Page:The Rebellion in the Cevennes (Volume 2).djvu/167

Rh passes away as the cloud, momentarily over the beautiful landscape in the brilliancy of spring." The old man paused, and Edmond said: "Oh! how willingly I listen to you, and remember all the sentiments and vicissitudes of my stormy youth."

"What I had before rejected," continued the priest, "now became the most urgent want of my soul, for I felt, how much a christian congregation, in unison together, must strengthen and elevate the individual. I visited the church therefore and wished to join in the worship of my sect. But whether it was that my mind was too much agitated, or that I had perhaps fallen on the wrong one, it appeared to me that every where the church overreached itself by preaching. All preferred their own explanations, and their close reasoning philosophy to the word of the Lord, they were all ashamed of Christ and denied him in artfully spun phrases, they misinterpreted him, merely that they might bring him nearer to their own weak necessities, as if