Page:A New England Tale.djvu/268

Rh The letter was filled with execrations. "If I have a soul," he said, "eternity will be spent in cursing her who has ruined it;" but he did not fear the future—hell was a bugbear to frighten children. "You," he continued, "neither fear it, nor believe it; for if you did, your religion would be something besides a cloak to hide your hard, cruel heart. Religion! what is it but a dream, a pretence? I might have believed it, if I had seen more like Jane Elton—whom you have trodden on, wrongfully accused, when you knew her innocent. Mother, mother! oh, that I must call you so!—as I do it, I howl a curse with every breath—you have destroyed me. You, it was, that taught me, when I scarcely knew my right hand from my left, that there was no difference between doing right and doing wrong, in the sight of the God you worship; you taught me, that I could do nothing acceptable to him. If you taught me truly, I have only acted out the nature totally depraved, (your own words,) that he gave to me, and I am not to blame for it. I could do nothing to save my own soul; and according to your own doctrine, I stand now a better chance than my moral cousin, Jane. If you have taught me falsely, I was not to blame; the peril be on your own soul. My mind was a blank, and you put your own impressions on it; God (if there be a God) reward you according to your deeds!"

This horrible letter, of which we have given a brief and comparatively mild specimen; and subtracted from that the curses that pointed every