Unity of _opinion_ is not necessary to
confident friendship and warm love.
As they talked, the major, seeing she was much depressed, and thinking
to draw her from troubled thought, began to tell her some of the more
personal parts of his history, and in these she soon became so
interested that she began to ask him questions, and drew from him much
that he would never have thought of volunteering. Before their talk was
over, she had come to regard the man as she could not have imagined it
possible she should. She had looked upon him as a man of so many and
such redeeming qualities, that his faults must be over-looked and
himself defended from any overweighing of them; but now she felt him a
man to be looked up to--almost revered. It was true that every now and
then some remark would reveal in him a less than attractive commonness
of thinking; and that his notions in religion were of the crudest, for
he regarded it as a set of doctrines--not a few of them very
dishonouring to God; yet was the man in a high sense a true man. There
is nothing shows more how hard it has been for God to redeem the world
than the opinions still uttered concerning him and his so-called
_plans_ by many who love him and try to obey him: a man may be in
possession of the most precious jewels, and yet know so little about
them that his description of them would never induce a jeweller to
purchase them, but on the contrary make him regard the man as a fool,
deceived with bits of coloured glass for rubies and sapphires.
Pages:
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430