'Ah,' cried I, 'you are relenting, you are weeping. Bless you for that.
Dear, dear father, look up, and see with what joy a daughter can
embrace you.'
'My child, my child!' cried he, turning, and throwing himself upon my
bosom. 'A heart of stone could not withstand this! There, there, there,
I forgive you all!'
Fast and fondly did we cling round each other, and sweet were the sighs
that we breathed, and the tears that we shed.
But I suffered too much: the disorder which had some time been
engendering in my frame now burst forth with alarming vehemence, and I
was conveyed raving into a carriage. On our arrival at the hotel, they
sent for a physician, who pronounced me in a violent fever of a nervous
nature. For a fortnight I was not expected to recover; and I myself
felt so convinced of my speedy dissolution, that I requested the
presence of a clergyman. He came; and his conversations, by composing
my mind, contributed in a great degree to my recovery. At my request,
he paid me daily visits. Our subject was religion,--not those
theological controversies which excite so much irreligious feeling, and
teach men to hate each other for the love of God; but those plain and
simple truths which convince without confounding, and which avoid the
bigotry that would worship error, because it is hereditary; and the
fanaticism that would lay rash hands on the holy temple, because some
of its smaller pillars appear unsound.
After several days of discussion on this important topic, he led me, by
degrees, to give him an account of my late adventures; and as I
related, he made comments.
Affected by his previous precepts, and by my own awful approach to
eternity, which had suppressed in my heart the passions of ambition and
pride, I now became as desirous of conviction as I had heretofore been
sophistical in support of my folly. To be predisposed is to be half
converted; and soon this exemplary pastor convinced my understanding of
the impious and immoral tendency of my past life. He shewed me, that to
the inordinate gratification of a particular caprice, I had sacrificed
my duty towards my natural protectors, myself, and my God. That my
ruling passion, though harmless in its nature, was injurious in its
effects; that it gave me a distaste for all sober occupations,
perverted my judgment, and even threatened me with the deprivation of
my reason. Religion itself, he said, if indulged with immoderate
enthusiasm, at last degenerates into zealotry, and leaves the poor
devotee too rapturous to be rational, and too virulent to be religious.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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