A vast majority of the noblest intellects of the race have ever held to the idea that,—“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,Rough hew them how we will.”By its influence they have been both consoled and strengthened under the pressures and in the exigencies of life. This principle, to a singular degree, assumes both form and development in the story of James Renfew, the Redemptioner.He comes to us as an orphan and the inmate of a workhouse, flung upon the world, like a dry leaf on the crest of a breaker; his mind a blank devoid of knowledge, save the idea of the Almighty and the commands of the Decalogue, whose force, in virtue of prior possession, held the ground and kept at bay the evil influences by which he was surrounded. And in consequence of thus holding aloof from all partnership in vice, he was brow-beaten, trampled upon, and made a butt of by his companions in misfortune.His only inheritance was the kiss of a dying mother, the dim recollection of her death, and a Bible which he could not read,—her sole bequest.