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.”
The wise and gentle instrument of Leila’s conversion did not, however,
give vent to those more Catholic sentiments which might have scared away
the wings of the descending dove. She forbore too vehemently to point
out the distinctions of the several creeds, and rather suffered them
to melt insensibly one into the other: Leila was a Christian, while she
still believed herself a Jewess. But in the fond and lovely weakness of
mortal emotions, there was one bitter thought that often and often came
to mar the peace that otherwise would have settled on her soul. That
father, the sole softener of whose stern heart and mysterious fates she
was, with what pangs would he receive the news of her conversion! And
Muza, that bright and hero-vision of her youth--was she not setting
the last seal of separation upon all hope of union with the idol of the
Moors? But, alas! was she not already separated from him, and had not
their faiths been from the first at variance? From these thoughts she
started with sighs and tears; and before her stood the crucifix already
admitted into her chamber, and--not, perhaps, too wisely--banished so
rigidly from the oratories of the Huguenot. For the representation of
that Divine resignation, that mortal agony, that miraculous sacrifice,
what eloquence it hath for our sorrows! what preaching hath the symbol
to the vanities of our wishes, to the yearnings of our discontent!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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