His Other Wife: A Novel — page 55: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

MISSIONARY WORK. 47 She belonged to that unhappy class of women whose need of love and kindness amounts to an insatiate craving; yet, with this nature, she was forever confronted with the fact that both men and women turned from her with in- stinctive coldness. Even her adopted parents showed her only lukewarm affection. Consequently, at the tender age of seventeen, Rachel was a morbid cynic, who believed with her whole soul that God had created and placed her in the world for no other purpose than to suffer. This girl attended the first meeting that assembled in the village church to listen to the new preacher’s discourse on evangelical religion. The former pastor, who had re- cently died, had been a Presbyterian ‘‘of the most strictest sect,” and Rachel had grown up under his terrible teach- ings of predestinarianism, and his fiery warnings pf ‘‘the wrath to come.” The new minister took his text from St. John— ‘‘ Love ye one another, my little children.” In a stream of rich and tender eloquence he poured out the waters of life on the arid sands of the congregation be- fore him. Men, women, and children, whose hearts had become seared as a desert by the fiery winds of doctrine which the | stern old Knoxite had let loose from his pulpit each Sun- day, were melted to tears by the soothing words of gospel love, mercy, and long-suffering patience which fell so sweetly from the missionary’s lips. Poor Rachel Logan almost sobbed her heart out. — m Eomirebooks:co