Gin ye wad jist lat the Lord instruck them! I doobt we mak ower
little o' them. Nae doobt they're born in sin, and brocht farth in
iniquity; but gin they repent ear', they win far aheid o' the auld
fowk."
Thomas's sufferings had made him more gentle--and more sure of Annie's
election. He was one on whom affliction was not thrown away.--Annie saw
him often after this, and he never let her go without reading a chapter
to him, his remarks upon which were always of some use to her,
notwithstanding the limited capacity and formal shape of the doctrinal
moulds in which they were cast; for wherever there is genuine religious
feeling and _experience_, it will now and then crack the prisoning
pitcher, and let some brilliant ray of the indwelling glory out, to
discomfit the beleaguering hosts of troublous thoughts.
Although the framework of Thomas was roughly hewn, he had always been
subject to such fluctuations of feeling as are more commonly found
amongst religious women. Sometimes, notwithstanding the visions of the
face of God "vouchsafed to him from the mercy-seat," as he would say,
he would fall into fits of doubting whether he was indeed one of the
elect; for how then could he be so hard-hearted, and so barren of good
thoughts and feelings as he found himself? At such times he was subject
to an irritation of temper, alternately the cause and effect of his
misery, upon which, with all his efforts, he was only capable yet of
putting a very partial check.
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