MIDNIGHT.—The gloom has gathered into a darkness that may be felt; and seeing nothing, I would stretch forth my hands to feel if there is anything within my mind to stay my soul upon. But, alas! in a deep sorrow, how little do mental acquisitions avail! All the beautiful systems and theories that delighted my intelligence, and filled my thought in my noon of hope and life, have sunk into darkness. How is this? Sometimes I think that all light comes through the heart into the mind; and when love is quenched, behold, there is only darkness; the beauty and life and joy are gone. Ah, woe is me! Have I nothing left?—no internal resources—no wealth of knowledge, with which to minister to this poverty of hope and life? It cannot be that all past efforts, all struggles and self-sacrifices, to attain this coveted and natural knowledge, were useless, vain mockeries. I thought I should live by this knowledge; that when the outer life palled upon me, I could then retire within my own being to boundless stores of riches and beauty. Well—this time has come, and what do I find? Truly it is no Aladdin-palace, glittering with gold and gems. It is more like a cavernous depth, stored with rubbish, and from its dark deeps comes up an earthy odour, that almost suffocates my spirit. But this is my all, and I must descend from the life of the heart to the life of the mind, and scan my unsatisfactory possessions.
Well, here is a world of childish, school-day lumber. Once it was a great delight to me to learn that the world was round, and not square; but I cannot see that a knowledge of that fact affords me any great satisfaction now, for it has shaped itself to me as an acute angle. And the earth's surface! how I used to glow with the excitement of the bare thought of Rome! and Athens! and Constantinople! and their thrilling histories and wonders of art, and beauties of nature, seemed to me an indefinite world of unattainable delight and ecstasy. But now, I have lived in all these places, and the light and glory have gone. They have fallen within the freezing light of reason. They are no longer like beautiful dreams to me. They are squared down into fixed, unalterable facts. I cannot gild them with any light of fancy; and I cannot extract from them anything like the delight of my childhood. So I will turn from these fixed facts and look out for those philosophical theories, that gave me a later delight, as more interior mental pleasure.
Well, when I first broke through the shackles of the old childish faith, Percy Bysshe Shelley was my high-priest. Through him I thought I had come into a beautiful light of nature, vague, shadowy, and grand, filling vast conceptions of the indefinite. He discarded the God of the Hebrews, who was fashioned after their own narrow, revengeful passions; a Being of wrath and war. And a brooding spirit, an indefinite indwelling life of nature, was a new revelation to me. I grew mystical and sublime and sentimental, in this new mental perception. But I wearied of that. I could not walk on stilts always, and I descended to the earth and read Voltaire, and laughed and sneered at all the old forms and superstitions of man. But this does not afford me any enjoyment now—the unhappy do not feel like laughing at a ribald wit; but, alas! this rubbish is stored here, and here I must live with it. It blackened and blurred the pictures of the angels, that adorned my childish memories. It wiped out all heavenly visions, and left only the earthly life.
But the human heart cannot live without a God; and I tried hard to make one, for myself, through German pantheism. But I turn this rubbish over disconsolately, for it is a material God, and does not respond to one spiritual nature. It seems rather to react against it. Alas! alas! I sink down into a Cimmerian darkness here; it seems as if the Stygian pools of blackness had closed over me, and a cry of anguish goes forth from my inmost soul, piercing the dark depths to learn what is spirit? and what is God? What manner of existence or unity of Being is He? Who is He? Where is He? And how can I attain to a knowledge of Him? But through the echoing halls of my dark mind, there is only a wailing sound of woe, of misery, of disappointment, of a yearning anguish of spirit for a something higher and better than I have ever yet conceived of or known.
But there is yet more of this mental rubbish. Ah! here is a whole chapter of stuff—and I once thought it was so wise. I called it the "progressive chain of being," and wove it out of the Pythagorean philosophy. I said man's nature begins from the lowest, and ascends to the highest. Nature gives the impulse to life; and the flower that blooms in South America may die, and its inner spirit may clothe itself in a donkey born in Greece! and so it goes on transfusing itself from clime to clime, in ever new and higher forms, until man is developed. Well, was there ever such stuff concocted before? I almost hear the bray of that donkey, who originated in a flower. And pray, most sapient self! what is nature? It seems now, to me, a form, a mere dead incubus of matter. And could this inert tangible matter, sublimate in its hard, dead bosom, an essence so subtle, as to be freer of the bonds of time and space? At such a preposterous suggestion even a donkey might bow his ears with shame. So I will hand this "progressive chain of being" over to a deeper darkness, and pass on.
