Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXI, No. 1, July 1842

by Various

But it was from the religious opinions of her parents that the deepest tint of coloring was imparted to the mind of Madeline. Mrs. Graham, a lineal descendant of one of the sternest and most intolerant of the puritans, had early united herself to one of the strictest of strict sects, and had been accustomed to practise a system of self-denial as rigid, if not quite as visible, as the penances of cloistered austerity. The impulses of innocent gaiety, the promptings of harmless vanity, the wanderings of youthful fancy were regarded by her only as evidences of a sinful nature, which ought to awaken remorse as keen as that which visits the penitent bosom of deep-dyed guilt. In the enthusiasm of her early zeal she seemed lifted above the weaknesses of humanity, and even the gray-headed members of the Christian community looked upon her as a chosen servant of the truth. But her excitement had been too great; the hour of reaction came, and it was when lukewarmness and weariness had taken full possession of her feelings for a season, that she first met with her future husband. Ever in extremes, an earthly passion now absorbed the heart which had consumed its energies in zeal without knowledge, and she married Mr. Graham without allowing herself to look upon the broad line of separation which lay between them. Had she ever made religion a question she would have learned the fact; for if good taste forbade him to obtrude his opinions upon others, yet love of truth prevented him from seeking to conceal them. Mr. Graham was a skeptic. The great truths of revealed religion were to him but as fables to amuse the multitude; and while in the works of creation he recognised the hand of a Deity, he read not in the hearts of men the necessity of a Redeemer. Mrs. Graham was horror-stricken when she discovered that her husband was not a Christian, and in proportion as the ardor of youthful passion faded into the tender light of conjugal affection, the terrible abyss which yawned between them became more painfully visible to her sight. The attempt to change his opinions again awakened her slumbering zeal, and with all the penitence of one who was conscious of having fallen from a state of elevated piety, she endeavored to make amends for her temporary alienation by renewed devotion. But her system of ascetic severity was little calculated to make religion attractive to her husband. The “beauty of holiness” was hidden beneath the sackcloth and ashes with which her mistaken judgment endued it, and Mr. Graham learned to look upon her piety as the one defect, rather than the crowning grace, in his wife’s character. Her sincere affection, and a desire to preserve domestic harmony, at length compelled her to give up all attempts to change her husband’s opinions, and she was therefore doomed to cherish a secret sorrow which wasted her very life away. The ascetic devotion which seemed so unlovely to the husband, produced a very different effect upon the imagination of Madeline. Accustomed to regard her mother as the best of human beings, she early learned to reverence and imitate her fervent zeal. Her reserve of character induced her to conceal her impressions even from the mother who labored to deepen them, and no one suspected the severe self-discipline which, even in childhood, she practised in imitation of her parent’s example. Her father, who, while despising Christianity, yet paid it the involuntary homage of considering it a very proper safeguard for women and children, did not attempt to interfere in her religious education. He contented himself with cultivating the field of mind, and left her mother to sow her moral nature with the tares of prejudice along with the seed of true piety.

Madeline had scarcely attained her twentieth year when a sudden and violent illness deprived her of her father, and left her the sole guardian of her young brother. Upon looking into Mr. Graham’s affairs, it was found that his profession had only procured for him a comfortable subsistence, and, as his income died with him, the orphans were almost penniless. The small house which they had long occupied, together with its furniture and a library of some value, were all that remained. To convert these into money was Madeline’s first care, and her next step was to invest the amount thus obtained in the name of her brother, as a fund for his education and future subsistence. For herself she seemed to have no anxieties, and with a degree of disinterestedness, as rare as it was praiseworthy, she determined to derive her own maintenance from the labor of her hands. With characteristic energy she made all her arrangements without consulting any one, or asking the advice of her father’s best friends. The bold self-reliance which formed her most striking and least amiable trait was now fully developed, and she felt no need of other aid than that of her own strong mind. She had a deep design to work out in future—a darling scheme to mature—a hope, which in her stern nature assumed the form of a determination to compass, and all sacrifices seemed light which could aid her to a successful issue. Need I add, that her brother was the object of all her future aspirations.

