what use was it? To-night his whole nature rebelled against this carnage
before him,--his duty; scorned it as brutal; cried out for a life as
peaceful and meek as that of Jesus, (as if that were not an absurdity in
a time like this,) for happiness, for this woman's love; demanded it, as
though these things were its right!

The man had a genial, childish temperament, given to woo and bind him,
in a thousand simple, silly ways, into a likeness of that Love that
holds the world, and that gave man no higher hero-model than a trustful,
happy child. It was the birthright of this haggard wretch going down the
hill, to receive quick messages from God through every voice of the
world,--to understand them, as few men did, by his poet's soul,--through
love, or color, or music, or keen healthy pain. Very many openings for
him to know God through the mask of matter. He had shut them; being a
Calvinist, and a dyspeptic, (Dyspepsia is twin-tempter with Satan, you
know,) sold his God-given birthright, like Esau, for a hungry, bitter
mess of man's doctrine. He came to loathe the world, the abode of sin;
loathed himself, the chief of sinners; mapped out a heaven in some
corner of the universe, where he and the souls of his persuasion,
panting with the terror of being scarcely saved, should find refuge. The
God he made out of his own bigoted and sour idea, and foisted on himself
and his hearers as Jesus, would not be as merciful in the Judgment as
Gaunt himself would like to be,--far from it. So He did not satisfy him.
Sometimes, thinking of the pure instincts thwarted in every heart,--of
the noble traits in damned souls, sent hellwards by birth or barred into
temptation by society, a vision flashed before him of some scheme of the
universe where all matter and mind were rising, slowly, through the
ages, to eternal life. "Even so in Christ should all be made alive." All
matter, all mind, rising in degrees towards the Good? made order,
infused by God? And God was Love. Why not trust this Love to underlie