I now felt this to be the great point of the demon's urging; it recurred too often not to be designed. Led on by the sophistry of my tempter, I had floated unconsciously to this issue, practically admitting all; but when this suggestion stood completely unclothed before me, my soul rose in horror at the abyss before it. For an instant all was chaos, and the very order of Nature seemed disorder. Life and light vanished from the face of the earth; my night made all things dead and dark. A universe without a God! Creation seemed to me for that moment but a galvanized corse. What my emotions were no human being who has not felt them can conceive. My first impulse was to suicide; with the next I cried from the depths of my despair, "God deliver me from the body of this death!" It was but a moment,--and there came, in the place of the cold questioning voice of my daemon, one of ineffable music, repeating words familiar to me from childhood, words linked to everything loved and lovely in my past:--"Ye believe in God, believe also in me." The hot tears for another moment blotted out the world from sight. I said once more to the questioner, "Now who _are_ you?" "Your own doubts," was the reply; and it seemed as if only I spoke to myself. Since that day I have never reasoned with my doubts, never doubted my imagination. ALL'S WELL. Sweet-voiced Hope, thy fine discourse Foretold not half life's good to me; Thy painter, Fancy, hath not force To show how sweet it is to be! Thy witching dream And pictured scheme To match the fact still want the power; Thy promise brave From birth to grave Life's boon may beggar in an hour. Ask and receive,--'tis sweetly said; Yet what to plead for know I not; For Wish is worsted, Hope o'ersped, And aye to thanks returns my thought. If I would pray, I've nought to say But this, that God may be God still; For Him to live Is still to give, And sweeter than my wish his will. O wealth of life beyond all bound! Eternity each moment given! What plummet may the Present sound? Who promises a _future_ heaven? Or glad, or grieved, Oppressed, relieved, In blackest night, or brightest day, Still pours the flood Of golden good, And more than heartfull fills me aye. My wealth is common; I possess No petty province, but the whole; What's mine alone is mine far less Than treasure shared by every soul. Talk not of store, Millions or more,-- Of values which the purse may hold,-- But this divine! I own the mine Whose grains outweigh a planet's gold.