In the breast of Cuthbert Noble the vulgar and cruel prejudice concerning witchcraft had no place. His humane and enlightened father had very early instilled into his mind clear notions of the love and care of the great Father of the human families; of the sacredness of human life, indeed of all life, and of the holiness of creation;--and he had, moreover, taught him to regard all particular cases of severe and inexplicable suffering as parts only of one vast and mysterious whole, and subserving, in the great end and issue, some wise, holy, wonderful purpose of divine and universal love. He had taught him, too, that ours was a marred and fallen nature; and how and by what means, and in whose divine person, it actually was restored; and how all the sons of Adam had become capable, through divine mercy, of partaking all the benefits of that restoration of man’s nature--in some degree even in this troubled and probationary state--in full and satisfying perfection in that state which is future and eternal. Hence, to the eye of Cuthbert, every one of human form was an object, though not perhaps of personal interest and affection, yet of wonder and of reverence, as a creature of God, born for immortality--an imperishable, an indestructible being; and, when the crimes and errors of his fellow-creatures stirred up his angry passions to punish and withstand them, the sense of his own weakness and his own sinfulness was ever waiting for him in his heart’s closet, to rebuke and humble him in the calmness of solitude. But Cuthbert as yet had been little tried; he knew not what spirit he was of. He thought that his placid and firm father was the model which he surely followed; but the settled and peaceful joy of that amiable and benevolent and subdued father was as yet unknown to him. However, the character and the life of Parson Noble will be the better understood and conceived of by transporting our reader to the village in Somersetshire where he dwelt, and where, had it been her good fortune to have been a parishioner of his, old Margery, in spite of her wild and withered aspect, might have lived unmolested and in peace with her neighbours, and would not have lacked such acquaintance with the mercy of the great Redeemer, as it is in the power of a mere human instrument to impart. CHAP. III. A branch of May we have brought you, And at your door it stands; It is but a sprout, But it’s well budded out, By the work of our Lord’s hands. The hedges and trees they are so green, As green as any leek; Our heavenly Father he watereth them, With his heavenly dew so sweet. _From the Mayer’s Song._