I had no sense of proportion, and believed myself a very monster of vileness: a vileness, I feared, which would cling and canker till it deformed my soul and body and face; and I saw myself, a loathsome shape, living on for ever with increasing self-loathing through all the pitiless eternal years. My blood froze with fear as my mind's eye stared fascinated at the shameful shape. I screamed as madmen scream.
Madness I often feared. In my imaginings of Eternity, let me one day go but a single step too far, let me suffer the awful ecstasy of fear to hold me but a second too long, and I knew my reason would be fled. So about this time I added to my prayers: "God, save me from going mad."
But fear, though never far away, and the sense of wickedness, though always near the surface, were not masters of every moment. The one thing that never left me was a feeling of unsatisfiedness, incompleteness. The world seemed an empty place, my soul an empty vessel. I had a melancholy sureness that something, the chief thing, the secret of happiness, was lacking me. I believed that this secret could only be discovered in the love of God: that there only could I find, as my Grandmother had found, the peace and delight which pass all understanding. That alone was religion, and I had it not.
"Do 'ee love the Lord?" my Grandmother was for ever asking.
To possess the love of God became the aim of all my prayers and hopes. It alone could save me from my evil self, quell my bad desires, dispel my fears, and fill the aching void. How could I possess it? The conviction seized me one day, how or why I do not know, that I should obtain it in the moment at which I was baptized; not before, and in no other way. Once the idea had come, it would not leave me; to hasten on my public immersion became the chief endeavour of my life.
Grandmother was nothing loth, for it was her own dearest wish. My age, she said, might be raised in objection: I was not yet thirteen. Had I surely faith?—I gave her passionate proofs—then God's requirements were fulfilled. She spoke to Aunt Jael, and both of them to Pentecost Dodderidge, who agreed ardently.
The Brethren do not of course practise infant baptism. However, children of about my age could be, and very occasionally were, baptized, provided they gave surpassing proofs of holiness. Faith, not age, as the Bible shows, is the only test of fitness. But certain of the Saints in our Meeting, influenced whether by "common-sense," or by the rankling notion that none of their children ever had been or ever would be admitted to baptism at such a tender age, began to murmur, and spoke privily to Pentecost against the project. Brother Browning took the bolder course of taking my Grandmother herself to task. Dark doubts beset him, he declared, scriptural doubts; though his real motive was jealousy for Marcus.
"Unscriptural?" said my Grandmother in amaze. "Have you read your acts of the Apostles, Brother Browning? Faith, not years or rank or race is what the Scripture requires. Think of Crispus, Cornelius, the jailor of Philippi, Lydia seller of purple! Turn to your eighth chapter: Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch: 'See, here is water, what doth hinder us to be baptized?' Does Philip answer 'But tell me first your age?' No, he answers: 'If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest.'"
She turned to me. "Child, do you believe with all your heart?"