"I came-to from that trance little better than a madman, with one only
hope, that it might not be true; one determination to find out for
certain, and if so to be revenged--revenged on the man. My love for the
girl was unchanged, and I realized with something akin to horror that
nothing could alter it; that from the moment when I made my vow, her
fate and mine were woven together; and in this first vision of her
damnation I felt driven from the face of God, a thing accursed. I had
taken her sin upon me, as we must ever take the sins of those we truly
love; and I had then perhaps for the first time some faint idea of the
meaning of the word substitution, and could understand how one perfect
in love, and therefore perfect in holiness, must in a world like this
bear the sin and carry the sorrows of humanity.
"As every man born into the world becomes a unit, influenced by all that
preceded him and influencing all future life, so must each be a saviour
or destroyer through self-renunciation or through egotism. To One alone
can we give the title, the noblest and the grandest for us to conceive,
of the Saviour. He, who possessing fully the spirit of God’s order and
of God’s love, was ordained to reflect them once perfectly upon earth so
that He might show to the wanderers of all time the possibility of man’s
nature, and the only path by which we may return to peace. Men waste
time in disputing if this Saviour was God. What know we of God but by
his attributes? Which of these attributes can we conceive bound down in
human form which was not manifest in the Christ? Could love exceed His
love, or meekness His humility, whose unselfishness asked no reward of
gratitude, and the exercise of whose power was ever restrained by the
hand of a far-seeing compassion? Is all we read true? Perhaps not; the
hand of imperfect devotion often, through want of insight, may have
touched and marred the picture, but the portrait remains, if somewhat
soiled through the fingers of adoration. On the other hand, if the
painter of our picture had no living model, a thing well nigh
impossible, then must he have been the Christ, for no soul can rise to a
sustained ideal beyond the possibility of his own nature.
"How wretched and partial a thing my love was, may be seen at once by
the bitter feeling of revenge that took possession of me. I fully
believe that at that moment I could have murdered my enemy in cold
blood. It is a humiliating reflection that there is virtually no crime
of which the best of us could not be guilty if the temptation were only
strong enough and the circumstances propitious.
"The next morning I walked to Heather Lodge, and asking to see Mr.
Soudin, was shown into his library. The old gentleman was sitting there
dressed for shooting, and did not seem very pleased to see me.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account