"Sometimes I think if I could only live, and be strong, I would make
myself useful in the world--would try to be less selfish and
exacting, but all regrets are vain, and the indulged child of luxury
must take her place in the pale realms of death along with the
poverty-stricken and laboring. Beulah, I was in pain last night, and
could not sleep, and for hours I seemed to hear the words of that
horrible vision: 'And he saw how world after world shook off its
glimmering souls upon the sea of Death, as a water-bubble scatters
swimming lights on the waves.' Oh! my mind is clouded and my heart
hopeless, it is dismal to stand alone as I do, and confront the
final issue, without belief in anything. Sometimes, when the
paroxysms are severe and prolonged, I grow impatient of the tedious
delay, and would spring, open-armed, to meet Death, the deliverer."
Beulah was deeply moved, and answered, with a faltering voice and
trembling lip: "I wish I could comfort and cheer you; but I cannot--I cannot! If
the hand of disease placed me to-day on the brink beside you, I
should be as hopeless as you. Oh, Cornelia! it makes my heart ache
to look at you now, and I would give my life to be able to stand
where you do, with a calm trust in the God of Israel; but--"
"Then be warned by my example. In many respects we resemble each
other; our pursuits have been similar. Beulah, do not follow me to
the end! Take my word for it, all is dark and grim."
She sank back, too much exhausted to continue the conversation, and
Beulah rose to go.
"Can't you stay with me?" said the feeble girl.
"No; my companionship is no benefit to you now. If I could help you
I would not leave you at all."
She pressed her lips to the forehead furrowed by suffering, and
hastened away.
It was dusk when she reached home, and, passing the dining room,
where the tea table awaited her arrival, she sought her own
apartment. A cheerful fire blazed in welcome; but just now all
things were somber to her vision, and she threw herself into a chair
and covered her face with her hands. Like a haunting specter,
Cornelia's haggard countenance pursued her, and a dull foreboding
pointed to a coming season when she, too, would quit earth in
hopeless uncertainty. She thought of her guardian and his skeptical
misanthropy. He had explored every by-path of speculation, and after
years of study and investigation had given up in despair, and
settled down into a refined pantheism. Could she hope to succeed
better? Was her intellect so vastly superior to those who for
thousands of years had puzzled by midnight lamps over these
identical questions of origin and destiny? What was the speculation
of all ages, from Thales to Comte, to the dying girl she had just
left? Poor Beulah! For the first time her courage forsook her, and
bitter tears gushed over her white cheeks. There was no stony
bitterness in her face, but an unlifting shadow that mutely revealed
the unnumbered hours of strife and desolation which were slowly
bowing that brave heart to the dust. She shuddered, as now, in self-
communion, she felt that atheism, grim and murderous, stood at the
entrance of her soul, and threw its benumbing shadow into the inmost
recesses. Unbelief hung its murky vapors about her heart, curtaining
it from the sunshine of God's smile. It was not difficult to trace
her gradual progress if so she might term her unsatisfactory
journey. Rejecting literal revelation, she was perplexed to draw the
exact line of demarcation between myths and realities; then followed
doubts as to the necessity, and finally as to the probability and
possibility, of an external, verbal revelation. A revealed code or
system was antagonistic to the doctrines of rationalism; her own
consciousness must furnish the necessary data. But how far was
"individualism" allowable? And here the hydra of speculation reared
its horrid head; if consciousness alone furnished truth, it was but
true for her, true according to the formation of her mind, but not
absolutely true. Admit the supremacy of the individual reason, and
she could not deny "that the individual mind is the generating
principle of all human knowledge; that the soul of man is like the
silkworm, which weaves its universe out of its own being; that the
whole mass of knowledge to which we can ever attain lies potentially
within us from the beginning; that all truth is nothing more than a
self-development."