"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."
She became entangled in the finely spun webs of ontology, and knew not what she believed. Her guardian's words rang in her ears like a knell. "You must accept either utter skepticism, or absolute, consistent pantheism."
A volume which she had been reading the night before lay on the table, and she opened it at the following passage:
"Every being is sufficient to itself; that is, every being is, in and by itself, infinite: has its God, its highest conceivable being, in itself. The object of any subject is nothing else than the subject's own nature taken objectively. Such as are a man's thoughts and dispositions, such is his God! Consciousness of God is self- consciousness; by his God, you know the man, and by the man, his God: the two are identical! Religion is merely the consciousness which a man has of his own, not limited, but infinite, nature; it is an early form of self-knowledge. God is the objective nature of the understanding."