For In This Book I Was First
Made Acquainted With Many Of The Arguments Of The Freethinkers, Both
Of The Deists Who Were Opposed To The Christian Creed, And Of Those
Who Denied The Truth Of All Supernatural Religion.
And the answers to
the arguments were not always convincing.
It was idle, then, to seek
for proofs in the books. The books themselves, after all their
arguments, told me as much when they said that only by faith could a
man be saved. And to the sad question: "How was it to be attained?"
the only answer was, by striving and striving until it came. And as
there was nothing else to do I continued striving, with the result
that I believed and did not believe, and my soul, or rather my hope of
immortality, trembled in the balance.
This, from first to last, was the one thing that mattered; so much was
it to me that in reading one of the religious books entitled _The
Saints' Everlasting Rest_, in which the pious author, Richard Baxter,
expatiates on and labours to make his readers realize the condition of
the eternally damned, I have said to myself: "If an angel, or one
returned from the dead, could come to assure me that life does not end
with death, that we mortals are destined to live for ever, but that
for me there can be no blessed hereafter on account of my want of
faith, and because I loved or worshipped Nature rather than the Author
of my being, it would be, not a message of despair, but of
consolation; for in that dreadful place to which I should be sent, I
should be alive and not dead, and have my memories of earth, and
perhaps meet and have communion there with others of like mind with
myself, and with recollections like mine."
This was but one of many lawless thoughts which assailed me at this
time. Another, very persistent, was the view I took of the sufferings
of the Saviour of mankind. Why, I asked, were they made so much of? - -
why was it said that He suffered as no man had suffered? It was
nothing but the physical pain which thousands and millions have had to
endure! And if I could be as sure of immortality as Jesus, death would
be to me no more than the prick of a thorn. What would it matter to be
nailed to a cross and perish in a slow agony if I believed that, the
agony over, I should sit down refreshed to sup in paradise? The worst
of it was that when I tried to banish these bitter, rebellious ideas,
taking them to be the whisperings of the Evil One, as the books
taught, the quick reply would come that the supposed Evil One was
nothing but the voice of my own reason striving to make itself heard.
But the contest could not be abandoned; devil or reason, or whatever
it was, must be overcome, else there was no hope for me; and such is
the powerful effect of fixing all one's thoughts on one object,
assisted no doubt by the reflex effect on the mind of prayer, that in
due time I did succeed in making myself believe all I wished to
believe, and had my reward, since after many days or weeks of mental
misery there would come beautiful intervals of peace and of more than
peace, a new and surprising experience, a state of exaltation, when it
would seem to me that I was lifted or translated into a purely
spiritual atmosphere and was in communion and one with the unseen
world.
It was wonderful. At last and for ever my Dark Night of the Soul was
over; no more bitter broodings and mocking whispers and shrinking from
the awful phantom of death continually hovering near me; and, above
all, no more "difficulties" - the rocky barriers I had vainly beat and
bruised myself against. For I had been miraculously lifted over them
and set safely down on the other side, where it was all plain walking.
Unhappily, these blissful intervals would not last long. A
recollection of something I had heard or read would come back to
startle me out of the confident happy mood; reason would revive as
from a benumbed or hypnotized condition, and the mocking voice would
be heard telling me that I had been under a delusion. Once more I
would abhor and shudder at the black phantom, and when the thought of
annihilation was most insistent, I would often recall the bitter,
poignant words about death and immortality spoken to me about two
years before by an old gaucho landowner who had been our neighbour in
my former home.
He was a rough, rather stern-looking man, with a mass of silver-white
hair and grey eyes; a gaucho in his dress and primitive way of life,
the owner of a little land and a few animals-the small remnant of the
estancia which had once belonged to his people. But he was a vigorous
old man, who spent half of his day on horseback, looking after the
animals, his only living. One day he was at our house, and coming out
to where I was doing something in the grounds, he sat down on a bench
and called me to him. I went gladly enough, thinking that he had some
interesting bird news to give me. He remained silent for some time,
smoking a cigar, and staring at the sky as if watching the smoke
vanish in the air. At length he opened fire.
"Look," he said, "you are only a boy, but you can tell me something I
don't know. Your parents read books, and you listen to their
conversation and learn things. We are Roman Catholics, and you are
Protestants. We call you heretics and say that for such there is no
salvation. Now I want you to tell me what is the difference between
our religion and yours."
I explained the matter as well as I knew how, and added, somewhat
maliciously, that the main difference was his religion was a corrupt
form of Christianity and ours a pure one.
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