But when she saw these and other like facts,
they gave her no shock--they left the reflex of the man in her mind
still unspotted, unimpaired. How could this be? Simply because they
left unaltered the conviction that this man believed in God, and that
the desire of his own heart brought him into some real, however
undefinable, relation to him who was yet nearer to him than that desire
itself, and whose presence had caused its birth.
He chose for his text these words of the Psalmist: "The wicked shall be
turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God." His sermon was
less ponderous in construction and multitudinous in division than
usual; for it consisted simply of answers to the two questions: "Who
are the wicked?" and "What is their fate?" The answer to the former
question was, "The wicked are those that forget God;" the answer to the
latter, "The torments of everlasting fire." Upon Annie the sermon
produced the immediate conviction that she was one of the wicked, and
that she was in danger of hell-fire. The distress generated by the
earlier part of the sermon, however, like that occasioned by the
chapter of prophecy, was considerably mitigated by the kindness of an
unknown hand, which, appearing occasionally over her shoulder from
behind, kept up a counteractive ministration of peppermint lozenges.
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