, and kingdom against kingdom."
Here the preacher's dark eyes left the sacred volume, and seemed to gaze
upon some coming struggle in which the sins of the people would meet a
bloody retribution.
Pages:
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121