Beulah - Page 191/348

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!"