"'I keep under my body and bring it into subjection,'" quoted Dr. Burge, emphasizing the personal pronoun. "The Apostle declares that his own immortal individuality alone controls his members,—and why? 'lest, when I have preached unto others, I myself should become a castaway.'"
The Doctor delivered the last sentence with rich cathedral-emphasis, and with the full unction of priestly authority.
Clifton, or whatever vague and dusky power controlled him, cowered at the rebuke. The nervous energy with which he had experimented, or which he had left passive for the experiments of others, seemed withdrawn from his frame.
Dr. Burge perceived his advantage, and continued:—
"I speak to you, my fallen brother, as I cannot speak to the foolish people who grope in this miasma of delusion. Silly women, yielding to the natural vanity of their sex, may mistake hysterics for inspiration. Vacillating and vacant men may seek a new sensation by encouraging a revival of the demoniacal epidemics of heathendom. But you, who have been a preacher of the gospel, though, as I must now more than ever believe, after a devitalized and perverted method,—you, to leave the honest work of a dweller upon earth, to chatter of immensity, to weaken the brain that it may no longer separate the true from the false!—believe me, Clifton, you have been bought by the shallowest promises which the King of Evil ever exchanged for a sacred and inviolable soul."
"You have spoken according to your business," replied Mr. Clifton, impatiently. "You, who begin by assuming the impossibility of spirit-intercourse since Bible times, with what candor can you examine the facts we build upon?"
"I make no such assumption," was the rejoinder. "Has it not been foretold that 'in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils'? Have we not aforetime been vexed with them in this very New England? For I almost justify Mather's words, when he stigmatizes the necromancy of his day as 'a terrible Plague of Evil Angels,' or, in still plainer speech, as 'a prodigious descent of devils upon divers places near the centre of this Province.' And how better can we characterize this confused and distracting babblement which gives no good gift to man?"
"It has given him this," exclaimed Clifton, advancing towards Dr. Burge, and seeming for a few moments to resume his old personality,—"it has given him the knowledge of a life to come! You think it, preach it, believe it,—but you do not know it. A susceptibility to impressions from the inmost characters of men has been mine through life. It has been given me to perceive what facts and feelings most deeply adhered in the mental consciousness. And I tell you, Burge, ministers both of your communion and of mine repeat the old words of sublimest assurance, sway congregations with descriptions bright or lurid of future worlds, yet behind all this glowing speech and blatant confidence there has lurked,—oh, will you deny it?—there has lurked a grovelling doubt of man's immortality."
"I will not deny it," said Dr. Burge, with slow solemnity. "Sinners that we are, how can we ask that faith be at no moment confused by the thousand cries of infidelity which our profession requires us to answer? Let my soul be chilled by transient shades of skepticism, rather than dote in a blind and puerile credulity! If I am not at all times equally penetrated by the great fact of man's conscious immortality, it is because of my undesert. A way to know of the doctrine has been revealed: it is by doing the will of the Father: who of us has fulfilled the condition? But I can meet you on lower ground, and declare, that, according to our human observation, it is not well for man to know the destiny of his being in all its details until the trials and victories of life have taught him to turn such knowledge to elevating use. It is the deplorable sinfulness of our nature which seeks to obtain without deserving, to possess the end and despise the appointed means."
Some reply would doubtless have been made to these pertinent considerations, had not the confused tramp of a committee been heard at the door. The professors of the "New Dispensation" had come to conduct the Reverend Charles Clifton to their platform. The distinguished convert shuddered, as if affected by some incorporeal presence, and suffered himself to be led away.