visit to London; there her quiet religion had received high sanction in
the mystery of S. Paul's. But here it was the plainest Calvinism preached
with immense power. The preacher's last words of peace were no peace to
her. If it was necessary to pass those bellowing breakers of wrath to
reach the Happy Country, then she had never reached it yet; she had lived
so far in an illusion; her life had been spent in a fool's paradise,
where the light and warmth and flowers were but artificial after all; and
she knew that she had not the heart to set out again. Though she
recognised dimly the compelling power of this religion, and that it was
one which, if sincerely embraced, would make the smallest details of life
momentous with eternal weight, yet she knew that her soul could never
respond to it, and whether saved or damned that it could only cower in
miserable despair under a Deity that was so sovereign as this.

So her heart was low and her eyes sad as she followed Mrs. Carrington out
of church. Was this then really the Revelation of the Love of God in the
Person of Jesus Christ? Had all that she knew as the Gospel melted down
into this fiery lump?

The rest of the day did not alter the impression made on her mind. There
was little talk, or evidence of any human fellowship, in the Carrington
household on the Lord's Day; there was a word or two of grave
commendation on the sermon during dinner; and in the afternoon there was
the Evening Prayer to be attended in St. Sepulchre's followed by an
exposition, and a public catechising on Calvin's questions and answers.
Here the same awful doctrines reappeared, condensed with an icy reality,
even more paralysing than the burning presentation of them in the
morning's sermon. She was spared questions herself, as she was a
stranger; and sat to hear girls of her own age and older men and women
who looked as soft-hearted as herself, utter definitions of the method of
salvation and the being and character of God that compelled the assent of
her intellect, while they jarred with her spiritual experience as
fiercely as brazen trumpets out of tune.

In the evening there followed further religious exercises in the dark
dining-room, at the close of which Dr. Carrington read one of Mr.
Calvin's Genevan discourses, from his tall chair at the head of the
table. She looked at him at first, and wondered in her heart whether that
man, with his clear gentle voice, and his pleasant old face crowned