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How beautiful is that religion which teaches to love God
above all things, and my neighbour as myself! religion is benevolence,
and benevolence includes every virtue. The truly
benevolent cannot be uncharitable, cannot be unfaithful, cannot
be censorious, cannot be impure in act or thought, cannot be
selfish: they love God and their neighbours, and they do as
they would be done by.

But who is religious? Who is benevolent? Who is at all

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times pure in thought and deed? Who is at all times free from
censoriousness, from uncharitableness. None. No, not
one. The precepts taught us as those on which “hang all the
law and the prophets,” the love of God and the love of our
neighbour, may be impressed upon the heart and have the
whole undivided assent of the understanding; while the mind
is in this state the individual is religious. But the cares of
the world must at times occupy the thoughts, and its jarring collisions
divert the mind from this wholesome state. The passions
which have been cherished by bad education; the indulgencies
that have become habitual before the beauty of
wisdom was perceived; the thousand and ten thousand occurrences
which tempt the rich to uncharitableness, and the poor
to envy and malice, all, by turns, banish truth from the mind.
This has led men to the desert and to the monastery; to become
hermits and monks; forgetting that religion requires to
do as well as to suffer. Truth becomes effective by frequent
contemplation; and the habitual recurrence of its precepts
induces practice.

The mother and brother of Emma Portland had taught her
those truths by precepts and example. And though the cares
and conflicting incidents of life might have distracted her
mind from them, and sometimes even suggested thoughts in
opposition to them, yet she habitually cherished them, assiduously
recalled them, acted in conformity to them, and drove
from her pure breast the intruders of an opposite character as
soon as she detected their presence; perhaps this is all that
we can do; perhaps it is all that is required of us.

Eliza Atherton was another creature whose purity and whose
soul was love. Her lot had been in all things different from
Emma's. Yet the result was nearly the same. Miss Atherton
had not enjoyed that love which begets love, or received
that education, either by example or precept, which leads to wisdom.
The education of Emma Portland guarded her from
the intoxicating effects which the consciousness of possessing
uncommon beauty, aided by the admiration it elicits from
others, might have produced. Miss Atherton had not this
temptation to contend with. And the almost repelling aspect
produced hy disease, added to the neglect of her weak parents,
and the preference given to her beautiful sisters, had operated
to produce the cultivation of her mind, the love of wisdom, the
desire for truth, and the practice of forbearance, forgiveness,
love, and piety.

These two beings, so unlike in appearance, but so similar in

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mind and inclination, were kept asunder by circumstances, at
this time, which we have communicated to our readers.

On the night, the events of which, as they are connected
with Mr. and Mrs. Spiffard, we have dwelt upon at some
length, Eliza Atherton, and her trusty English servant, Ellen
Graves, by turns watched with the almost exhausted Mrs.
Williams. Though both were watchers, the difference between
mental and physical, was, as the night waned, apparent. Ellen
slept. Her mistress approached her sister to administer medicine,
which was to be given at stated hours, and found that
although under the influence of an anodyne, she was struggling
and in agony. The tender sister raised her, to assist the efforts
of nature; she opened her eyes wildly, with an expression of
terror, and a cry of “save me, save me!”

“Be calm, dear sister!”

“Help me! I can't go! He forgave me! Eliza!”

“I am here, sister! be calm. You are in my arms.”

“Save me, Eliza! I am dying!”

“You are not yet awake!”

“O, such terrible sights!”

“It was only a dream!”

“I know I am dying. I never felt so before. There is no
hope for me here or hereafter! I saw my mother—my father!
I murdered them! I am without hope!”

“They forgave you. I will send for Doctor Cadwallader.”

“Send for Mr. Carlton to pray with me. I can't pray.”

“Ellen! Ellen! I will pray with you. Ellen! Ellen!”

Eliza Atherton promptly roused the sleeping Ellen. The
other servants were called, and one of the men was dispatched
for Doctor Cadwallader, while Ellen being sooner ready to
go out, from the circumstance of being a watcher, and dressed,
was sent to request the attendance of the Reverend Doctor
Carlton, whose church, she, as well as the rest of the family,
attended, and whose place of residence was near. Ellen was
unsuccessful. The reverend Doctor Carlton had not returned
from a concert of sacred music then performing in his church.
It was past eleven o'clock. As the young woman was descending
the steps from the clergyman's door, and debating with
herself whether she should go to the church, or return home,
she saw a person approach, wrapt in a black cloak, and otherwise
having a clerical appearance. She hastened to meet him,
and addressing him as Doctor Carlton, requested him to attend
Mrs. Williams, who, as she said, was dying, and wanted his
prayers.

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“I am not Doctor Carlton.”

“But, sir, you look like a clergyman.”

“I am. But I am a stranger to Mrs. Williams.”

“She's dying, sir.”

“She may not wish to see a stranger.”

“But, sir, are you of the church of England?”

Ellen was one of those who had been taught that there was
but one way to heaven, and that the key of the gate was intrusted
to but one description of men.

“I am an episcopal clergyman,” the stranger replied, “and,
I hope, of the church of God.”

“That's what I mean, sir; but I am a stranger in America,
and do not know your modes of speech.”

“I will attend you, and see Mrs. Williams. If she will permit
me to join with her in the prayers of the church, or of the
heart, I will attend and assist, as far as in my power, to reconcile
her to her Maker.”

