“Exalted souls Have passions in proportion, violent,
Resistless and tormenting: they’re a tax
Imposed by nature in pre?minence,
And Fortitude, and Wisdom must support them.”
Lillo.
When Olmedo left his house under such excited feelings, he unconsciously followed the path which led to the grove where Beatriz was, and which he knew to be her favorite retreat. In his present condition of mind, she was the last person his reason would have counselled him to meet, but led by an inward attraction, without seeking the meeting, his steps took him towards where she had just risen from prayer. So distracted, however, was he with his conflicting emotions, that she saw him the first. It was too late to avoid him, which she would not have done had she been able. Conscious of the rectitude of her own desires, and pacified by her late appeal to heaven, she obeyed her impulse and advanced towards him. As he suddenly looked up and saw her within a few steps, a faintness came over him, and he was well nigh falling, but with a great effort recovering himself, he took her hand as frankly as it was offered.
[141]
Both were silent. Each felt the crisis of their fate had arrived. Nature, when her mightiest agencies are about to go forth in the hurricane, the earthquake, or the volcanic eruption, is for the moment breathless. So the human soul anticipates its most direful trials by utter stillness.
They walked on side by side, going deeper into the wood, as if to screen themselves from all the world. Yet neither knew why they did so, only it was a relief to be together and to be apart from every one else. Though not a word had been spoken, each felt the confession had been made, and they began to tremble, as did the guilty pair in Paradise when they first heard the voice of the Creator. Why should they tremble?
To love surely was no crime. That hearts like theirs should in meeting mingle, God had ordained when he first created man and woman. Whence, then, the thrill too deep for utterance that paralyzed their tongues? Beatriz was not a woman to shrink from the display of her own feelings. She was one rather to avow them, and meet the consequences fearless in her honesty. Olmedo had never before shrunk from speaking directly from his heart words of truth or admonition. Why, then, did these innocent ones act as if guilt was upon them? Because the Church had said to him, “thou shalt not love her whom God gave thee for a companion, and to her, thou shalt not be a companion to him.” Thus man’s forgery of God’s will, making Him to say, “it is good for man to be alone,” had given to each of these sufferers, who by his laws were mated in[142] love and sympathy in body and soul, for time and eternity, a false conscience which perverted their good into their evil. Much of theology is indeed a cunningly contrived system of man’s to make himself miserable, despite the broad ordinances of the Creator, to be read in all his works, “to go forth and enjoy the world, to be fruitful and multiply, to love Him with all thy heart, with all thy soul, and with all thy mind,” and “thy neighbor as thyself.” Man will not be in his proper relation to his Maker, until he escapes from the dogmas and creeds of a conventional Christianity and walks with Him, as did Enoch, in the faith of that perfect love which casteth out all fear.
But man in his soul-progress can keep pace only with his age and opportunity. The duties he voluntarily assumes are still duties, though more light may have widened his own prospect. He is but a link in the vast chain of humanity, no one of which can be ruptured without affecting it through its entire extent. He is, therefore, to consider well before he acts whether in seeking his own personal gratification, or even in obeying the right instincts of his heart, he may not offend others, or do a general injury for a particular good. In all doubtful moral emergencies, duty says obey the higher law, or that which shows that thou lovest thy neighbor as thyself.
There is a blessing in the principle of obedience, springing from self-sacrificing motives, which, whatever may be the result in this life, is sure of its final reward. Duties, whether artificial or not, are the[143] moral diamond dust, by which our souls are polished. As we free ourselves from all selfish considerations in our relations with others, so shall our hope be converted into joy in the next life. It is well, therefore, to bear our burdens meekly and with courage here, that we may travel the lighter hereafter.
Olmedo was distracted between his vows and his desire. How could he to the simple natives recall his teachings and example as a monk, upon the one point of celibacy, which in him was now in such peril! Could they comprehend his recantation? Would not the little truth that had already begun to be understood among them, based as it was more upon their respect for one who showed himself superior to their ordinary passions, than to an intellectual appreciation of his doctrines, would not this seed even be lost, and the priest, tabued to women, be hereafter esteemed only as one of themselves? Besides, the doctrine of self-abnegation, or the crucifying of his natural instincts, which although his now more enlightened reason showed him could not be an acceptable sacrifice to their author, except in............