Page:Salem - a tale of the seventeenth century (IA taleseventeenth00derbrich).pdf/341

 do not give any evidence that they had any realizing sense of the enormity of the sin they had committed. In their subsequent confessions they speak of their conduct by such mild terms as "an error of judgment, a strange delusion of the devil," rather than in a spirit of heartfelt repentance for their terrible guilt, and its widespread and irremediable effects.

Even the Reverend Mr. Parris appears himself so entirely devoid of natural human sympathies that he was positively unable to realize their existence in others: "He could not be made to understand why the sorrowing family of Rebecca Nurse felt themselves so much aggrieved by her cruel and unjust execution; he told them in plain terms that while they thought her innocent, and he believed her guilty and justly put to death, "it was a mere difference of opinion;" as if he regarded the fact of her life or death as an altogether indifferent matter."

But the history of the Past is the warning of the Future—the beacon that shows where one frail little bark went down has saved many a gallant vessel from a similar fate;