subjects of horrible indifference;—­whether, if such Omnipotent Being created the world, he has now abandoned it to be the sport of chance, and I am thus an orphan in the universe;—­whether this ‘universal frame’ be indeed without a mind, and we are, in fact, the only forms of conscious existence; —­whether, as the Pantheist declares, the universe itself be God,—­ ever making, never made,—­the product of an evolution of an infinite series of ‘antecedents’ and ‘consequents’; a God of which—­for I cannot say of whom—­you and I are bits; perishable fragments of a Divinity, itself imperishable only because there will always be bits of it to perish;—­whether, even upon some such supposition, this conscious existence of ours is to be renewed; and, if under what conditions; or whether, when we have finished our little day, no other dawn is to break upon our night;—­whether the vale, vale in eternum vale, is really the proper utterance of a breaking heart as it closes the sepulchre on the object of its love.”

His voice faltered; and I was confirmed in my suspicions, that some deep, secret sorrow had had to do with his morbid state of mind.  In a moment, he resumed:—­

“These are the questions, and others like the them, which I have vainly toiled to solve.  I, like you, have been rudely driven out of my old beliefs; my early Christian faith has given way to doubt; the little hut on the mountain-side, in which I thought to dwell in pastoral simplicity, has been scattered to the tempest, and I am turned out to the blast without a shelter.  I have wandered long and far, but have not found that rest which you tell me is to be obtained.  As I examine all other theories, they seem, to me, pressed by at least equal difficulties with that I have abandoned.  I cannot make myself contented, as others do, with believing nothing, and yet I have nothing to believe; I have wrestled long and hard with my Titan foes,—­but not successfully.  I have turned to every quarter of the universe in vain; I have interrogated my own soul, but it answers not; I have gazed upon nature, but its many voices speak no articulate language to me; and, more especially, when I gaze upon the bright page of the midnight heavens, those orbs gleam upon me with so cold a light, and amidst so portentous a silence, that I am, with Pascal, terrified at the spectacle of the infinite solitudes,—­’de ces espaces infinis.’  I declare to you that I know nothing in nature so beautiful or so terrible as those mute oracles.”

“They are indeed mute,” said Fellowes; “but not so that still voice which whispers its oracles within.  You have but to look inwards, and you may see, by the direct gaze of ‘the spiritual faculty,’ bright and clear, those great ‘intuitions’ of spiritual truth which the gauds and splendors of the external universe can no more illustrate than can the illuminated characters of an old missal;—­just as little can any book teach these truths.  You have truly said, the stars will shed no light upon them; they, on the contrary, must illumine the stars; I mean, they must themselves be seen before the outward universe can assume intelligible meaning; must utter their voices before any of the phenomena of the external world can have any real significance!”