might supply the deficiencies of her mortal instructor. Perhaps, sharing
those notions of the different value of the sexes, prevalent, from the
remotest period, in his beloved and ancestral East, Almamen might have
hopes for himself which did not extend to his child. And thus she grew
up, with all the beautiful faculties of the soul cherished and unfolded,
without thought, without more than dim and shadowy conjectures, of the
Eternal Bourne to which the sorrowing pilgrim of the earth is bound. It
was on this point that the quick eye of Donna Inez discovered her faith
was vulnerable: who would not, if belief were voluntary, believe in the
world to come? Leila's curiosity and interest were aroused: she
willingly listened to her new guide--she willingly inclined to
conclusions pressed upon her, not with menace, but persuasion. Free from
the stubborn associations, the sectarian prejudices, and unversed in the
peculiar traditions and accounts of the learned of her race, she found
nothing to shock her in the volume which seemed but a continuation of the
elder writings of her faith. The sufferings of the Messiah, His sublime
purity, His meek forgiveness, spoke to her woman's heart; His doctrines
elevated, while they charmed, her reason: and in the Heaven that a Divine
hand opened to all,--the humble as the proud, the oppressed as the
oppressor, to the woman as to the lords of the earth,--she found a haven
for all the doubts she had known, and for the despair which of late had
darkened the face of earth. Her home lost, the deep and beautiful love
of her youth blighted,--that was a creed almost irresistible which told
her that grief was but for a day, that happiness was eternal. Far, too,
from revolting such of the Hebrew pride of association as she had formed,
the birth of the Messiah in the land of the Israelites seemed to
consummate their peculiar triumph as the Elected of Jehovah. And while
she mourned for the Jews who persecuted the Saviour, she gloried in those
whose belief had carried the name and worship of the descendants of David
over the furthest regions of the world. Often she perplexed and startled
the worthy Inez by exclaiming, "This, your belief, is the same as mine,
adding only the assurance of immortal life--Christianity is but the
Revelation of Judaism."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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