Page:Orange Grove.djvu/386

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

and how he suffered and how they put a crown of thorns on his head, and how mighty pretty he bore it all and only asked to have 'em forgiven, I'se so happy to think he was willin' to come down here and die for us and then be nailed on to the cross on Cavalry, I'se willin' to suffer any thing. But you see I forgets him when the troubles heaps upon me," throwing her arms passionately across her breast, and violently rocking to and fro, as a fresh sense of her wrongs swept over her. Whether it is owing to the uncultivated state of their religious convictions, and the general neglect of moral training, or the familiarity with the Deity to which their large imagination has prompted them, in the absence of earthly friends to hear the story of their suffering; there is in the African race a strange mixture of religious enthusiasm and earthly passion in the same breath. Possessing an uncommon share of the devotional clement, they have an inherent sense of the mercy and goodness of God, and an unfaltering faith in his promises, that belongs to no other race. Apparently through outside forces the most propitious soil for its development, Atheism finds no foothold there. Visions of the New Jerusalem and the Heavenly Land have led them through the fiery furnace of outraged affection and excruciating tortures, until they reached those shores where master and slave know no other distinction than the unerring scales of justice award to them. Steadfast in their belief in immortality, all the sufferings of this life are swallowed up in glorious anticipations of its realities.

Chrissy arose and relighted her pipe, a powerful