His suffering was too
intense, and any doubt concerning duty too far from him, to allow
of anything that could be called thought; but such were the
fundamental facts that lay below his unselfquestioned resolve--such
was the soil in which grew the fruits, that is, the deeds, the
outcome of his nature. For himself, the darkness billowed and
rolled about him, and life was a frightful thing.
For where was God this awful time? Nowhere within the ken of the
banished youth. In his own feeling Cosmo was outside the city of
life--not even among the dogs--outside with bare nothingness--cold
negation. Alas for him who had so lately offered to help another to
pray, thinking the hour would never come to him when he could not
pray! It had COME! He did not try to pray. The thought of prayer
did not wake in him! Let no one say he was punished for his
overconfidence--for his presumption! There was no presumption in
the matter; there was only ignorance. He had not learned--nor has
any one learned more than in part--what awful possibilities lie the
existence we call WE. He had but spoken from what he knew--that
hitherto life for him had seemed inseparable from prayer to his
Father. And was it separable? Surely not. He could not pray,
true--but neither was he alive. To live, one must chose to live. He
was dead with a death that was heavy upon him. There is a far worse
death--the death that is content and suffers nothing; but
annihilation is not death--is nothing like it.
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