But the conflict of religious sentiment produces a divided
camp.
The offspring must of necessity be of negative faith. When intelligence
dawns on the young soul, its first reasoning powers are caught in a
dilemma. Reverential and filial awe chains the child to the father
and chains it to the mother; but the father may sternly command the
Methodist chapel for Sunday service; the mother will wish to see her
little one worship before the alters of the Church. Fear or love wins
the trusting child, but neither gains a sincere believer.
See that young mother, silent and fretful; the rouge that grief gives
the moistened eye tells its own tale of secret weeping.
Trusting, confiding in the power of young love, attracted by the wealth,
the family, or the manners of her suitor, she allows the indissoluble
tie to bind her in unholy wedlock. Soon the faith she has trifled
with assumes its mastery in her repentant heart, but liberty is gone;
for the dream of conjugal bliss which dazzled when making her choice,
she finds herself plunged for life into the most galling and
irremediable of human sorrows--secret domestic persecution. Few brave
the trial; the largest number go with the current to the greater evil
of apostasy.
Cassier loved a beautiful Catholic girl named Madeleine. Blinded by
the stronger passion, he waived religious prejudice. He wooed, he
promised, he won. The timid Madeleine, beneath her rich suitor in
position, dazzled by wealth, and decoyed by the fair promises that
so often deceive the confiding character of girlhood, gave her hand
and her heart to a destiny she soon learned to lament.
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