His
consolation was that he suffered for the truth's sake, for to
decline action upon such insight as he had had, was a thing as
impossible as to alter the relations between the parts of a sphere.
Dorothy longed for peace, and the return of the wandering chickens
of the church to the shelter of her wings, to be led by her about
the paled yard of obedience, picking up the barley of righteousness;
Richard longed for the trumpet-blast of Liberty to call her sons
together--to a war whose battles should never cease until men were
free to worship God after the light he had lighted within them, and
the dragon of priestly authority should breathe out his last fiery
breath, no more to drive the feebler brethren to seek refuge in the
house of hypocrisy.
At home Dorothy was under few influences except those of her mother,
and, through his letters, of Mr. Matthew Herbert. Upon the former a
lovely spiritual repose had long since descended. Her anxieties were
only for her daughter, her hopes only for the world beyond the
grave. The latter was a man of peace, who, having found in the
ordinances of his church everything to aid and nothing to retard his
spiritual development, had no conception of the nature of the
puritanical opposition to its government and rites.
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