CHAPTER XI
SEARCHING FOR LIGHT
The inquiring spirit will not be controlled;
He would make certain all, and all behold.
—Sprague.
At the age of twenty-one Edwin had formed one bad habit. Having had nobody to tell him that the use of tobacco was harmful to his body and seeing it used as commonly as a food by nearly all, regardless of age or sex, he had learned both to smoke and to chew. By the permission of the farmers for whom he had worked, he had raised a few tobacco-plants for himself, and the leaves of these plants, when carefully dried, were what he used as smoking-tobacco, but the cigars and chewing-tobacco he purchased at the store.
But although Edwin had never heard that tobacco was in any way unfit for the use of man, something within him seemed to suggest that there were some things about its use that were filthy and unclean. One thing that he abhorred was the chewing of tobacco in the house, because he pitied the women who were forced to look after and clean the spittoons. When in the house in the evening or on Sunday he considered smoking his pipe or cigars more appropriate, and he had supplied himself with special mouth-pieces for his cigars and convenient cases in which to carry them in his pockets. He did his chewing when at his work in the field. He also felt that it was placing his employer's property in too much danger to smoke when about his work in the barn, and this he always avoided. Thus, the same principle that had governed his earlier years was still his ruling trait.
Although for so many months Edwin had been seeking carefully and often with tears for some clue to the mystery connected with the hereafter, he had as yet found no one who could inform him on the subject; for those whom he considered the best people living were as uncertain concerning the future reward as the most vile. But from information gleaned he felt that there must be a place somewhere beyond the grave where the good and the bad would live again. When reasoning about the matter, he would say, "Now, if I am on the road to heaven, how am I to know if I get off that road and take a branch that will land me in hell?"
The thought of his own good behavior and abhorrence of all that he considered evil did not suggest to his mind that for this reason he might be the more entitled to enter the better place, for all his actions had been prompted by a sense of justice and his duty toward his fellow men.
Having become acquainted with a young married couple named Frank and Amanda Kauffman, Edwin went often to their home to pour out his troubles and perplexities. But although these people tried hard to help him, their efforts often plunged him into greater doubts and confusion. Whenever he went to them or to any one else with his question, it seemed that the answer was still the same: "No one can know about these things. We must all wait and see." Still he was not discouraged. Instead he was more than ever determined to keep on trying until he did find out.
Had Edwin been able to reason about the drunkard, the thief, or the liar, as not being fit for the good place, it might have been different, but to him the evils with which they were bound were a matter of choice. He had never heard the story of Adam and Eve, and so did not know that their first sin had severed not only them but also the entire human race from God's family (Rom. 5:19). Had he known that it is impossible for any one to know God or to enter the better world without first realizing that he is already condemned and on the road to destruction, and that the only way to be transferred to the highway leading to heaven is to be forgiven and adopted back into the family of God as a redeemed child, it would not have been so hard for him to understand upon which road he was traveling.