Alfred Graham had already given evidence of precocious genius which seemed fully to justify Madeline’s ambition. Nature in his case had displayed her usual compensating kindness, and since she had bestowed on him a dwarfed and diminutive form, a delicate and fragile body, made amends by giving him a countenance of almost feminine beauty, and a mind filled with the most exquisite perceptions. He was born a poet. His fervid feelings, his nervous temperament, his delicate sense of beauty in the moral and physical world—even the very fragility of constitution which shut him out from the rude conflicts of real life, and confined him within the limits of the fairyland of reverie—all seemed to point out his future vocation. Too young to frame in numbers the fancies of his childish hours, he yet breathed into his sister’s ear the eloquent words of pure and passionless enthusiasm, and Madeline’s heart thrilled with high hopes of his future glory. But she did not suffer nature to direct his course. Long ere the child had seriously commenced the work of education, she had destined him to become an apostle of Christianity to the benighted world of paganism. Imaginative, high minded, stern, and self-sacrificing, Madeline was just such a woman as in the olden time might have embroidered the cross upon the mantle of her best beloved one, and sent him forth to fight the battles of the holy church. But the missionary of modern days has a far more difficult and therefore far nobler office to perform. Amid belted knights and men-at-arms to do battle with myriads of the Paynim foe is a lighter task than that which falls upon him, who goes forth alone and single handed to face the more insidious foes of ignorance and sin amid the blinded and perverse heathen. Yet such was the high and holy duty to which Madeline destined her brother, while her own ambition was limited to the hope of being the companion of his toils and his labors. She looked forward to the time when they should go forth hand in hand into the howling wilderness of superstition, with the gospel as a light to their feet and a lamp to their path, while they scattered the blessings of truth among the benighted idolaters of distant lands.

As Alfred advanced in life he learned the full extent of his sister’s sacrifices for his welfare. He saw her relinquishing all the intellectual pleasures she had once enjoyed, and devoting herself day and night to the humble labors of the needle. He noticed her attention to his most trifling wishes, and he did not fail to observe that while his dress was of the neatest and finest texture, and his food of the delicate kind which best suited the capricious appetite of an invalid, Madeline practised the strictest economy in all that affected only her own individual comfort. Yet Alfred did not love Madeline with the entire affection which could alone repay her devotedness. There was too much awe, too much fear blended with his feelings towards her. Her strong mind and stern integrity seemed ever ready to rebuke the vacillating temper and morbid sensibility of the youth. Superior to temptations which had no power over herself, she had little charity for the failings of another; and the boyish errors, often but the earliest trial of principles which the world will hereafter put to a far more severe test—were regarded by her as heavy sins. Educated in the seclusion of home, she could not imagine the dangers which beset a boy from his first entrance into the miniature world of a large school. Instead of rewarding with her approbation the first struggles of principle with passion in the youthful heart, she seemed only shocked and mortified that any conflict should have been necessary, and was more keenly sensible to the weakness which had required defence, than to the strength which had offered resistance. Such mistaken views of character soon checked the flow of confidence between them. Alfred could not open his whole heart to one who was incapable of comprehending all his feelings, and though he never needed a mother’s care, he early learned the want of a mother’s sympathy.

Madeline had seen sufficient proofs of Alfred’s facile temper and instability of purpose to dread his introduction into scenes of greater temptation, and, vainly fancying that he would be safer any where than in the busy city, she preferred that he should enter a distant college. At the age of seventeen he was removed from his sister’s influence to enter upon his new course of studies, and although at first truly unhappy at this separation from his only relative, it was not long before the absence of her keen eye and stern rebuke became a positive relief to him. Hitherto his life had passed amid the sombre shades of domestic life, and with all Madeline’s noble traits of character, she lacked the tact, so truly feminine, which enables a woman to throw sunshine around the humblest home. The cheerful song, the pleasant jest, the merry voice, the bright smile, the buoyant step—all the lighter graces without which a woman’s character, however elevated and noble, is but as a Corinthian column without its capital, or as a rose without its perfume—were wanting to the unbending nature of Madeline. The world was to her a scene of probation and preparation, and to waste a thought upon enlivening its grave duties seemed to her as idle as planting flowers around a sepulchre. When therefore Alfred found himself amid a throng of young men from every part of the country—some ambitious of renown, some fond of study for its own sake, some utterly careless of present duties, some slothful and indifferent to honor, but all equally alive to pleasurable excitement and equally eager in the pursuit of amusement, he felt as if he had suddenly been transported to a world of which he had never dreamed. His susceptible temper rendered him an easy prey to the lures of gay society. Intellectual enjoyments mingled their pure odors with the fumes of the wine cup, and the refinements of elegant taste served to veil the native deformity of vice, until, long before he had learned the danger of his position, he was bound in the strong toils of sensual indulgence. Full of intellect, and wonderfully acute in his perceptions, he soon became distinguished for his genius, and the heart of his sister was often gladdened by tidings of his success. But she knew not that he was drinking from more turbid waters than those which flow from the fountain of wisdom—she dreamed not that the offering which she hoped to bring pure and unpolluted to the altar of Heaven was already blemished and unworthy to be presented.

