heir hatred springs from
misapprehension. "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do:"
many a true story of religious persecution, as of Inquisitorial
torture, exacted by sincere bigotry, and endured by equally sincere
conviction, would illustrate the prayer, and the scene might be laid
among Waldensian saints and the friars of Madrid. The second tale might
enlarge upon a promised Paradise, the assurance of pardon, and the
efficacy of repentance: the certainty of hope and life being
co-extensive, so that it might still be said of the seeming worst, the
brigand and the blasphemer, "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise;"
a story to check presumption, while it encourages the humility of
pentitent hope; the details of a prodigal's career and his return, say
a falsely philosophizing German student, or the excesses of some not
ungenerous outburst of youthful wantonness; haply, a fair and passionate
Neapolitan. The third might well regard filial piety: "Behold thy
son--behold thy mother:" illustrated perhaps by a slave scene in
Morocco, or the last adieus between a Maccabaean mother, and her noble
children rushing on duteous death; or the dangers of a son, during the
Reign of Terror, protecting his proscribed parents; or allusive to the
case of many razed and fired homes in the Irish rebellion. The fourth,
necessarily a tale of overwhelming calamity ultimately triumphant, "My
God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"--the confidence of _my_ God
still, even in His recognised judgments trusted in as merciful: the
history of many an unrecorded Job; a parent bereaved of his fair dear
children; an aged merchant beggared by the roguery of others, and his
very name blamelessly dishonoured; the extremity of a martyr's
sufferings; or some hunted soul's temptation. The fifth, "I thirst;"
which might be commented on, either morally only, as referring to a
thirst after religion, virtue, and knowledge--or physically also, in
some story of well-endured miseries at sea on a wrecking craft; or of
Christian resignation even to the horrible death of drought among the
torrid sands of Africa; or some noble act, like that of Sir Philip
Sidney on the battle-field, or David's libation of that desired draught
from the well of Bethlehem. I need not remark that all these sayings
might primarily be applied to their Good Utterer, if it seemed more
advisable to shape the publication into seven sermons: but this, it will
at once be perceived,