Page:Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands.djvu/55

 30 EFFECTS OF FEAR.

that scene of danger, seem to adhere indelibly to recol lection. A young girl came and sat down on the cabin floor, and said, in a low, tremulous tone, &quot; I have loved my Saviour, but have not been faithful to Him as I ought ; &quot; and in that posture of humility awaited His will.

A mother, who since coming on board had taken the entire charge of an infant not a year old, retired with it in her arms to a sofa, when the expectation of death was the strongest upon us all. Her eyes were silently rivetted upon the nursling, with whom she might so soon go down beneath the deep waters. He returned that gaze with an almost equal intensity, and there they sat, uttering no sound, scarcely breathing, and pale as a group of sculptured marble.

In that strange communion was the mother impart ing to her nursling her own speechless weight of ago ny, at parting with other beloved objects in their dis tant home ? Or did the tender soul take upon itself a burden, which pressed from it a sudden ripeness of sympathy ? Or was the intensity of prayer drawing the spirit of the child into that of the mother, until they were as one before God ?

Strong lessons were learned at an hour like this. Ages of thought were compressed into a moment. The reach of an unbodied spirit, or some glimpse of the power, by which the deeds and motives of a whole life may be brought into view, at the scrutiny of the last judgment, seemed to reveal itself. Methought the af fections, that so imperatively bind to earth, loosened

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