Beulah - Page 218/348

"To me all creeds and systems are alike null. With you, Beulah, it

was once very different."

"Once! yes, once!" She shuddered at the wild waste into which she

had strayed.

"What are the questions that have so long disturbed you?"

"Questions, sir, which, all my life, have been printed on evening

sun-flushed clouds, on rosy sea shells, on pale, sweet, delicate

blossoms, and which I have unavailingly sought to answer for myself.

There are mysteries in physics, morals, and metaphysics that have

wooed me on to an investigation; but the further I wander, deeper

grows the darkness. Alone and unaided I have been forced to brave

these doubts; I have studied, and read, and thought. Cloudy

symbolisms mock me on every side; and the more earnestly I strive to

overtake truth the tighter grow my eyes. Now, sir, you are much

older; you have scaled the dizzy heights of science and carefully

explored the mines of philosophy; and if human learning will avail,

then you can help me. It is impossible for you to have lived and

studied so long without arriving at some conclusion relative to

these vexing questions of this and every other age. I want to know

whether I have ever lived before; whether there is not an anterior

life of my soul, of which I get occasional glimpses, and the memory

of which haunts and disquiets me. This doubt has not been engendered

by casual allusions to Plato's 'reminiscence theory'; before I knew

there was such a doctrine in existence I have sat by your study

fire, pondering some strange coincidences for which I could not

account. It seemed an indistinct outgoing into the far past; a dim

recollection of scenes and ideas, older than the aggregate of my

birthdays; now a flickering light, then all darkness; no clew; all

shrouded in the mystery of voiceless ages. I tried to explain these

psychological phenomena by the theory of association of ideas, but

they eluded an analysis; there was no chain along which memory can

pass. They were like ignes fatui, flashing up from dank caverns and

dying out while I looked upon them. As I grew older I found strange

confirmation in those curious passages of Coleridge and Wordsworth,

[Footnote: Coleridge's "Sonnet on the Birth of a Son." Wordsworth's

"Ode--Intimations of Immortality."] and continually I propound to my

soul these questions: 'If you are immortal, and will exist through

endless ages, have you not existed from the beginning of time?

Immortality knows neither commencement nor ending. If so, whither

shall I go when this material framework is dissolved? to make other

frameworks? to a final rest? Or shall the I, the me, the soul, lose

its former identity? Am I a minute constituent of the all-diffused,

all-pervading Spirit, a breath of the Infinite Essence, one day to

be divested of my individuality? or is God an awful, gigantic,

immutable, isolated Personality? If so, what medium of communication

is afforded? Can the spiritual commune with matter? Can the material

take cognizance of the purely spiritual and divine?' Oh, sir! I know

that you do not accept the holy men of Galilee as His deputed

oracles. Tell me where you find surer prophets. Only show me the

truth--the eternal truth, and I would give my life for it! Sir, how

can you smile at such questions as these--questions involving the

soul's destiny? One might fancy you a second Parrhasius."