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Page 42
We went through fine and airy corridors, into which many doors, as of
cells, opened. Occasionally a man or a woman, attended by a male or a
female warder, passed us. The inmates had all the same kind of air--a
sort of amused dignity, which was very marked. Presently our companion
opened a door with his key and we went in. It was a small,
pleasantly-furnished room. Some books, apparently of devotion, lay on
the table. There was a little kneeling-desk near the window, and the
room had a half-monastic air about it. When we entered, an elderly man,
with a very serene face, was looking earnestly into the door of a
cupboard in the wall, which he was holding open; there was, so far as I
could see, nothing in the cupboard; but the inmate seemed to be
struggling with an access of rather overpowering mirth. He bowed to us.
Our conductor greeted him respectfully, and then said, "There is a
stranger here who would like a little conversation with you, if you can
spare the time."
"By all means," said the inmate, with a very ingratiating smile. "It is
very kind of him to call upon me, and my time is entirely at his
disposal."
Our conductor said to me that he and Amroth had some brief business to
transact, and that they would call for me again in a moment. The inmate
bowed, and seemed almost impatient for them to depart. He motioned me to
a chair, and the moment they left us he began to talk with great
animation. He asked me if I was a new inmate, and when I said no, only a
visitor, he looked at me compassionately, saying that he hoped I might
some day attain to the privilege. "This," he said, "is the abode of
final and lasting peace. No one is admitted here unless his convictions
are of the firmest and most ardent character; it is a reward for
faithful service. But as our time is short, I must tell you," he said,
"of a very curious experience I have had this very morning--a spiritual
experience of the most reassuring character. You must know that I held a
high official position in the religious world--I will mention no
details--and I found at an early age, I am glad to say, the imperative
necessity of forming absolutely impregnable convictions. I went to work
in the most business-like way. I devoted some years to hard reading and
solid thought, and I found that the sect to which I belonged was lacking
in certain definite notes of divine truth, while the weight of evidence
pointed in the clearest possible manner to the fact that one particular
section of the Church had preserved absolutely intact the primitive
faith of the Saints, and was without any shadow of doubt the perfectly
logical development of the principles of the Gospel. Mine is not a
nature that can admit of compromise; and at considerable sacrifice of
worldly prospects I transferred my allegiance, and was instantly
rewarded by a perfect serenity of conviction which has never faltered.
"I had a friend with whom I had often discussed the matter, who was much
of my way of thinking. But though I showed him the illogical nature of
his position, he hung back--whether from material motives or from mere
emotional associations I will not now stop to inquire. But I could not
palter with the truth. I expostulated with him, and pointed out to him
in the sternest terms the eternal distinctions involved. I broke off all
relations with him ultimately. And after a life spent in the most
solemn and candid denunciation of the fluidity of religious belief,
which is the curse of our age, though it involved me in many of the
heart-rending suspensions of human intercourse with my nearest and
dearest so plainly indicated in the Gospel, I passed at length, in
complete tranquillity, to my final rest. The first duty of the sincere
believer is inflexible intolerance. If a man will not recognise the
truth when it is plainly presented to him, he must accept the eternal
consequences of his act--separation from God, and absorption in guilty
and awestruck regret, which admits of no repentance.
"One of the privileges of our sojourn here is that we have a strange and
beautiful device--a window, I will call it--which admits one to a sight
of the spiritual world. I was to-day contemplating, not without pain,
but with absolute confidence in its justice, the sufferings of some of
these lost souls, and I observed, I cannot say with satisfaction, but
with complete submission, the form of my friend, whom my testimony might
have saved, in eternal misery. I have the tenderest heart of any man
alive. It has cost me a sore struggle to subdue it--it is more unruly
even than the will--but you may imagine that it is a matter of deep and
comforting assurance to reflect that on earth the door, the one door, to
salvation is clearly and plainly indicated--though few there be that
find it--and that this signal mercy has been vouchsafed to me. I have
then the peace of knowing, not only that my choice was right, but that
all those to whom the truth is revealed have the power to choose it. I
am a firm believer in the uncovenanted mercies vouchsafed to those who
have not had the advantages of clear presentment, but for the
deliberately unfaithful, for all sinners against light, the sentence is
inflexible."
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