_HOPE._
At last there came a time, even in hell, when the burden of my sin lay
so heavily upon me, that I felt I could bear it no longer, and that if
succour there came none, the very soul of me must wither away and die.
It was not that I wanted to evade the punishment of my crime, for I
was willing and wished to undergo it to the uttermost. No, that which
was so terrible to me was the thought that not all the sufferings of
eternity could avail to wipe away the awful stain upon my spirit, or
to undo the evil which I had brought upon the woman I had ruined. Of
myself and of my future, save for the continual crying-out of my soul
after its lost purity, I scarcely cared now to think. It was of Dorothy
that my heart was full; it was for Dorothy that I never ceased to
sorrow, to lament, and--sinner, though I was--to pray. I saw then the
inevitable consequences of the wrong I had done her pictured forth in
all their horror. I saw her, with the sense of her sin as yet but fresh
upon her, shrinking from every glance, and fancying that she read the
knowledge of her guilt in every eye. I saw her, "not knowing where to
turn for refuge from swiftly-advancing shame, and understanding no more
of this life of ours than a foolish lost lamb wandering farther and
farther in the nightfall," stealing stealthily forth at dusk to hide
herself from her fellow-creatures.
I saw her, when the secret of her shame could no longer be concealed,
recoiling in mute terror from the glance of coarse admiration on the
faces of sensual men, or shrinking in quivering agony from the look
of curious scorn in the eyes of maids and mothers, who drew aside
their skirts as she passed them, as if fearful of being contaminated
by her touch. And then--driven out from their midst by the very
Christian women who should have been the first to have held out a hand
to save her--I saw her turn away with a heart hardened into brazen
indifference, and plunge headlong into a bottomless gulf of ignominy
and sin.
Nor did the vision pass from me until, out of that seething vortex
of lust and infamy, I saw arise the black phantom of an immortal
soul which was lost for ever, crying out unto God and His Christ for
judgment upon the seducer!
* * * * *
As these hideous spectres of the past arose again before me, I fell to
the ground, and shrieked out under the burden of my sin, as only he can
shriek who is torn by hell-torture and despair. But even as I shrieked,
I felt that burden lifted and borne away from me, and then I saw, as in
a vision, One kneeling in prayer. And I, who had cried out that I could
bear the burden of my sin no longer, saw that upon Him was laid, not
only my sin, but the sins of the whole world, and that He stooped of
His own accord to receive them. And as I looked upon the Divine dignity
of that agonized form--forsaken of His Father that we might never be
forsaken, and bowed down under a burden, compared to which, all the
horrors of hell were but as the passing phantom of a pain--I saw great
beads of blood break out like sweat upon His brow, and I heard wrung
from Him a cry of such unutterable anguish as never before rose from
human lips. And at that cry the vision passed, and I awoke to find
myself in hell once more, but in my heart there was a stirring as of
the wings of hope--the hope which I had deemed dead to me for ever.
_Could_ it be--O God of mercy! was it possible that even now it might
not be too late?--that there was indeed One who could make my sin as
though it had never been?--who of His great love for Dorothy and for
me, would bear it and its consequences as His own burden? and who by
the cleansing power of the blood which He had shed upon the cross,
could wash her soul and mine whiter than the whiteness of snow?
But to this hope there succeeded a moment when the agonized thought:
"How if there be no Christ?" leapt out at me, like the darkness which
looms but the blacker for the lightning-flash; a moment when hell gat
hold on me again, and a thousand gibbering devils arose to shriek in my
ear: "And though there be a Christ, is it not now too late?"
I reeled at that cry, and the darkness seemed once more to close in
around. A horde of hideous thoughts, the very spawn of hell, swarmed
like vermin in my mind; there was the breath as of a host of contending
fiends upon my face; a hundred hungry hands laid hold on me, and strove
to drag me down and down as to a bottomless pit; but with a great cry
to God, I flung the foul things from me; and battling, beating, like a
drowning man for breath, I fell at the feet of a woman, white-veiled,
and clad in robes like the morning, whose hand it was that had plucked
me from the abyss in which I lay.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]