As soon as it was day I arose; and, with the eagerness of one who would escape from suspense, I resorted to the book which had so lately arrested my regard. I no longer glanced over its pages in careless haste; for it offered my only present lights upon the questions, interesting by their novelty as well as by their importance—whether I had been guilty of the worse than childish improvidence, which, in attending to trifles, overlooks the capital circumstance? or whether the Creator, having dismissed us like orphans into a fatherless world, is regardless of our improvement, and deaf to our cry? My impatience of doubt made me forget, for a time, that the very fact which confers upon Scripture its authority, supposes a divine interference in human concerns. The great truth, however, shone forth in every page. All spoke of a vigilant witness, a universal, a ceaseless energy. Nor was this all. I could scarcely open the book without finding somewhat applicable to my own character or situation; I was, therefore, no longer obliged to compel my attention, as to the concerns of a stranger; it was powerfully attracted by interests peculiarly my own. The study, indeed, was often painful; but yet I returned to it, as the heir to the deed which is to make him rich or a beggar.
My search, however, produced nothing to elate. I read of benefits which I had forgotten; of duties which I had neglected; of threatenings which I had despised. The 'first and great commandment,' directed every affection of my soul to Him who had scarcely occupied even the least of my thoughts. The most glorious examples were proposed to my imitation, and my heart sunk when I compared them with myself. A temper of universal forbearance, habits of diligent benevolence, were made the infallible marks of a character which I had no right to claim. The happy few were represented as entering with difficulty, and treading with perseverance, the 'strait and narrow way,' which not even self-deceit could persuade me that I had found. That self-denial, which was enjoined to all as an unremitting habit, was new to me almost even in name. The 'lovers of pleasure,' among whom I had been avowedly enrolled, were ranked, by my new guide, with 'traitors and blasphemers.' The pride which, if I considered it at all as an error, I accounted the 'glorious fault' of noble minds, was reprobated as an impious absurdity. The anguish of repentance,—the raptures of piety,—the 'full assurance of hope,' were poured forth; but, with the restless anxiety of him who obtains an imperfect glimpse of the secret upon which his all depends, I perceived, that their language was to me the language of a foreign land.
By degrees, something of my real self was opened to my sight. The view was terrible; but, once seen, I vainly endeavoured to avert my eye. At midnight, and in the blaze of day, in the midst of every employment, in defiance of every effort, my offences stood before me. With the sense of guilt, came the fear before which the boldest spirit fails. I saw the decree already executed which took from me the 'talent buried in the earth;' but, the stroke which had deprived me of all, seemed only a prelude to that more awful sentence which consigns the unprofitable servant to 'outer darkness.' As one who starts from sleep beneath the uplifted sword,—as he to whom the lightning's flash reveals the precipice,—as the mother waked by the struggles of her half-smothered babe,—so I—but what material images of horror can shadow forth the terrors of him who feels that he is by his own act undone? In an overwhelming sense of my folly and my danger, I often sunk into the attitude of supplication; but I had now a meaning to unfold not to be expressed in a few formal phrases which I had been accustomed to hurry over. I saw that I had need of mercy which I had not deserved, and which I had no words to ask. How little do they know of repentance who propose to repay with it, at their own 'convenient season,' the pleasures which they are at all hazards determined to seize!
Meanwhile, though my misfortunes could not be banished from my mind, they no longer held their sullen reign alone. New interests had awakened in my breast; new fears; new regrets. I felt that there is an evil greater than the loss of fame, of fortune, or of friends; that there is a pang compared with which sorrow is pleasure. This anguish I endured alone. The proud spirit could pour into no human ear the language of its humiliation and its dread. I suffered Miss Mortimer to attribute to grief the dejection which at times overpowered me; to impatience of deprivation, the anxious disquiet of one who is seeking rest, and finding none. Yet I no longer shunned her society. I sought relief in the converse of a person rich in the knowledge in which I was wanting, impressed with the only subjects which could interest me now. Miss Mortimer was precisely the companion best calculated to be useful to me. She never willingly oppressed me with a sense of her superiority,—never upbraided my cold reception of doctrines which I was not yet fitted to receive,—never expressed surprise at my hesitation, or impatience with my prejudices,—never aggravated my sense of the danger of my state, nor boasted of the security of her own; but answered my questions in terms direct and perspicuous; opposed my doubts and prejudices with meek reason; represented the condition of the worst of mankind as admitting of hope,—that of the best, as implying warfare.
From the first month of my residence with Miss Mortimer I may date a new era of my existence. My mind had received a new impulse, and new views had opened to me of my actions, my situation, and my prospects. An important step had been made towards a change in my character. But still it was only a step. The tendencies of nature, strengthened by the habits of seventeen years, remained to be overcome, and this was not the work of a month, or a year. I was not, however, of a temper long to endure the sense of helpless misery. Encouraged by the promises which are made to the repentant, and guided now by the example which I had once overlooked or ridiculed, I resolved to associate myself as much as possible, in Miss Mortimer's acts of devotion and of charity. I joined in her family worship,—I visited her pensioners,—and industriously assisted her in working for the poor; an employment to which she punctually devoted part of her time. Little did I then suspect how much the value of the same action was varied by our different motives. She laboured to please a Father,—I to propitiate a hard Master. She was humbly offering a token of gratitude,—I was poorly toiling for a hire.
