ure
that this girl Shipton, with her pretty face and blue eyes, had no
brains. To think that his boy should repeat the same inexplicable
blunder, that he would never hear from his wife's lips one serious word!
What would she be if trouble came upon him? She was not a child of God.
He did not know that she ever sought the Lord. She went to church once a
day and read her prayers, and that was all. She was not one of the
chosen; she might corrupt Robert and he might fall away and so commit
the sin against the Holy Ghost. He went to his room, and, shutting the
door, wept bitter tears. 'O my son, Absalom,' he cried, 'my son, my son
Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!'

It was in these desperate straits that poor Michael consulted Paul--and
misunderstood him. It was a Sunday night. Michael picked up the Bible
and turned to the Epistle to the Romans. It was his favorite epistle. He
read the ninth chapter. The third verse startled him. '_I could wish
that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen
according to the flesh._' Nobody need wonder that the words strangely
affected him. In his _Table Talk_, Coleridge says that when he read this
passage to a friend of his, a Jew at Ramsgate, the old man burst into
tears. 'Any Jew of sensibility,' the poet adds, 'must be deeply
impressed by it.' Michael Trevanion read the throbbing words again. '_I
could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my
kinsmen according to the flesh._'

He laid down the Book. 'What did Paul mean? What _could_ he mean save
that he was willing to be damned to save those whom he loved? And why
not? Why should not a man be willing to be damned for others? Damnation!
It is awful, horrible. Millions of years, with no relief, with no light
from the Most High, and in subjection to His enemy! "And yet, if it is
to save--if it is to save Robert," thought Michael, "God give me
strength--I could endure it. Did not the Son Himself venture to risk the
wrath of the Father that He might redeem man? What am I? What is my poor
self?" And Michael determined that night that neither his life in this
world nor in the next, if he could rescue his child, should be of any
account.'

So far Michael and Paul were of one mind. Now for the divergence! Now
for the misunderstanding! Michael questioned himself and his oracle
further. 'What could Paul mean exactly? God could not curse him _if he
did no wrong_. He could o