The year had been one of honest effort, faithful, loyal service. Twice every Sabbath, morning and evening, Mr. Thorpe had stood in the pulpit and expounded the truths of the Gospel as they had been revealed to him. Mrs. Thorpe, capable and willing, had been drawn into church, charitable and benevolent work, until her hands were full of work, and her life full of care; and her thoughts were vastly more troubled than they had ever been before. She realized that where once her thoughts had been vague, half-formed, that now, full-fledged and forceful, they were overmastering her. The mysteries that had once hung about her, dim and misty, now arose like walls of blackness, forbidding and awe-inspiring; and the things that she had once gazed upon with curious eyes now shocked and terrified her.
When she started in her life's work, her ideas of religion and the truths of life were but dream-like, shadowy conceptions; reflections, as it were, from the theories and dogmas of her elders and so-called spiritual leaders. There are many people who never get beyond these reflections, these traditions of religion, these second-hand conceptions. To some natures they are satisfying; they ease the mind, point a way to safety for the future, and afford a solace in time of trouble.
Mrs. Thorpe, however, was one who was destined to abide but a very short time in the consolation afforded by this kind of religion. Yet, when she attempted to step out from the creeds that cramped and dwarfed her soul, to thrust from her theories and premises that depressed and antagonized her, she found no other ground on which to place her feet, and felt herself naked and alone, without a garment of righteousness with which to clothe herself, and without compass or guiding star. She doubted, and in agony condemned herself for her doubts; later she rebelled, yet with her own hand she would have torn her rebellious heart from her bosom, had it been in her power to do so, and cast it from her as an unclean thing, an enemy to her peace, a treachery to her soul. She believed it treason to allow her mind to wander into fields of religious research other than those that had been carefully explored and marked as safe; and to her consciousness she pleaded guilty of the charge.
Before her, life stretched barren and desolate, and not even in her dreams could she find a light to guide her feet. She longed for peace, and believed the fault all hers that she had not found it; she lacked wisdom, and believed the power to attain it had been denied her.
And as she stood alone in the sweet spring night, her thoughts and emotions became complex, conflicting and tumultuous. Strange, alien thoughts flashed before her vision, and, like things alive, seemed to glow and quiver in the darkness. She covered her face with her hands. "God has hidden His face from me," she whispered, "I have never known Him."
Now before her in a fleeting vision she saw her Savior, but it was not the man Jesus as she had thought of him, with his crown of thorns and his nail-pierced hands beckoning to her, asking for her adoration and worship; but in this vision he came as a friend and teacher, one who has solved and proven all of life's problems, and stood ready to help her with all that troubled and perplexed her. He offered her not redemption through his death, but life through the understanding of God's love.
But so foreign was this vision of a Christ, to her orthodox conception of Him, that for a moment she was overwhelmed by it; then instantly she felt her strange thoughts to be intruders, vagaries of her brain, and her first impulse was to refuse them audience, to resist and destroy them. She had no intention of countenancing for a moment a thought that cast any shade of disapprobation on the work in which she and her husband were united, or which differed in any manner from the way in which they were working.
She turned and walked back and forth through the room. "This unrest always attacks me when I am tired and undone," she thought. "These troublesome thoughts will leave me when I am rested and myself again."
She went back to the window and breathed deep of the sweet night air. Something deeper than her consciousness, more potent than her faith, greater than her understanding, was striving for recognition within her. The heart of all things, the force and strength of the universe, the science of Life itself was unfolding before her; but she steeled her heart against it. Her mind had not yet burst its chrysalis; she was still a child of earth.
When Mrs. Thorpe found herself beset by the strife and unrest of her inner life, she turned instinctively to a strong, true friend that she had found. This was a Mrs. Mayhew, the wife of one of the deacons of the church. She was a woman older than Mrs. Thorpe and possessed of rare tact, and the sympathy that soothes and comforts without conscious effort.