“She will, sir; and Miss Atherton, her sister, will be happy
to join, sir, for she is as good a church-woman as ever lived.”

And Ellen Graves led the way to the bed-side of the dying
woman, after having received her mistress's permission.

The clergyman was a tall, thin man, of a pale complexion;
in fact, his face was destitute of any warm tint—it was white,
and contrasted strongly with his jet-black eyes and hair. His
features were all strongly marked, but well formed; and his
countenance far from austere. His eyes were brilliant; his
hair, in large dark masses, caused the whiteness of his forehead
and cheeks to appear like alabaster. The intense darkness of
the colour of his eyes, and their prying fixedness, would have
been overpowering, but for the serenity of his brow, and the
expression of benevolence which seemed native to his well-formed
but colourless lips.

Mrs. Williams was tranquil. Ellen brought a prayer-book,
and presented to the priest. He kneeled by the bed-side.
Eliza Atherton kneeled at the foot of the bed. Her faithful
servant kneeled a little behind, in habitual deference, even in
what she felt the more immediate presence of Him, before
whom all are equal. The clergyman looked at the sick
woman, and her opening eyes met his. He commenced, “Let
us pray!”

“I cannot pray!” was uttered in a voice, harsh, broken, unearthly.
“I cannot die! O, save me!”

Miss Atherton rose, and gently approached her sister; raised
her in her arms, and supported her.”

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“Let us join in prayer to him who can save,” said the
stranger.

“I cannot! I am dying without hope! I murdered my
father and mother! I have caused my own death! Murder
and suicide!”

“You are repentant.”

“Dear sister! our parents lived to an advanced age; your
mother—your father, died blessing and forgiving you. You
have suffered from and repented the errors of youth; and
although those sufferings misled you to further error, you are
penitent, and heaven is merciful!”

“Your earthly father,” added the priest, “forgave you;
how infinitely greater is the forgiving love of your Father who
is in heaven. To doubt his mercy is sin; and that sin must
be eschewed, otherwise you cannot die in peace, or feel the
love of the Father, who is all love. I will read to you the
words of him who is all truth; and of whose love there is no
end.”[1]

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Such was the effect of the reading of this gentleman, which
was like a pure full stream, issuing from the heart, that the
unhappy, conscience-stricken woman was restored to a quiet
resignation to the will of her Maker, before Doctor Cadwallader
arrived. He saluted the clergyman as Mr. Littlejohn.

This pious and tried man, now possessing health of body
and mind, was no other than the son of the benevolent merchant
with whom the reader is acquainted, restored to the
world, and to his father. He had likewise been attending the
concert of sacred music, but had left it earlier than the rector
of the church, Doctor Carlton.

eaf089v2.n1

[1] Having requested of my friend, Dr. J. W. Francis, to give me, as a mecal
man, some notices of the effects of stimulants upon the unhappy persons
who have been induced to have recourse to them from various
causes, he has favoured me with a very interesting letter on the subject, a
part of which I will here introduce, and reserve other portions for subsequent
pages.

New-York March 31, 1836.

Dear Sir—Your interrogatories are distinctly within my recollection,
and I would be happy to give them the fullest answers, were the subject
susceptible of illustration within the compass of an ordinary letter. Your
desire to embody some of the more prominent facts connected with the
phenomena of intemperance, so far as they are associated with morbid
changes in the physical structure, occurring in persons who have long indulged
in spirituous potations, is such, however, as induces me, though
with little time at command, hastily to put together a few leading facts,
from which you and other general readers, may, perhaps, derive the
strongest arguments which can be adduced, on medical grounds, against the
practice of using ardent spirits. It is for the divine, the moralist, and the
economist, to attack the pernicious habit on other principles equally potent.
All that I aim at on this occasion, is to group together, for your special use,
a number of the most striking occurrences which we encounter, when professionally
called upon to prescribe for the intemperate, or to perform a
more unpleasant service, which occasionally presents itself as a duty; I
mean the drawing up a report of the disordered changes wrought by alcohol
in the corporeal system of the inebriate, when dead.

The malade imaginaire affords a pretty good proof that Moliere drew some
of his leading illustrations from cases of what are now denominated delirium
tremens, or mania a potu. The disturbed, unequal, and often exhausted state
of the faculties of the minds of persons who have long indulged in spirituous
drinks, is familiarly known; and the same condition of the functions of
the body has as often been observed. Hypocondriacism, or other species
of mental aberration, are noticed in one class of patients, and functional
derangement in another, but oftener both in the same individual; and
hence, too, we see alcoholic insanity conspicuous among the numerous forms
of deranged manifestations of mind in many of our public institutions, appropraited
to the treatment of lunacy. In our mixed population, (I mean of
foreigners and natives,) we find this type of disease more abundant than in
any other of the disorders which are classed under the denomination of insanity.
Gloomy as this picture may seem, it has this cheering feature, that
inasmuch as the mania of intemperance is more medicable than several
other forms of the complaint, we may, in cases of this origin, promise a success
in our means of cure, when capable of carrying our remedial measures
into full effect, that might be altogether unwarrantable in some cases arising
from a different source.”—See the chapter entitled “Lunatic Asylum,” Vol. I.

p089-398

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