There was Letty,
now, seemed to take a very unselfish interest in that old black woman,
and indeed in poor people generally; perhaps it would not be too much to
say that she was always thinking of other people. He thought he had
seen other young persons naturally unselfish, thoughtful for others; it
seemed to be a family trait in some he had known.
But most of all he was exercised about this poor girl whose story Sophy
had been telling. If what the old woman believed was true,--and it
had too much semblance of probability,--what became of his theory of
ingrained moral obliquity applied to such a case? If by the visitation
of God a person receives any injury which impairs the intellect or the
moral perceptions, is it not monstrous to judge such a person by our
common working standards of right and wrong? Certainly, everybody will
answer, in cases where there is a palpable organic change brought about,
as when a blow on the head produces insanity. Fools! How long will it be
before we shall learn that for every wound which betrays itself to the
sight by a scar, there are a thousand unseen mutilations that cripple,
each of them, some one or more of our highest faculties? If what Sophy
told and believed was the real truth, what prayers could be agonizing
enough, what tenderness could be deep enough, for this poor, lost,
blighted, hapless, blameless child of misfortune, struck by such a doom
as perhaps no living creature in all the sisterhood of humanity shared
with her?
The minister thought these matters over until his mind was bewildered
with doubts and tossed to and fro on that stormy deep of thought heaving
forever beneath the conflict of windy dogmas.
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