It was now that I began to feel the effects of my former habits of life. While my feelings were in a state of strong excitement, they held the place of the stimulants to which I had been accustomed; and I should have turned in disgust from the trivial interests which had formerly engaged me. But whenever my mind settled into its more natural state, I became sensible of a vacancy,—a wearisome craving for an undefined something to rouse and interest me. The great truths indeed which I had lately discovered, often supplied this want; and I had only to turn my newly acquired powers of sight towards my own character to be awakened into strong emotion. But compared with my new standards, my own heart offered a prospect so little inviting, that I turned from it as often as I dared; endeavouring to 'lay the flattering unction to my soul,' by wilfully mistaking the resolution to be virtuous for virtue itself.
The activity of my mind had hitherto been so unhappily directed, that it now revolted from every impulse, except such as was either pleasurable or of overwhelming force. Besides, although nothing be more sublime than a life of charity and self-denial in the abstract, nothing is less so in the detail. I was unused to difficulty, and therefore submitted with impatience to difficulties which my own inexperience rendered more numerous. Poverty I had known only as she is exhibited in the graceful draperies of tragedy and romance; therefore I met her real form in all its squalor and loathsomeness, with more, I fear, of disgust than of pity. My imaginary poor had all been innocent and grateful. Short experience in realities corrected this belief; and when I found among the real poor the vices common to mankind, added to those which peculiarly belong to a state of dependence,—when I found them selfish, proud, and sensual, as well as cunning and improvident,—I almost forgot that alms were never meant as a tribute to the virtues of man; and that it is absurd to pretend compassion for the bodily necessities of our fellow-creature, while we exercise none towards the more deplorable wants of his mind. Not knowing, however, what spirit I was of, I called my impatience of their defects a virtuous indignation; and witnessed, with something like resentment, the moderation of Miss Mortimer, who always viewed mental debasement as others do bodily decrepitude, with an averseness which inclined her to withdraw her eye, but with a pity which stretched forth her hand to help. Yet when I beheld the ignorance, the miseries, the crimes of beings in whom I had now, in some degree, learnt to reverence the character of immortality, how did I lament, that, with respect to them, I had hitherto lived in vain! How did I reproach myself, that, while thousands of sensitive and accountable creatures were daily within the sphere of my influence, that influence had served only to deepen, with additional shades, the blackness of human misery and of human guilt.
Accident served to heighten this self-upbraiding. One day when Miss Mortimer, with the assistance of my arm, was walking round her garden, she observed a meagre, barefooted little girl; who, reaching her sallow hand through the bars of the wicket, asked alms in a strong Caledonian accent. My friend, who never dismissed any supplicant unheard, patiently enquired into a tale which was rendered almost unintelligible by the uncouth dialect and national bashfulness of the narrator. All that we could understand from the child was, that she was starving, because her father was ill, and her mother prevented from working, by attendance upon an infant who was dying of the small-pox. Miss Mortimer, who always conscientiously endeavoured to ascertain that the alms which she subtracted from her own humble comforts were not squandered in profligacy, accepted of my offer to examine into the truth of this story; and I accompanied the child to the abode of her parents.
After the longest walk which I had ever taken, my conductress ushered me into a low dark apartment in the meanest part of Greenwich. Till my eye was accommodated to the obscurity, I could very imperfectly distinguish the objects which surrounded me; and, for some minutes after leaving the gladdening air of heaven, I could scarcely breathe the vapour stagnant in the abode of disease and wretchedness. The little light which entered through a window half filled with boards fell upon a miserable pallet, where lay the emaciated figure of a man; his face ghastly wan, till the exertion of a hollow cough flushed it with unnatural red; and his eye glittering with the melancholy brightness which indicates hopeless consumption.
Upon a low stool, close by the expiring embers, sat a woman, vainly trying to still the hoarse cry of an infant. On my entrance, she started up to offer me the only seat which her apartment contained; and the poor Scotchman, with national courtesy to a superior, would have risen to receive me,—but he was unable to move without help. His wife, that she might be at liberty to assist him, called upon the little girl to take charge of her brother. Startled at seeing an infant committed to such care, I thoughtlessly offered my services; and held out my arms for the child. The mother, evidently pleased with what she seemed to regard as condescension, and not aware that the being whom she was fondly caressing could be an object of disgust to others, held the child towards me; but at the first glance I recoiled, with an exclamation of horror, from a creature who scarcely retained a trace of human likeness. That dreadful plague, which the most fortunate of discoveries now promises to banish from the earth, had disguised, or rather concealed, every feature; and, deprived of light, of nourishment, and rest, the sufferer scarcely retained the power to express its misery in a hoarse and smothered wailing. The poor woman, sensibly hurt by my expression of disgust, shed tears, while she reminded me of the evanescent nature of beauty, and enumerated all the charms of which a few days had deprived her boy. I had wounded where I came to heal; and all my address could scarcely atone for an error, that increased the difficulties which my errand already found in the decent reserve of spirits unsubdued to beggary, and in a dialect which I could very imperfectly comprehend.