So do not flatter
yourselves this is a Christian village, for it is not. The only excuse
to be made for you, and I fear it is not one that God will accept on
His judgment-day, is that your betters set you a bad example instead of
a good one. The two principal people in this village are kinsfolk, yet
enemies, and have been enemies for twenty years. That's a nice example
for two Christian gentlemen to set to poor people, who, they may be
sure, will copy their sins, if they copy nothing else.
"They go to church regularly, and believe in the Bible, and yet they
defy both Church and Bible.
"Now I should like to ask those gentlemen a question. How do they mean
to manage in Heaven? When the baronet comes to that happy place, where
all is love, will the squire walk out? Or do they think to quarrel
there, and so get turned out, both of them? I don't wonder at your
smiling; but it is a serious consideration, for all that. The soul of
man is immortal: and what is the soul? it is not a substantial thing,
like the body; it is a bundle of thoughts and feelings: the thoughts we
die with in this world, we shall wake up with them in the next. Yet
here are two Christians loading their immortal souls with immortal
hate. What a waste of feeling, if it must all be flung off together
with the body, lest it drag the souls of both down to bottomless
perdition.
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