THAT THERE IS not a God, the fool
Doth in his heart conclude:
They are corrupt, their works are vile;
Not one of them doth good.
* * * * *
There feared they much; for God is with The whole race of the just. — PSALM xiv.
ANOTHER December has begun to lower in the dim skies with wintry wildness, to bind the earth with iron fetters, and to cover its surface with its snowy mantle, as we enter for the first time another town, far from that English borough in which we lingered a year ago. An ancient city is this, within whose time-honoured walls the flower and pride of whatever was greatest and noblest in Scotland, has ever been found through long descending ages. Elevated rank, mighty mental ability, eminent piety, the Roundest of all theology, the most thorough of all philosophy, and the truest patriotism, have ever been concentrated within its gates. Here men are common, who elsewhere would be great, and the few who do stand out from amid that mass of intellect stand out as towers, and above that vast aggregate of genius and goodness are seen from every mountain in Christendom, from every Pisgah of intellectual vision, whereon thoughtful men do take their stations, as suns amid the stars. And alas that we should have to say it, where vice also erects its head and stalks abroad with an unblushing front, and a fierce hardihood, lamentable to behold. We cannot, to-night, tread its far-famed halls of learning, we may not thread our way through the busy, seething multitudes of its old traditionary streets; but there is one chamber, from whose high windows a solitary light streams out into the murky air, into which we must pass.
It is a plain room, not large, and rich in nothing but books; books which tell the prevalent pursuits, tastes, and studies of its owner, filling the shelves of the little bookcase, covering the table, and piled in heaps on floor and chairs: massive old folios, ponderous quartos, and thick, dumpy little volumes, of the seventeenth century, in faded vellum, seem most to prevail, but there are others with the fresh glitter of modern times without, and perhaps with the false polish of modern philosophies within. With each of its two occupants we have yet to make acquaintance; one is a tall, handsome man, already beyond the freshness of his youth, well-dressed and gentleman-like, but having a disagreeable expression on his finely formed features, and a glittering look in his eye — a look at once exulting and malicious, such as you could fancy of a demon assured of his prey. The other, with whom he is engaged in earnest conversation, is at least ten years his junior; young, sensitive, enthusiastic, he appears to be, with an ample forehead and a brilliant eye, as different as possible in its expression from the shining orb of the other. There is no malice to be seen here, no sneer on those lips, no deceit in that face, open, manly, eloquent and sincere. Famed in his bygone career, he is covered with academic honours, is full of vigour, of promise, of hopefulness, with eloquence on his lips, and logic in his brain, and his mind cultured thoroughly, the favoured of his teachers, the beloved of his companions, the brother of our gentle Christian, our acquaintance of last year in his letter to Christian — Halbert Melville.
But what is this we see to-night! How changed does he seem, then so beautiful, so gallant; there is a fire in his eyes, a wild fire that used not to be there, and the veins are swollen on his forehead, and stand out like whipcord. His face is like the sea, beneath the sudden squall that heralds the coming hurricane, now wild and tossed in its stormy agitation, now lulled into a desperate and deceitful calmness. His lips are severed one moment with a laugh of reckless mirth, and the next, are firmly compressed as if in mortal agony, and he casts a look around as if inquiring who dared to laugh. His arm rests on the table, and his finger is inserted between the pages of a book — one of the glittering ones we can see, resplendent in green and gold — to which he often refers, as the conversation becomes more and more animated; again and again he searches its pages, and after each reference he reiterates that terrible laugh, so wild, so desperate, so mad, while his companion’s glittering serpent eye, and sneering lip, send it back again in triumph. What, and why is this?
Look at the book, which Halbert’s trembling hand holds open. Look at this little pile laid by themselves in one corner of the room, the gift every one of them of the friend who sits sneering beside him, the Apostle of so-called spiritualism, but in reality, rank materialism, and infidelity, and you will see good cause for the internal struggle, which chases the boiling blood through his youthful veins, and moistens his lofty brow with drops of anguish. The tempter has wrought long and warily; Halbert’s mind has been besieged in regular form; mines have been sprung, batteries silenced, bastions destroyed — at least, to Halbert’s apprehension, rendered no longer tenable; point by point has he surrendered, stone by stone the walls of the citadel have been undermined, and the overthrowal is complete.
Halbert Melville is an unbeliever, an infidel, for the time. Alas! that fair and beauteous structure, one short twelvemonth since so grand, so imposing, so seeming strong and impregnable, lies now a heap of ruins. No worse sight did ever captured fortress offer, after shot and shell, mine and counter-mine, storm and rapine had done their worst, than this, that that noble enthusiastic mind should become so shattered and confused and ruinous.
There is a pause in the conversation. Halbert has shut his book, and is bending over it in silence. Oh, that some ray of light may penetrate his soul, transfix these subtle sophisms, and win him back to truth and right again; for what has he instead of truth and right? only dead negations and privations; a series of Noes — no God, no Saviour, no Devil even, though they are his children; no immortality, no hereafter — a perfect wilderness of Noes. But his tempter sees the danger.
“Come, Melville,” he says rising, “you have been studying too long to-day; come man, you are not a boy to become melancholy, because you have found out at last, what I could have told you long ago, that these nonsensical dreams and figments, that puzzled you a month or two since, are but bubbles and absurdities after all — marvellously coherent we must confess in some things, and very poetical and pretty in others — but so very irrational that they most surely are far beneath the consideration of men in these days of progress and enlightenment. Come, you must go with me to-night, I have some friends to sup with me, to whom I would like to introduce you. See, here is your hat; put away Gregg, and Newman, just now, the Nemesis can stand till another time — by-the-by, what a struggle that fellow must have had, before he got to light. Come away.”
