Atma - A Romance

Death, whether it be day or night, overtook Bertram in the mountain

fastness, and Atma knew once more that the human soul is lonely, which

he had been fain to doubt or deny in the pleasant delusion of

friendship. He lived alone, and, after a while, with returning mental

health, he sometimes gave way to bitter reflection on these, his wasted

days, though knowing himself unable still to take up the broken thread

of active existence. But, growing stronger, he was at last able to

perceive that this apparently barren season was the best harvest time of

his life, for, adrift from human ties and from religions, he was at last

alone with God. His battles were sore to fight, the solid earth seemed

gone from beneath his feet, and the heavens were become an illusion.

There was a time when he cried out that "all men are liars," as we have

all cried, but the instinct of the soul happily arrested him then.

Happily, for it is strangely true that he who loses faith in man will

soon lose faith in God. It is as if the great heart of the Race,

recoiling from suicidal impulse, warned the individual from treason

against his kind--a suggestion of the unity underlying all created

things. This the best religions have known, and have founded on it a law

that he who loves God must love his brother also. Apprehending this,

Atma grew again in heart to forgive his fellowmen who had so sorely

sinned against him, and, musing on their ways he pitied them, and knew

that the true attitude towards humanity is one of pity. He pitied men in

their crimes, in their unbeliefs, and in their faiths, and presently he

saw in these faiths which he had decried a spiritual beauty. His own

creed, grown hateful to him as the vainest of delusions, reasserted its

claims to reverence, and the voice that had cried to his childhood out

of the desert of silence and mystery that surrounds every human soul

spoke to him again as a voice of inspiration. Every man's faith is the

faith of his fathers, the faith learned on his mother's knee. He, who,

increasing knowledge, discerns the different degrees of darkness that

characterize our religious theories, and chooses for himself one from

among them, increases his soul's sorrow, for our light is darkness, and

God is not to be found for searching. "It is not by our feet or change

of place that men leave Thee nor return unto Thee." The quietness of

habit is more conducive to spirituality than the progress whose gain is

so infinitesimal, and whose heavy price is the destruction of the habit

of faith. It is better to believe a falsehood than to doubt a truth. The

habitual attitude of the soul, its upward gaze is more important than

the quality of the veil through which it discerns the Eternal. During

the days when Atma lived without the religion which was so mortal that

it died in his heart because he found that its friends were false, he

knew God, for this veil was removed, and when the weakness of human

nature again demanded the support of habit and formula, he turned to the

mystic rites and prayers endeared and hallowed by association, but he

knew now that God is a spirit, for spirit with spirit had met. A

silence, born of great reverence, rested upon him, and he no more

clamoured to save the world. The fall of the Khalsa no longer meant the

downfall of God, and in time even the heartache for the vanquishment of

his early dreams disappeared.