His
neighbor hates him as a monster, tyrant, persecutor; and fancies
burning martyrs, and that pale countenance looking on, and lighted up
by the flame. These have no doubts; these march on trustfully, bearing
their load of logic."
"Would you like to look at the paper, sir?" here interposed the stout
gentleman (it had a flaming article against the order of the
blackcoated gentleman who was traveling with them in the carriage) and
Pen thanked him and took it, and pursued his reverie, without reading
two sentences of the journal.
"And yet, would you take either of those men's creeds, with its
consequences?" he thought. "Ah me! you must bear your own burden,
fashion your own faith, think your own thoughts, and pray your own
prayer. To what mortal ear could I tell all, if I had a mind? or who
could understand all? Who can tell another's short-comings, lost
opportunities, weigh the passions which overpower, the defects which
incapacitate reason?--what extent of truth and right his neighbor's
mind is organized to perceive and to do?--what invisible and forgotten
accident, terror of youth, chance or mischance of fortune, may have
altered the whole current of life? A grain of sand may alter it, as
the flinging of a pebble may end it.
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