Poor Halbert yielded unresistingly, rose mechanically, put away the books so often opened, and as if in a dream, his mind wandering and unsettled so that he hardly knew what he was about, he listened to his companion’s persuasions, placed his arm within his “friend” Forsyth’s, and suffered himself to be led away, the prey in the hands of the fowler, the tempted by the tempter. Poor fallen, forsaken Halbert Melville!
The quiet moments of the winter evening steal along, the charmed hour of midnight has passed over the hoary city, slumbering among its mountains. Through the thick frosty air of that terrible night no moonbeam has poured its stream of blessed light; no solitary star stood out on the clouded firmament to tell of hope which faileth never, and life that endures for evermore, far and long beyond this narrow circuit of joys and sorrows. Dark, as was one soul beneath its gloomy covering, lowered the wide wild sky above, and blinding frost mist, and squalls laden with sleet, which fell on the face like pointed needles, had driven every passenger who had a home to go to, or could find a shelter, or a refuge, from the desolate and quiet streets. In entries, and the mouths of closes, and at the foot of common stairs, little heaps of miserable unfortunates were to be seen huddled together, seeking warmth from numbers, and ease of mind from companionship, even in their vice and wretchedness. Hour after hour has gone steadily, slowly on, and still that chamber is empty, still it lacks its nightly tenant, and the faint gleam of the fire smouldering, shining fitfully, now on the little pile of poison, now on the goodly heaps of what men call dry books and rubbish, but which a year ago Halbert considered as the very triumphs of sanctified genius. Hither and thither goes the dull gleam, but still he comes not.
But hark, there is a step upon the stair, a hurried, feverish, uncertain step, and Halbert Melville rushes into his deserted room, wan, haggard, weary, with despair stamped upon his usually firm, but now quivering lip, and anguish, anguish of the most terrible kind, in his burning eye. He has been doubting, fearing, questioning, falling away from his pure faith — falling away from his devout worship, losing himself and his uprightness of thought, because questioning the soundness of his ancient principles and laying them aside one by one, like effete and worthless things. He has been led forward to doubt by the most specious sophistry — not the rigid unflinching inquiry of a truth-seeker, whose whole mind is directed to use every aid that learning, philosophy, history, and experience can furnish, to find, or to establish what is true and of good repute, but the captious search for seeming flaws and incongruities, the desire to find some link so weak that the whole chain might be broken and cast off. In such spirit has Halbert Melville been led to question, to doubt, to mock, at length, and to laugh, at what before was the very source of his strength and vigour, and the cause of his academical success. And he has fallen — but to-night — to-night he has gone with open eyes into the haunts of undisguised wickedness — to-night he has seen and borne fellowship with men unprincipled, not alone sinning against God, whose existence they have taught Halbert to deny, whose laws they have encouraged him, by their practice and example, to despise, contemn, and set aside, but also against their neighbours in the world and in society. To-night, while his young heart was beating with generous impulses, — while he still loathed the very idea of impurity and iniquity, he has seen the friends of his “friend,” he has seen his favoured companion and immaculate guide himself, whose professions of purity and uprightness have often charmed him, who scorned God’s laws, because there was that innate dignity in man that needed not an extraneous monitor, whose lofty, pure nature has been to Halbert that long twelve-month something to reverence and admire; him has he seen entering with manifest delight into all the vile foulness of unrestrained and unconcealed sin, into all the unhallowed orgies of that midnight meeting and debauch. Unhappy Halbert! The veil has been torn from his eyes, he sees the deep, black fathomless abyss into which he has been plunged, the hateful character of those who have dragged him over its perilous brink, who have tempted him to wallow in the mire of its pollutions and to content himself with its flowing wine, its hollow heartless laughter, its dire and loathsome pleasures.
The threatenings of the Scriptures, so long forgotten and neglected, ring now in his terrified ears, like peals of thunder, so loud and stern their dread denunciations. His conscience adopts so fearfully that awful expression, “The fool hath said in his heart there is no God,” that the secret tones of mercy, whispering ever of grace and pardon, are all unheard and unheeded, and he was in great fear, for the Lord is in the generation of the righteous. He leans his burning brow upon the table, but starts back as if stung by an adder, for he has touched one of those fatal books, whose deadly contents, so cunningly used by his crafty tempter, overthrew and made shipwreck of his lingering faith, and has become now a very Nemesis to him. With a shudder of abhorrence and almost fear, he seizes the volume and casts it from him as an unclean thing, and then starts up and paces the room with wild and unsteady steps for a time, then throws himself down again and groans in agony. See I he is trying with his white and quivering lips to articulate the name of that great Being whom he has denied and dishonoured, but the accents die on his faltering tongue. He cannot pray, he fancies that he is guilty of that sin unpardonable of which he has often read and thought with horror. Is he then lost? Is there no hope for this struggling and already sore-tired spirit? Is there no succour in Heaven? The gloom of night gathering thicker and closer round about him, the dying sparkle of the fire, the last faint fitful gleam of the expiring candle leaping from its socket, and as it seems to him soaring away to heaven, cannot answer. Surely there will yet be a morrow.