Atma - A Romance

They looked on the tomb, its walls gleamed white through the foliage

that draped it. It was old and neglected. The door was nearly concealed

from view by the luxuriant growth of many years, and when they examined

it closely they found that it hung on one rusty hinge.

"May we believe," asked Bertram, "that the tender fancy of the dying

princess was ever verified by the actual shelter here of a fugitive?"

"The story is ancient," replied Nawab Khan, "and I cannot say. The

lesson she taught would forbid the finding anywhere a Place of Rest."

But it neared the hour of the devout man's prayers and he left them.

"Nawab Khan," said Atma, "speaks not as he believes, for many are the

Havens of the Mohammedan."

"Ay," said Bertram, "and does not every creed too soon become a secure

retreat to the spirit of man to which God has denied the repose of

certainty. We crave knowledge which is withheld more earnestly than we

desire faith or hope, and we eagerly make even its semblance a foothold.

It appears to me, my friend, with whom I am grown bold, that you and I

may find in our less material beliefs as false a haven as the pilgrim

finds in his Mecca."

"You say well," said Atma thoughtfully, "it is not new to me. Thoughts

for which I cannot account have been borne in upon my soul, waking and

sleeping, by riverside or on mountain height, and I know and believe

that he who would find God must close his eyes and his ears."

"And the soul," said Bertram, "that knows an infallible guide, be it

voice of other man, or of his own reason, or volume of mystery, or

whatever it be, that soul walks not by faith. But why speak of a soul

finding God? The soul of man must be first found of Him, and it seems to

me that until thus adopted no soul would prefer faith to knowledge--thus

much might we learn of Nawab Khan."

And as they returned to the Palace, they continued this grave discourse,

lamenting the sadness and sin of the world, and Atma, greatly moved,

told that his life's purpose, of which he might not fully speak,

involved the conquest of evil and the redemption of the world by means

whose greatness was worthy of the end. And Bertram, sometimes assenting,

often silent, hoped that at last, by each and all means employed by man,

the whole world might be redeemed. He was a Christian and devout, but

he, too, desired to redeem the world. His dream was one with Atma's. But

the highest dreams are soonest dissolved, for the dispelling of

illusions and breaking of idols is God's benison, and is given soonest

to those whom He approves.