Robert Williams Buchanan

“ His creed was beautiful as a rainbow, as many-coloured, as capable of stretching from heaven to earth and earth to heaven, but it faded, rainbow-like, when the sun sank and the darkness came. So must it be with all creeds which are not solid as the ground we walk on, strength-giving as the air we breath, simple as the thoughts of childhood, and inexorable as the solemn verity of death.
Such has been, throughout all success or failure, and such is, practical Christianity. Blessed is he who, in days of backsliding and unbelief, can become as a little child and lean all his hope upon it. ”

“ There are moments in a man’s life when all the forces of life and society seem to conspire for his destruction; when, look which way he will, he sees no loophole for escape; when every step he takes forward seems a step downward towards some pitiless Inferno, and when to make even one step backward is impossible, because the precipice down which he has been thrust seems steep as a wall. Yet there is still hope for such a man, if his own conscience is not in revolt against him; for that conscience, like a very angel, may uplift him by the hair and hold him miraculously from despair and death. ”

“ But why should not Religion and Joy be united this side the last mystery? Why should not this world be the Paradise of all our dreams?’
‘It can never be so, Ambrose,’ replied Alma, ‘until we can abolish Death.’
‘And we can do that in a measure; that is to say, we can abolish premature decay, sick ness, disease. Look what Science has done in fifty years! More than other-worldliness has done in a thousand! When Death comes gently, at the natural end of life, it generally comes as a blessing—as the last sacrament of peace. ”

“ The Christian dies that he may live; suffers that he may enjoy; relinquishes that he may gain; sacrifices his life that he may save it. He knows the beatitude of suffering, which no merely happy man can know. We who are worlds removed from the simple faith of the early world may at least admit all this, and then, with a sigh for the lost illusion, go dismally upon our way.
That night Ambrose Bindley found, to his astonishment, that Alma was still at his mercy, that at a word from him she would defy the world. ”

“ When I think of my dead mother, it is of the very face and form I used to know; the same eyes, the same sweet lips, the same smile, the same touch of loving hands. Either we shall exist again as we are, or——’
‘Of course we shall so exist,’ broke in Alma, more and more nervous at the turn the conversation was taking. ‘Is it not all beautifully expressed in St. Paul? We sow a physical body, we shall reap a spiritual body; but they will be one and the same. But pray do not talk of it any more. You are not dying, dear, thank God!’
Half an hour later Bradley and Alma left the house together. ”

“ If Ambrose Bradley was base, if the one true man she had ever known and loved was false, what remained? Nothing but disgrace and death.
He had been in her eyes next to God, without speck or flaw, perfectly noble and supreme; one by one he had absorbed all her childish faiths, while in idolatry of passion she had knelt at his feet adoring him—
He for God only, she for God in him. ”

“ He felt for the first time the helplessness of a transcendental Christianity, like his own. Presently he returned, almost unconsciously, to the point from which he had set forth.
‘There is something, perhaps,’ he said, ‘in the Positivist conception of mankind as one ever-changing and practically deathless Being. Though men perish, Man survives. Children spring like flowers in the dark footprints of Death, and in them the dead inherit the world.’
‘That creed would possibly suit me,’ retimed Miss Combe, smiling sadly again, ‘if I were a mother, if I were to live again in my own offspring. ”

“ But when sorrow comes, when temptation beckons, when what is wanted is a staff to lean upon and a Divine finger to point and guide, woe to him who puts his trust in any transcendental creed, however fair!
It is the tendency of modern agnosticism to slacken the moral fibre of men, even more than to weaken their intellectual grasp. The laws of human life are written in letters of brass on the rock of Science, and it is the task of true Religion to read them and translate them for the common use. But the agnostic is as shortsighted as an owl, while the atheist is as blind as a bat ”

“ I believe spiritualism, even clairvoyance, to be mere imposture.’
‘Indeed, sir?’ said the Professor, without the slightest sign of astonishment or irritation. ‘You don’t believe in solar biology?’
‘I don’t even know what that means,’ answered Bradley with a smile.
‘May I explain, sir? Solar biology is the science which demonstrates our connection with radiant existences of the central luminary of this universe; our dependence and interdependence as spiritual beings on the ebb and flow of consciousness from that shining centre; our life hitherto, now, and hereafter, as solar elements. ”

“ So luminous and searching were these eyes, so rapt and eager the pale face, that Bradley was startled, as if he were looking into the countenance of a living person.
Beneath this picture were written the words—‘Eustasia Mapleleafe.’
The clergyman looked at this picture again and again, with a curious fascination. As he did so, holding it close to the lamplight, a peculiar thrill ran through his frame, and his hand tingled as if it touched the warm hand of some living being. At last, with an effort, he returned it also to the envelope, which he threw carelessly upon his desk. ”

“ John and Shakespeare, Mary Magdalene and Mary Shelley, the angels of the church and the winged pterodactyls of the chalk, flashed and faded in everchanging kaleidoscopic dream.
The mood which welcomed all forms of belief, embraced none utterly, but contemplated all, became vague, chaotic, and transcendental; and Ambrose Bradley found himself in a fairy world where nothing seemed real and solemn enough as a law for life. ”

“ Harley sees her nearly every day. Poor Agatha! She has not had too much happiness in this world. She has worked so hard, and all alone!’
They entered the park gate, and came again among the greenness and the sunshine. Everything seemed light and happiness, and the air had that indescribable sense of resurrection in it which comes with the early shining of the primrose and the reawakening of the year. Bradley glanced at his companion. ”

