02.26. A Strange Power of the Soul
Chapter 26 A STRANGE POWER OF THE SOUL.
We doubt not that there are powers of the soul that have not yet been imagined; and depths that no lead-line of thought has sounded. And this we feel to be the case while the greatness of the spirit through daily study is constantly growing upon us.
He who investigates the nature of the soul, its strange action upon itself and as certain influence upon others, will confess to two feelings, one a sense of bewilderment, and the other an emotion of awe. Who has not been puzzled at its swift alternate softenings and hardenings, its magnanimity and meanness, its sacrifices and selfishness, its activity and idleness, its bravery and cowardice.
Swung in one direction it impresses the observer with its kinship to God, but with a pendulum sweep it appears gazing at us with the features of Satan. Sometimes it lies within the body as quietly as a lake sleeping amid the hills, not a yearning of regret disturbs its rest, not a thought of pleasure or dream of ambition can stimulate it. It seems more than quiet, it is felt to be stagnant. But in the next moment or hour the body is aquiver with the awakened spirit, not aroused necessarily by anger, but by a great thought, noble intent and sublime purpose. The man stands thrilled with a consciousness of power. Nerve and vein are on fire. The heart is a Mountain of Flame! The breast swells, and at that moment nothing in the universe is too hard to undertake or accomplish.
If we had to liken the soul to anything material we would take the ocean. The sea, with its shifting colors, its light and shadows, its calms and storms, and last but not least its horizon line, measuring off indeed a visible greatness, but suggestive also of depths, lengths and breadths beyond, and of realms unseen, unknown and unexplored. Who has not felt that horizon line in his own soul, and beheld it in others, and who can approach it without thinking of distant sailing ships, peaceful sunny islands, but also of monsoons, typhoons and all that these and other things of sea and land stand for, in the spiritual life.
However we started out to write not of many, but of a single power of the soul.
Among the various faculties within us is one called conscience. It is a moral attribute, and its province is to pronounce upon the quality of our actions and put upon them the seal of approval or disapproval. We all agree that it is conscience which rebukes us for the sin just committed, and applies the lash upon the quivering and suffering spirit, but what power of the soul is that which stamps the conviction upon the mind that everybody knows of the sin itself? The deed may have been committed in secret, and it is not possible for any living being to be aware of what has been done, and yet the inward feeling remains that the ghastly thing is a matter of public knowledge. If this is the act of conscience, then has that faculty three functions, first to approve, second to condemn, and third to produce the impression and even conviction that one’s guilt is known to everybody.
Dickens speaks of a murderer, who after slaying his victim and leaving him in the woods at night, and in a place where he could not possibly be found for days, yet fancied that everybody was talking about the murder. Miles away from the place of tragedy, and in the heart of a great city, he was convinced that men were looking up at the window where he was crouching, and speaking of the crime. Not only the water gutters about the house gurgled like the dying man did, but footsteps on the street seemed to stop at the door, and men were coming to arrest him. All this intense misery was produced by this strange power of the soul. A gentleman related to us several years ago the following dream. He dreamed that he had committed a crime, a heinous offense, a sin the thought of which in his waking moments he would not allow to enter in his mind a moment; yet in his night visions he committed this deed. In his dream he was passing down the street, bearing his heart load, when suddenly a man sprang upon him from behind a corner, and with a red-hot iron branded him upon face and throat. The brand bore the name of the sin!
Even in slumber the sense of shame and pain was intolerable, amounting to an indescribable agony. He at once began to run, and sped like the wind block after block, but the thought which burned and blistered equal to the scorching letters, and which he could not outrun, was, "Everybody sees the word which has been stamped upon you."
We have related this dream in order to illustrate the peculiar power of the soul about which we are writing. It seizes the guilty mind, writes on it the sin of the life, and then presses home the thought, "Everybody knows the sin, for everybody sees it!" When a pastor of large city churches, we never relaxed our efforts, but we immediately felt the effect of this power. The neglect of pastoral work would in point of time scarcely cover a week, not enough to have excited comment, yet the disturbing thought would continually arise, "Everybody is talking about your slothfulness." A young man of our acquaintance once complained to us that people were talking about his private life, his habit of secret drinking, when the truth was that no one dreamed of it. And so, not suspecting his intemperance, there had not been any comment by the community on the subject. The voice within was so loud that he thought it was the verdict of society against him. The strange inward testifier swept out and came back upon the sufferer’s own soul after the manner of a boomerang. It pointed its own hand at the man and said this is not a finger, but the tongue of the public. All men are talking about you.
It is doubtless this very feeling or conviction which brings the criminal to confession, or, if he flies for life from country to country, betrays him finally into the hands of justice. Murder will out is an old saying, and men said it because of their knowledge of this distressing and terrible power that is resident in man.
What has been our object in writing these lines? Mainly to bring out the following thought: If the soul exercises such a dreadful office here, what will be the full force of its torment hereafter in Eternity, when the sins of the life under the accusing tones of conscience will seem to leap out in blazing characters upon the face, when the assembled universe will be able to read the guilty past, and the overwhelming consciousness is that nothing is hidden nor can be hidden. At such a time it will seem to maddened beings as though hands were pointing at them from the dust, and voices were speaking to them from the clouds, crying out all the sins of a lifetime. Who will be able to bear this? And who is willing to go into eternity to enter upon such an existence, and to endure forever such a doom? * * * * * * *