Agonies of
injury a man may endure, and, so far from being overwhelmed, rise
above them tenfold a man, who, were he to awake to the self-knowledge
of a crime, would sink into a heap of ruin. Then indeed, if there be
no God, or one that has not an infinite power of setting right that
which has gone wrong with his work, then indeed welcome the faith,
for faith it may then be called, of such as say there is no hereafter!
Helen did not know to what gulfs of personal shame, nay, to what
summits of public execration, a man may be glad to flee for refuge
from the fangs of home-born guilt--if so be there is any refuge to
be found in either. And some kind of refuge there does seem to be.
Strange it is and true that in publicity itself lies some relief
from the gnawing of the worm--as if even a cursing humanity were a
barrier of protection between the torn soul and its crime. It flees
to its kind for shelter from itself. Hence, I imagine, in part, may
the coolness of some criminals be accounted for. Their quietness is
the relief brought by confession--even confession but to their
fellows. Is it that the crime seems then lifted a little from their
shoulders, and its weight shared by the ace?
Helen had hoped that the man who had spoken in public so tenderly,
and at the same time so powerfully, of the saving heart of the
universe, that would have no divisions of pride, no scatterings of
hate, but of many would make one, would in private have spoken yet
sweeter words of hope and consolation, which she might have carried
home in gladness to her sick-souled brother, to comfort and
strengthen him--words of might to allay the burning of the poison
within him, and make him feel that after all there was yet a place
for him in the universe, and that he was no outcast of Gehenna.
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