The morning dew that scarcely bends the flowers,
Exhal’d to heaven, becomes the thunderbolt
That strikes the tree at noon.
Judas Iscariot: a Drama.
There are moments in a man’s life when all the forces of life and society seem to conspire for his destruction; when, look which way he will, he sees no loophole for escape; when every step he takes forward seems a step downward towards some pitiless Inferno, and when to make even one step backward is impossible, because the precipice down which he has been thrust seems steep as a wall. Yet there is still hope for such a man, if his own conscience is not in revolt against him; for that conscience, like a very angel, may uplift him by the hair and hold him miraculously from despair and death. Woe to him, however, if he has no such living help! Beyond that, there is surely no succour for him, beyond the infinite mercy, the cruel kindness, of his avenging God.
The moment of which I speak had come to Ambrose Bradley.
Even in the very heyday of his pride, when he thought himself strong enough to walk alone, without faith, almost without vital belief, his sins had found him out, and he saw the Inferno waiting at his feet. He knew that there was no escape. He saw the powers of evil arrayed on every side against him. And cruellest of all the enemies leagued for his destruction, was the conscience which might have been his sweetest and surest friend.
It was too late now for regrets, it was too late now to reshape his course. Had he only exhibited a man’s courage, and, instead of snatching an ignoble happiness, confided the whole truth to the woman he loved, she might have pitied and forgiven him; but he had accepted her love under a lie, and to confide the truth to her now would simply be to make a confession of his moral baseness. He dared not, could not, tell her; yet he knew that detection was inevitable. Madly, despairingly, he wrestled with his agony, and soon lay prostrate before it, a strong man self-stripped of his spiritual and moral strength.
Not that he was tamely acquiescent; not that he accepted his fate as just. On the contrary, his whole spirit rose in revolt and indignation. He had tried to serve God—so at least he assured himself; he had tried to become a living lesson and example to a hard and unbelieving world; he had tried to upbuild again a Temple where men might worship in all honesty and freedom; and what was the result? For a slight fault, a venial blunder, of his own youth, he was betrayed to a punishment which threatened to be everlasting.
His intellect rebelled at the idea.