Lo! here lie the statues of broken gods, headless divinities. I tried to believe in Greek mythology; to fancy that the world had gone backwards, and that there were spirits of the earth and air, that took part in the life of man. But these were poetic visions that shifted and waved with every fleeting fancy. But now this would be a pleasant faith. What if I could appeal to an invisible, higher spiritual being, who sympathized with my nature, to lead me out of this darkness of ignorance into a true world of light, of truth, of definite knowledge, concerning life and its origin; concerning God and His nature? If I were only an old Greek, how I would pray to Minerva for help, and call upon Hercules to remove this Augean dirt, that pollutes and lumbers all the chambers of my mind! But when the old Greeks called, were they answered? Ah, there is nothing to hope for!
Yet Socrates believed in these spiritual existences; he ordered a cock to be sacrificed to Esculapius as he was drinking the hemlock. To him, they were not mere poetic creations; he believed to the last that he was guided and guarded by his demon. What if we all are? What if even now, in this midnight darkness, stands a beautiful being, veiled by my ignorance, who loves me, from a world of light; sees the tangled web of my thoughts, and would draw it out into form, and order, and beauty? If such there be, oh, bright and beautiful one! pity me, love me, and enlighten me. Alas, no!—all is yet dark. What would a being revelling in light and beauty, have to do with this poor, faded life of mine? Alas! that was a fleeting hope, that, like a pale, flickering ray, gilded the darkness for a moment.
But, here is a something which gives somewhat of joy and life to the mind. It is a beautiful thought of Plato, that there is a great central sun in the universe, around which all other suns revolve. What if this be an inner sun, which is the fountain of spiritual life? That is something to believe. Yet the thought sinks appalled from it. The heart desires a God that it may love, and trust in, that it may speak to and be heard; and if the fountain of life be only a sun, what is there to love in it? True, we rejoice in the light and beauty of the sun that upholds this world in its place; but what is this enjoyment compared to the bliss of human love? A man—a living, breathing, loving man—is the perfection of existence; and one could be happy with a perfect man, if all the suns in the universe were blotted out. A MAN! what is he, in his essential attributes? What is it that gives a delight in him? Ah! I am full of ideal visions—for in all history I find not one man that altogether fills my vision of what a man should be. From the Alexanders and Caesars I turn with loathing—their fierce, rude, outre life, their selfish, grasping ambition, suggest to me the vision of snarling wild beasts, battling over the torn and palpitating limbs of nations. These men could never have touched my soul; they could never have dispelled the darkness of my mind; they could not be friends. But was there ever a man that could have answered the questions for the solution of which my spirit yearns? Plato was beautiful; around him was a pure, intellectual light. But, after all, he knew very little; his writings are mostly suggestive. But suppose here was a man who could reveal all the hidden things of life? How sudden would be the delight of learning of him, of communing with his spirit? And what if he knew, not only everything relating to this world, and my own intellectual being, but could tell me of all the universe, of all the after life? Oh! what a joy such a man would be to me! How would this midnight darkness melt into the clearest and most beautiful day!
But did such an one ever exist? Why is it that now comes over me the vision of my childhood, of the Divine Man walking over the hills of Judea? Oh, Christ! who wert Thou? My thought goes forth to Thee; beautiful was Thy life upon the earth. It had in it a heavenly sanctity, a purity, a grace and mercy, a gentleness and forbearance, that seems to me God-like and Divine. Yes—what if God descended and walked on the earth? I could love Him, that He had lowered Himself to my comprehension. But God! the Infinite and Eternal! in the finite human form, undergoing death! I cannot comprehend this. But what is infinity? When I look within myself and realize my ever-changing and fleeting feelings, now glancing in expansive ranges of thought from star to star, I realize an infinity in mind, that is not of the body. What if it were thus with the Holy Man, Christ? What if He were God as to the spirit, and man as to the flesh? If this were so, well may I have wished "to live when Jesus walked the earth," for He alone could have revealed all things to me. How wonderful must have been His wisdom! And if His indwelling spirit were God, then Christ yet lives—lives in some inner world of love and beauty. Ah, beautiful hope! for, if immortality is my portion, I may yet see Him, and learn of Him in another existence. Methinks the night of my soul is passing away; upon the rayless darkness a star has risen; a fixed star of love and hope; what if like other fixed stars it prove a sun?
Oh, Christ! holy and beautiful Man! if Thou yet livest in far-away realms of light and blessedness—grant that I may see Thee, and learn of Thy wondrous wisdom. Enlighten my darkness, and suffer me to love Thee as the Divinest type of man that my thought has yet imagined.