Chapter XXIX: A Return to Myself

I had received several letters from Carlo, and they were very pleasant and satisfactory, except that, as yet, he had not succeeded in finding any clue to the whereabouts of the poor woman who was said to be the widow of my uncle. But he fancied, from several reports which reached his ears, that she had not died.

“So there will be another lost bride to be found, I suppose,” said Aunt Jane. “Well, you will both be very happy without your inheritance, if she should turn up, and prove at last to have been really a bride--very happy, if you can succeed in acquiring a real firm faith in Revelation.”

I was reading various books at that time, by Aunt Jane’s advice, and those I found most useful in helping me to acquire true faith were Butler’s “Analogy,” and, later, Dr. Newman’s “Grammar of Assent,”[B] and his early sermons, and Montalembert’s “Monks of the West;” and for evidences of the immortality of the soul, I found Plato and Paul Richter’s work very conclusive.

But at times I still was much perplexed; and when suffering from those paroxysms of unbelief, I felt as if I were doomed to listen incessantly to the chord of the seventh, with an agonized longing to resolve it into the key-note, and attain the contentment of perfected harmony. And this everlasting seventh was always mingled with the sound of more or less fearful discords. Yet I could sometimes feel quite comforted even when suffering the bitter pangs of remorse, because they convinced me that, if I were not a responsible being, and destined for eternity, I should not suffer from such pangs. And then what a comfort to think that, Revelation being true, we must inherit the blessings promised to the meek and poor in spirit; for we cannot be crushed by remorse without feeling meek, and humble, and poor, and worthless.

“It seems to me that I fearfully love the world and the things of the world,” I once told Aunt Jane. “I am such an animal in my love for what we call nature, even in its commonest and most homely aspects--hedges, trees, fields, the sky, the birds, the air, and stars and moon by night, as well as glorious sunrise or evening coloured clouds. I sometimes feel that my _beau-ideal_ of future bliss would be to be transformed into a kind of permanent butterfly or bird, if I could acquire the faculty of ministering to the wants of suffering mortals, and bringing comfort and pleasant thoughts to them. To alleviate their sufferings, and yet have the power to hover amid wild flowers on sunny banks part of the day, with the spirits of dear friends who are gone before--a sort of spiritual Sister of Mercy, without being encumbered by a body liable to pain or fatigue. How very human and grovelling this must appear to those who are by grace imbued with such devotional spirits as to make perpetual adoration of God, of an Unseen Being, the chief pleasure and object of their lives. And yet people who are usually called worldly--those, I mean, who are principally occupied in the advancement of their worldly position--are still less comprehensible to me than the devotional ones are.”

“I can imagine this,” said Aunt Jane. “I cannot understand having any forgetfulness of the future after death. From earliest childhood I have been accustomed to die daily--to face the hereafter--to be almost solely occupied with speculations, or wonderment, or hopes about it. The short space of this life has always seemed to me as nothing--the end was always present. All my readings had this object--to be satisfied by ‘some sure and certain hope.’ But I suppose this strong innate spirit of enjoyment in the common and apparently most innocent pleasures of life--a pleasure which I sedulously taught myself to cultivate as a refuge from bodily pain and _malaise_, to which I have always been subject, has perhaps prevented that kind of high devotional feeling which some persons seem absorbed with, and find their greatest delight in. My mind lives always in a prayerful form of thanksgiving--fervent thankfulness to the Unseen Being--thankful because I felt so conscious of sin--of never being able to act up to the high standard of duty which I felt was right--a keen suffering from remorse, and consciousness that I required to suffer in order to fit me for a purer, higher state, and a great satisfaction in all the Scriptures.

“The comfort of them, when I could fully believe that they were authentic, was immense; and even in moments of doubt, when I could not believe that they are of divine (not human) origin, the precepts they inculcate gave me great pleasure. To look at and feel anything _good_ gives me the same kind of real enjoyment that it seemed to give Plato and other cultivated ancient writers, because it gives us hope of eventual and eternal happiness.”

“Yes,” said I, “but, alas! with me I confess it must always be a _hope_, for, if I look closely upon the Cross, and contemplate the sufferings of our Blessed Saviour, His sufferings acquire a kind of permanent, ever-existing, present reality, which pains me fearfully. I cannot contemplate them as past. To me it is as if He went on suffering there still, to atone for all the present wickedness of human beings. I am pervaded always with the conviction of the present sinful state of human beings, and the corruption of human nature. Is this stupidity, or what, that seems to incapacitate me from being able to comprehend the present enjoyment some people feel from the constant adoration of the Cross, and painful parts of our religion?--and is it that they _can_ always feel that it _is_ past, although they keep looking at the figure of our Lord in agony? Is it that their bodies are so much healthier than mine that they can afford better to contemplate all suffering, without being wholly depressed and crushed by it?”

“I cannot tell how that is,” she said: “but I fancy that those devout minds have a corresponding perception of our Lord’s glory, and of His joy in saving sinners; and therefore these three perceptions blend harmoniously, like the dark and light colours of the rainbow, forming a perfect whole--the purple hue of his suffering, the crimson fervour of His Divine love, the golden radiance of His eternal joy! Remember what Jean Paul Richter somewhere says--‘Weak eyes cannot bear darkness any better than they can extreme of light.’ But,” she added, “I can quite understand the _doubts_ from which you have often been suffering, and which are beautifully described in a poem of Roden Noel’s, ‘To whom shall we go?’ You have no idea of the trouble and difficulty my sister always found in believing in Revelation, and how all visible churches, which are often expressions of exaggerated texts of Scripture, have tended to increase her difficulties. And yet these very Churches, with all their apparent differences, to my mind tend to prove the truth of those Scriptures from which they all derive their faith. But, surely you have attained belief in our immortality--that this suffering world, or, rather, our suffering in it, will help us to everlasting joy? Because we become more and more formed for eternal joy the longer we live, if we have duly cultivated a taste for _what is good_. I feel now that my decaying body, in spite of increasing sufferings, contains a mind more fitted to enjoy happiness than it did when young and healthy. This alone ought to convince me that I am tending towards that happiness, and that it can only be perfected after I have got rid of this suffering body by death. If you do not yet feel this, I am sure you will in time. The miserable moments when I could not feel this hope were perfect agony, and I cannot think that such a mind as yours could be satisfied without hope. It would make me very sad if I thought you _could_.”

These and other words of dear Aunt Jane lingered in my memory for years after they were spoken, and in moments of despondency and grief her bright clear eyes and hopeful words seemed again more vivid than even when her bodily presence was with me on earth.

I doubt not that her prayers have helped me to attain that peace which, thank God, I now enjoy; and I trust that all the suffering and the weary, who read these pages, may be aided, by some poor words of mine, as I was by her words and example, to seek for happiness and rest in the same unfailing source of light, and hope, and joy.

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