“ Spiritualism is materialism; in other words, everything is spirit matter. All bodies, as the great Swedenborg demonstrated long ago, are spirit; thought is spirit—that is to say, sir, sunlight. The same great principle of which I have spoken is the destruction of all religion save the religion of solar science. It demolishes Theism, which has been the will-o’-the-wisp of the world, abolishes Christianity, which has been its bane. The God of the universe is solar Force, which is universal and pantheistic.’
‘Pray sit down,’ said Bradley, now for the first time becoming interested. ”

“ As the great cosmic Bard of solar biology expresses it in his sublime epic:
The radiant flux and reflux, the serene
Atomic ebb and flow of force divine,
This, this alone, is God, the Demiurgus;
By this alone we are, and still shall be.
O joy! the Phantom of the Uncondition’d
Fades into nothingness before the breath
Of that eternal ever-effluent Life
Whose centre is the shining solar Heart
Of countless throbbing pulses, each a world! ”

“ Alma did not answer. Her thoughts were wandering, or she would have shrunk to find her idolised teacher turning so ominously towards materialism. But indeed it was not the first time that Bradley’s thoughts had drifted in that direction. It is not in moments of personal happiness or success that we lean with any eagerness towards the supernatural. Glimpses of a world to come are vouchsafed chiefly to those who weep and those who fail; and in proportion as the radiance of this life brightens, fades the faint aurora of the other. ”

“ The scene which we have described had tortured her delicate spirit more than she at first knew; and her cousin’s bitter taunts and reproaches, though they missed their mark at first, had struck home in the end. She was a woman of infinite sensitiveness, exceeding sweetness of disposition; and she could not bear harsh words, even from one she cordially despised. Above all, she shrank, like all good women, even the most intellectual, before the evil judgment of the world. Could it be true, as George Craik had said, that people were connecting her name infamously with that of Bradley? ”

“ She sighed heavily, for she was thinking of her friend Agatha Combe.
‘I sometimes think that the sum of human misery is trifling compared to that of human happiness,’ pursued the clergyman. ‘Unless one is a downright pessimist, a very Schopenhauer, surely one must see that the preponderance is in favour of enjoyment. Look at these ragged boys—how merry they are! There is not so much wretchedness in the world, perhaps, as some of us imagine.’
She glanced at him curiously, uncertain whither his thoughts were tending. ”

“ We must forget our vain happiness, and work for God.’
Her face became Madonna-like in its beautiful resignation. Bradley looked at her in wonder, and never before had he hated himself so much for what he had done. Had she heaped reproaches upon him, had she turned from him in the pride of passionate disdain, he could have borne it far better. But in so much as she assumed the sweetness of an angel, did he feel the misery and selfscorn of a devil.
And, if the truth must be spoken, Alma wondered at herself. ”

“ I hate it, Alma! I hate everything in the world but you!’
Alma smiled, and, smoothing back his hair with her white hand, kissed his forehead.
‘My Abelard must not talk like that! Every day you continue to fulfil your ministry, your fame and influence grow greater. How eloquent you were to-day! I heard the Prime Minister say that you were the most wonderful preacher he had ever heard, and that though he disagreed with your opinions——’
‘Do not speak of it!’ he cried, interrupting her eagerly. ‘I care for no one’s praise but yours. Oh! ”

“ Bradley with you. To my uncle I will listen, because I know he has a good heart, and because he is my dear father’s brother; but I forbid you to speak to me on the subject. I owe all this misery and humiliation to you, and you only.’
‘That’s all humbug!’ George began furiously, but his father interposed and waved him to silence.
‘Alma is excited, naturally excited; in her cooler senses she will acknowledge that she does you an injustice. Hush, George!—My dear child,’ he continued, addressing Alma, ‘all my son and I desire to do is to save you pain. ”

“ Now that’s all over; and as for Ulysses being murdered, he was killed in a free fight, he was, and he only got what he’d given to many another. Don’t you take on, Eustasia! If ever you marry, it will be a better man than he was.’
‘Marry?’ cried the girl with a bitter laugh. ‘Who’d marry me? Who’d ever look at such a thing as I am? Even he despised me, Salem, and thought me a cheat and an impostor. Wherever we go, it’s the old story. I hate the life; I hate myself. I’d rather be a beggar in the street than what I am.’
‘Don’t underreckon yourself, Eustasia! ”

“ These new-fangled ideas of hers are absurd enough, but irritating opposition will never lead her to get rid of them.’
‘She’s in love with that fellow Bradley!’
‘Nothing of the kind. She is in love with her own wild fancies, which he is wise enough to humour, and you are indiscreet enough to oppose. If there had been anything serious between them, a marriage would have come off long ago; but, absurd as Alma is, she is not mad enough to throw herself away on a mere adventurer like that, without a penny in the world.’
‘What is a fellow to do?’ pleaded George, dolefully. ”

“ Montmorency had gone to Paris and had remained there with her child, under the same ‘protection’ as before. Finding his secret safe from the world, he began unconsciously to dismiss it from his mind, the more rapidly as Alma’s relations towards him became more and more those of a devoted sister. Presently his old enthusiasm came back upon him, and with it a sense of new power and mastery. He began to feel an unspeakable sacredness in the tie which bound him to the woman he loved ”

“ I postulate a heaven where I should meet and know my mother, and where the happy cry of living creatures would rise like a fountain into the clear azure for evermore.’
‘Surely,’ said Bradley, gently, ‘we all hope as much!’
‘But do we believe it?’ returned Miss Combe. ‘That is the question. All human experience, all physiology, all true psychology, is against it. The letter of the eternal Universe, written on the open Book of Astronomy, speaks of eternal death and change. ”