Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/267

Rh circle, and suddenly stopping, he rose up and left the room. His sister followed, a minute or two afterwards, and found him in his room greatly affected and bathed in tears.

His father was a just, but a severe man; nevertheless his son loved him with his entire warm heart. Long after the father's death, the son treasured up as a sacred relic, the peeling of an orange, which his father on one occasion had thrown to him.

It is now about twenty-five years, since a religious revival passed from England through the whole of Switzerland. It awakened souls to a consciousness of their inner condition, and produced an open acknowledgment of the same, as well before men as before God. It was an arousing—as in the early days of Protestantism—an arousing of the conscience against all hypocrisy, all sham Christianity, all mere thoughtless formalism. It flew like wild-fire through the country; it kindled all minds of a deeper character. People held meetings at which they openly avowed their faith, and their conviction. Skeptics, deists, nay even atheists, declared theirs, as well as the believing Christian. Men desired above all things to be honest to themselves and their neighbor. They protested against the tyranny over the conscience practiced by the state-church, and against the hypocrisy or the indifference which was the consequence thereof.

A. Vinet, at this time Professor of Literature, attached himself to the new movement, and soon became its leader, from his great eloquence both as a writer and speaker, and by means of which he conducted it beyond the protest, to the higher ground of