Alfred Graham was not designed by nature to be a votary of evil. Temptation had found him weak to resist, but conscience was still true to her charge, and the youth was as free from habitual vice as he was destitute of unsullied virtue. When the vacations brought him to his quiet home, the better feelings of his nature were ever aroused; he respected the virtue of his sister’s character, and when surrounded by that pure atmosphere which envelopes real goodness, he forgot even to harbor a sinful thought. But day by day the profession to which he was destined became more repugnant to his feelings, and after deferring as long as possible the announcement of his wishes, he at length summoned courage to reveal the truth to his sister. The blow fell upon Madeline with almost stunning violence. He had just left college crowned with honors and flushed with success, and Madeline was exulting in the hope of his future usefulness, when he revealed to her his change of purpose. The first intimation of his unwillingness to devote himself to the church, almost drove her to frenzy. All the violence of her secret nature broke forth in the fearful threats of temporal and eternal punishment which she predicted for such apostacy, and Alfred’s feeble temper was actually crushed beneath the weight of her indignation. He trembled at the storm which he had raised, and when, after days of entreaty and expostulation, Madeline, the stern, proud Madeline, even knelt at his feet, and implored the child of her affections to listen to the voice of God, speaking by the lips of her who had ever been as a mother to his heart, the weak youth yielded to her prayers and promised what he well knew he could not conscientiously perform. His was not the free-will offering of talents and time and health and strength in the service of the Redeemer. He entered the sanctuary as one driven onward by irresistible force, not as one drawn by the cords of love and piety.

Time passed on and taught Alfred a lesson of deep hypocrisy. His timid and feeble nature could neither resist the influence of evil nor brave its consequences, and therefore it was that the fair face of the youth became more and more characterized by sanctity in proportion as his heart became less susceptible of its influences. Happy is it for mankind that the eye rarely pierces beneath the veil which conceals the hideous depravity of the heart. Who but would have shrunk from the delicate beauty of Alfred’s gentle countenance—who but would have shuddered at the contemplation of those clear blue eyes, that feminine complexion, the delicate rose tint of his thin cheek, and the exceeding loveliness of his chiselled and flexible lips, if the dark mass of evil thoughts which lay beneath that fair seeming, could have been discerned. Yet Alfred was far from being happy. Unstable as water, he had no power over his own impulses, and remorse preyed upon him, even while he sought to drown his senses in indulgence. Conscience was his perpetual tormentor, and yet a constant course of sinning and repenting left him neither time nor will to struggle effectually with his errors.

But a still darker change came upon his character. His health, which had several times required a suspension of his studies, began again to fail, a short time before the period fixed upon for his ordination, and he eagerly seized the opportunity of deferring the dreaded ordeal. The physicians ordered perfect relaxation from all mental labors, and unfortunately for his future peace, the listlessness of unwonted idleness led him to examine a chest of old papers, the accumulated records of many years, where he accidentally met with a catalogue of his father’s library. Alfred was so young at the time of his father’s death that he retained little recollection of him, and Madeline had carefully kept him in ignorance of those skeptical opinions which had so grieved both mother and daughter. It was with no little surprise, therefore, that Alfred found the names of so great a number of infidel works among his father’s books. He pondered long upon the subject, and at length conjectured the truth. This excited his interest, and a vague curiosity, awakened rather by a belief in his sister’s desire to conceal from him his father’s opinions, led him secretly to procure the prohibited volumes. Upon the feeble mind of one who was “blown about by every wind of doctrine,” and who yearned after worldly pleasures while he shrunk with unutterable disgust from religious duties, the subtleties of the skeptics had a most fatal effect. He had never been well grounded in the faith, and the doubts now suggested to his mind were exactly such things as in his present state of feeling he would gladly have adopted as truths. These six months of respite from theological studies were spent in the careful perusal of all skeptical writings, and when Alfred resumed his former pursuits the plague spot of infidelity had already given evidence of the fatal disease which was spreading over his moral nature.

If my tale were designed only for the eye of the student of human nature, I might dwell long upon the strange incongruity of feeling and action, the wonderful contrariety between principle and practice, and all the complicated workings of a wayward heart, which characterized the deceptive course of the young student. With his usual timid hypocrisy he concealed every real feeling, every genuine impulse. His conduct was apparently irreproachable, his principles seemed unimpeachable, and he even schooled himself to come forward and enrol himself beneath the banner of the cross, when he was but too conscious that he had already trampled the holy emblem beneath his feet. Why did he carry his deceit to such an awful extent? Alas! who can tell just where the waves of sin may stay their whelming force? He feared the world’s dread laugh at his apostacy, he shrunk from the scorn of all good men, and, above all, his mind absolutely cowered at the thought of his sister’s bitter wrath. So he buried his secret within his own bosom, and trusting to some future chance to rescue him from the irksome duties of his profession, prepared himself for the ceremony of ordination. But he was not yet sensible of the terrible power of Conscience.

The day came, and, as usual, crowds were assembled to witness the dedication of the youthful candidates. The two young men—for Alfred had a companion, a pious, humble-minded, meek-hearted youth—stood before the altar to offer their vows. Madeline, the weeping but happy Madeline—who had sacrificed her youth and health and beauty, aye and the hopes ever dearest to a woman’s heart, to this one darling hope—was there too, and as she looked on her brother bending before the altar, while his bright curls just caught one straggling sunbeam which shed a glory around his youthful brow, she was heard to murmur “Lo, here am I, Lord, and the child which thou hast given me.”