Beulah - Page 173/348

"No, never. I want to die before such a doubt occurs to me. Oh, what

would my life be without that plan? What would a fallen, sin-cursed

world be without a Jesus?"

"But why curse a race in order to necessitate a Saviour?"

Clara looked in astonishment at the pale, fixed features before her.

A frightened expression came over her own countenance, a look of

shuddering horror; and, putting up her wasted hands, as if to ward

off some grim phantom, she cried: "Oh, Beulah! what is this? You are not an infidel?"

Her companion was silent a moment; then said emphatically: "Dr. Hartwell does not believe the religion you hold so dear."

Clara covered her face with her hands, and answered brokenly: "Beulah, I have envied you, because I fancied that your superior

intellect won you the love which I was weak enough to expect and

need. But if it has brought you both to doubt the Bible, I thank God

that the fatal gift was withheld from me. Have your books and

studies brought you to this? Beulah! Beulah! throw them into the

fire, and come back to trust in Christ."

She held out her hands imploringly; but, with a singularly cold

smile, her friend replied: "You must go to sleep. Your fever is rising. Don't talk any more to-

night; I will not hear you."

An hour after Clara slept soundly, and Beulah sat in her own room

bending over a book. Midnight study had long since become an

habitual thing; nay, two and three o'clock frequently found her

beside the waning lamp. Was it any marvel that, as Dr. Hartwell

expressed it, she "looked wretched." From her earliest childhood she

had been possessed by an active spirit of inquiry which constantly

impelled her to investigate, and as far as possible to explain, the

mysteries which surrounded, her on every side. With her growth grew

this haunting spirit, which asked continually: "What am I? Whence

did I come? And whither am I bound? What is life? What is death? Am

I my own mistress, or am I but a tool in the hands of my Maker? What

constitutes the difference between my mind and my body? Is there any

difference? If spirit must needs have body to incase it, and body

must have a spirit to animate it, may they not be identical? With

these primeval foundation questions began her speculative career. In

the solitude of her own soul she struggled bravely and earnestly to

answer those "dread questions, which, like swords of flaming fire,

tokens of imprisonment, encompass man on earth." Of course mystery

triumphed. Panting for the truth, she pored over her Bible,

supposing that here, at least, all clouds would melt away; but here,

too, some inexplicable passages confronted her. Physically, morally,

and mentally she found the world warring. To reconcile these

antagonisms with the conditions and requirements of Holy Writ, she

now most faithfully set to work. Ah, proudly aspiring soul! How many

earnest thinkers had essayed the same mighty task, and died under

the intolerable burden? Unluckily for her, there was no one to

direct or assist her. She scrupulously endeavored to conceal her

doubts and questions from her guardian. Poor child? she fancied she

concealed them so effectually from his knowledge; while he silently

noted the march of skepticism in her nature. There were dim,

puzzling passages of Scripture which she studied on her knees; now

trying to comprehend them, and now beseeching the Source of all

knowledge to enlighten her. But, as has happened to numberless

others, there was seemingly no assistance given. The clouds grew

denser and darker, and, like the "cry of strong swimmers in their

agony," her prayers had gone up to the Throne of Grace. Sometimes

she was tempted to go to the minister of the church where she sat

Sunday after Sunday, and beg him to explain the mysteries to her.

But the pompous austerity of his manners repelled her whenever she

thought of broaching the subject, and gradually she saw that she

must work out her own problems. Thus, from week to week and month to

month, she toiled on, with a slowly dying faith, constantly

clambering over obstacles which seemed to stand between her trust

and revelation. It was no longer study for the sake of erudition;

these riddles involved all that she prized in Time and Eternity, and

she grasped books of every description with the eagerness of a

famishing nature. What dire chance threw into her hands such works

as Emerson's, Carlyle's, and Goethe's? Like the waves of the clear,

sunny sea, they only increased her thirst to madness. Her burning

lips were ever at these fountains; and, in her reckless eagerness,

she plunged into the gulf of German speculation. Here she believed

that she had indeed found the "true processes," and, with renewed

zest, continued the work of questioning. At this stage of the

conflict the pestilential scourge was laid upon the city, and she

paused from her metaphysical toil to close glazed eyes and shroud

soulless clay. In the awful hush of those hours of watching she

looked calmly for some solution, and longed for the unquestioning

faith of early years. But these influences passed without aiding her

in the least, and, with rekindled ardor, she went back to her false

prophets. In addition, ethnology beckoned her on to conclusions

apparently antagonistic to the revealed system, and the stony face

of geology seemed radiant with characters of light, which she might

decipher and find some security in. From Dr. Asbury's extensive

collection she snatched treatise after treatise. The sages of

geology talked of the pre-Adamic eras, and of man's ending the

slowly forged chain, of which the radiata form the lowest link; and

then she was told that in those pre-Adamic ages paleontologists find

no trace whatever of that golden time when the vast animal creation

lived in harmony and bloodshed was unknown; ergo, man's fall in Eden

had no agency in bringing death into the world; ergo, that chapter

in Genesis need puzzle her no more.