A RETURN TO MYSELF.
I had received several letters from Carlo, and they were very pleasant
and satisfactory, except that, as yet, he had not succeeded in finding
any clue to the whereabouts of the poor woman who was said to be the
widow of my uncle. But he fancied, from several reports which reached
his ears, that she had not died.
“So there will be another lost bride to be found, I suppose,” said Aunt
Jane. “Well, you will both be very happy without your inheritance, if
she should turn up, and prove at last to have been really a bride--very
happy, if you can succeed in acquiring a real firm faith in Revelation.”
I was reading various books at that time, by Aunt Jane’s advice, and
those I found most useful in helping me to acquire true faith were
Butler’s “Analogy,” and, later, Dr. Newman’s “Grammar of Assent,”[B]
and his early sermons, and Montalembert’s “Monks of the West;” and for
evidences of the immortality of the soul, I found Plato and Paul
Richter’s work very conclusive.
But at times I still was much perplexed; and when suffering from those
paroxysms of unbelief, I felt as if I were doomed to listen incessantly
to the chord of the seventh, with an agonized longing to resolve it into
the key-note, and attain the contentment of perfected harmony. And this
everlasting seventh was always mingled with the sound of more or less
fearful discords. Yet I could sometimes feel quite comforted even when
suffering the bitter pangs of remorse, because they convinced me that,
if I were not a responsible being, and destined for eternity, I should
not suffer from such pangs. And then what a comfort to think that,
Revelation being true, we must inherit the blessings promised to the
meek and poor in spirit; for we cannot be crushed by remorse without
feeling meek, and humble, and poor, and worthless.
“It seems to me that I fearfully love the world and the things of the
world,” I once told Aunt Jane. “I am such an animal in my love for what
we call nature, even in its commonest and most homely aspects--hedges,
trees, fields, the sky, the birds, the air, and stars and moon by night,
as well as glorious sunrise or evening coloured clouds. I sometimes feel
that my _beau-ideal_ of future bliss would be to be transformed into a
kind of permanent butterfly or bird, if I could acquire the faculty of
ministering to the wants of suffering mortals, and bringing comfort and
pleasant thoughts to them. To alleviate their sufferings, and yet have
the power to hover amid wild flowers on sunny banks part of the day,
with the spirits of dear friends who are gone before--a sort of
spiritual Sister of Mercy, without being encumbered by a body liable to
pain or fatigue. How very human and grovelling this must appear to those
who are by grace imbued with such devotional spirits as to make
perpetual adoration of God, of an Unseen Being, the chief pleasure and
object of their lives. And yet people who are usually called
worldly--those, I mean, who are principally occupied in the advancement
of their worldly position--are still less comprehensible to me than the
devotional ones are.”
“I can imagine this,” said Aunt Jane. “I cannot understand having any
forgetfulness of the future after death. From earliest childhood I have
been accustomed to die daily--to face the hereafter--to be almost solely
occupied with speculations, or wonderment, or hopes about it. The short
space of this life has always seemed to me as nothing--the end was
always present. All my readings had this object--to be satisfied by
‘some sure and certain hope.’ But I suppose this strong innate spirit of
enjoyment in the common and apparently most innocent pleasures of
life--a pleasure which I sedulously taught myself to cultivate as a
refuge from bodily pain and _malaise_, to which I have always been
subject, has perhaps prevented that kind of high devotional feeling
which some persons seem absorbed with, and find their greatest delight
in. My mind lives always in a prayerful form of thanksgiving--fervent
thankfulness to the Unseen Being--thankful because I felt so conscious
of sin--of never being able to act up to the high standard of duty which
I felt was right--a keen suffering from remorse, and consciousness that
I required to suffer in order to fit me for a purer, higher state, and a
great satisfaction in all the Scriptures.
“The comfort of them, when I could fully believe that they were
authentic, was immense; and even in moments of doubt, when I could not
believe that they are of divine (not human) origin, the precepts they
inculcate gave me great pleasure. To look at and feel anything _good_
gives me the same kind of real enjoyment that it seemed to give Plato
and other cultivated ancient writers, because it gives us hope of
eventual and eternal happiness.”
“Yes,” said I, “but, alas! with me I confess it must always be a _hope_,
for, if I look closely upon the Cross, and contemplate the sufferings of
our Blessed Saviour, His sufferings acquire a kind of permanent,
ever-existing, present reality, which pains me fearfully. I cannot
contemplate them as past. To me it is as if He went on suffering there
still, to atone for all the present wickedness of human beings. I am
pervaded always with the conviction of the present sinful state of human
beings, and the corruption of human nature. Is this stupidity, or what,
that seems to incapacitate me from being able to comprehend the present
enjoyment some people feel from the constant adoration of the Cross, and
painful parts of our religion?--and is it that they _can_ always feel
that it _is_ past, although they keep looking at the figure of our Lord
in agony? Is it that their bodies are so much healthier than mine that
they can afford better to contemplate all suffering, without being
wholly depressed and crushed by it?”
“I cannot tell how that is,” she said: “but I fancy that those devout
minds have a corresponding perception of our Lord’s glory, and of His
joy in saving sinners; and therefore these three perceptions blend
harmoniously, like the dark and light colours of the rainbow, forming a
perfect whole--the purple hue of his suffering, the crimson fervour of
His Divine love, the golden radiance of His eternal joy! Remember what
Jean Paul Richter somewhere says--‘Weak eyes cannot bear darkness any
better than they can extreme of light.’ But,” she added, “I can quite
understand the _doubts_ from which you have often been suffering, and
which are beautifully described in a poem of Roden Noel’s, ‘To whom
shall we go?’ You have no idea of the trouble and difficulty my sister
always found in believing in Revelation, and how all visible churches,
which are often expressions of exaggerated texts of Scripture, have
tended to increase her difficulties. And yet these very Churches, with
all their apparent differences, to my mind tend to prove the truth of
those Scriptures from which they all derive their faith. But, surely you
have attained belief in our immortality--that this suffering world, or,
rather, our suffering in it, will help us to everlasting joy? Because we
become more and more formed for eternal joy the longer we live, if we
have duly cultivated a taste for _what is good_. I feel now that my
decaying body, in spite of increasing sufferings, contains a mind more
fitted to enjoy happiness than it did when young and healthy. This alone
ought to convince me that I am tending towards that happiness, and that
it can only be perfected after I have got rid of this suffering body by
death. If you do not yet feel this, I am sure you will in time. The
miserable moments when I could not feel this hope were perfect agony,
and I cannot think that such a mind as yours could be satisfied without
hope. It would make me very sad if I thought you _could_.”
These and other words of dear Aunt Jane lingered in my memory for years
after they were spoken, and in moments of despondency and grief her
bright clear eyes and hopeful words seemed again more vivid than even
when her bodily presence was with me on earth.
I doubt not that her prayers have helped me to attain that peace which,
thank God, I now enjoy; and I trust that all the suffering and the
weary, who read these pages, may be aided, by some poor words of mine,
as I was by her words and example, to seek for happiness and rest in
the same unfailing source of light, and hope, and joy.
* * * * *