The Sabbath-Day Book for Boys and Girls (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Whether William went back to his old service, or was received again into the army, we do not know. Allegory II.?The Grand Trial. There was in a certain country a great king, who was also a judge. He was very merciful, but he was also very just; for he used to say that justice was the foundation of all goodness. His subjects were apt enough, in a general way, to extol his merciful temper, and especially those subjects who were always committing crimes, which made them liable to be punished by his justice. This last quality, they constantly kept out of sight, till they had cheated themselves into a notion that he was too good to punish at all. Now it happened a long time before, that this whole people had broken their allegiance, and had forfeited the king's favor, and had also fallen from a very prosperous state in which he had placed them, having one and all become bankrupts; but when they were thus deeply in debt, and had nothing to pay, the king's son most generously took the whole burden of the debts on himself; and, in short, it was proposed, that all their affairs should be settled, and their very crimes forgiven (for they were criminals as well as debtors) provided only they would show themselves to be sorry for what they had done, themselves, and be thankful for what was done for them. I should however remark, that a book was also given them, in which a true and faithful account of their own rebellion was written; and of the manner of obtaining the king's pardon, together with a variety of directions for their conduct in time to come; and in this book, it was particularly mentioned, that, after having lived a certain number of years in a part of the same king's country, and under his eye and jurisdiction, there should be a Grand Trial, when every one was to be...