A dreadful sound of coughing rose
from the audience, mingled with sneezing from such as were now first
taking their all-winter colds and diversified from time to time by the
wail of some child too miserable and desperate to have any fear of the
parental knuckles before its face.
Struggling with these noises and sometimes wholly lost to those in the
back part of the house, when some tremendous gust of wind shook and
strained the building, the voice of Parson West flowed on and on. He
was demonstrating that seeing it was evident some souls would be lost
it must be for the glory of God that they should be lost, and such
being the case all true saints must and should rejoice in the fact,
and praise God for it. But in order that their approval of the Divine
decree in this matter should be genuine and sincere it must be purely
disinterested, and therefore they must be willing, if God in his
inscrutable wisdom should so will, to be themselves among the lost and
forever to hate and blaspheme him in hell, because thus would his
glory be served. The parson warmly urged that all who believed
themselves to have been born again, should constantly inquire of their
own souls whether they were so resigned, for if they did not feel that
they were, it was to be feared they were still dead in trespasses and
sins.
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