Page:A happy half-century and other essays.djvu/195

Rh hear them. … Your heart, little child, is full of sin. You think of what is not right, and then you wish it, and that is sin. … Ah, what shall sinners do when the last day comes upon them? What will they think when God shall punish them forever?"

Children brought up on these lines passed swiftly from one form of hysteria to another, from self-exaltation and the assurance of grace to fears which had no easement. There is nothing more terrible in literature than Borrow's account of the Welsh preacher who believed that when he was a child of seven he had committed the unpardonable sin, and whose whole life was shadowed by fear. At the same time that little William Godwin was composing beautiful death-bed speeches for the possible edification of his parents and neighbours, we find Miss Elizabeth Carter writing to Mrs. Montagu about her own nephew, who realized, at seven years of age, how much he and all creatures stood in need of pardon; and who, being ill, pitifully entreated his father to pray that his sins might be forgiven. Commenting upon which incident, the reverent Montagu