She replaced the book on the table, and, taking up a small basket,
resumed her sewing.
"But, Beulah, did you not accept his 'Law of Compensation'?"
"I believe its operations are correct as regards mere social
position--wealth, penury, even the endowments of genius. But further
than this I do not accept it. I want to believe that my soul is
immortal. Emerson's 'Duration of the Attributes of the Soul' does
not satisfy me. I desire something more than an immutability, or
continued existence hereafter, in the form of an abstract idea of
truth, justice, love, or humility."
Cornelia looked at her steadily, and, after a pause, said with
indescribable bitterness and despair: "If our past and present shadows the future, I hope that my last
sleep may be unbroken and eternal."
Beulah raised her head and glanced searchingly at her companion;
then silently went on with her work.
"I understand your honest face. You think I have no cause to talk
so. You see me surrounded by wealth,--petted, indulged in every
whim,--and you fancy that I am a very enviable woman; but--"
"There you entirely mistake me," interrupted Beulah, with a cold
smile.
"You think that I ought to be very happy and contented, and useful
in the sphere in which I move; and regard me, I know, as a weak
hypochondriac. Beulah, physicians told me, long ago, that I lived
upon the very brink of the grave; that I might die at any moment,
without warning. My grandmother and one of my uncles died suddenly
with this disease of the heart, and the shadow of death seems
continually around me; it will not be dispelled--it haunts me
forever. 'Boast not thyself of to-morrow,' said the preacher; but I
cannot even boast of to-day, or this hour. The world knows nothing
of this; it has been carefully concealed by my parents; but I know
it! and, Beulah, I feel as did that miserable, doomed prisoner of
Poe's 'Pit and Pendulum,' who saw the pendulum, slowly but surely,
sweeping down upon him. My life has been a great unfulfilled
promise. With what are generally considered elements of happiness in
my home, I have always been solitary and unsatisfied. Conscious of
my feeble tenure on life, I early set out to anchor myself in a calm
faith which would secure me a happy lot in eternity. My nature was
strongly religious, and I longed to find hope and consolation in
some of our churches. My parents always had a pew in the fashionable
church in this city. You need not smile--I speak advisedly when I
say 'fashionable' church; for, assuredly, fashion has crept into
religion also, nowadays. From my childhood I was regularly dressed
and taken to church; but I soon began to question the sincerity of
the pastor and the consistency of the members. Sunday after Sunday I
saw them in their pews, and week after week listened to their
gossiping, slanderous chit-chat. Prominent members busied themselves
about charitable associations, and headed subscription lists, and
all the while set examples of frivolity, heartlessness, and what is
softly termed 'fashionable excesses,' which shocked my ideas of
Christian propriety and disgusted me with the mockery their lives
presented. I watched the minister in his social relations, and,
instead of reverencing him as a meek and holy man of God, I could
not forbear looking with utter contempt upon his pompous, self-
sufficient demeanor toward the mass of his flock; while to the most
opulent and influential members he bowed down, with a servile,
fawning sycophancy absolutely disgusting. I attended various
churches, listening to sermons, and watching the conduct of the
prominent professing Christians of each. Many gave most liberally to
so-called religious causes and institutions, and made amends by
heavily draining the purses of widows and orphans. Some affected an
ascetical simplicity of dress, and yet hugged their purses where
their Bibles should have been. It was all Mammon worship; some
grossly palpable, some adroitly cloaked under solemn faces and
severe observance of the outward ceremonials. The clergy, as a
class, I found strangely unlike what I had expected. Instead of
earnest zeal for the promotion of Christianity, I saw that the
majority were bent only on the aggrandizement of their particular
denomination. Verily, I thought in my heart, 'Is all this bickering
the result of their religion? How these churches do hate each
other!' According to each, salvation could only be found in their
special tenets--within the pale of their peculiar organization; and
yet, all professed to draw their doctrines from the same book; and,
Beulah, the end of my search was that I scorned all creeds and
churches, and began to find a faith outside of a revelation which
gave rise to so much narrow-minded bigotry--so much pharisaism and
delusion. Those who call themselves ministers of the Christian
religion should look well to their commissions, and beware how they
go out into the world, unless the seal of Jesus be indeed upon their
brows. They offer themselves as the Pharos of the people, but ah!
they sometimes wreck immortal souls by their unpardonable
inconsistencies. For the last two years I have been groping my way
after some system upon which I could rest the little time I have to
live. Oh, I am heartsick and despairing!"