Ever since he took his place at
his wife's bedside, he had been fighting off the conviction that
he was a brute. He would not, he could not believe it. What! Tom
Helmer, the fine, indubitable fellow! such as he had always known
himself!--he to cower before his own consciousness as a man
unworthy, and greatly to be despised! The chaos was come again!
And, verily, chaos was there, but not by any means newly come.
And, moreover, when chaos begins to be conscious of itself, then
is the dawn of an ordered world at hand. Nay, the creation of it
is already begun, and the pangs of the waking conscience are the
prophecy of the new birth.
With that pitiful cry of his wife after her lost child, disbelief
in himself got within the lines of his defense; he could do no
more, and began to loathe that conscious self which had hitherto
been his pride.
Whatever the effect of illness may be upon the temper of some, it
is most certainly an ally of the conscience. All pains, indeed,
and all sorrows, all demons, yea, and all sins themselves under
the suffering care of the highest minister, are but the ministers
of truth and righteousness. I never came to know the condition of
such as seemed exceptionally afflicted but I seemed to see reason
for their affliction, either in exceptional faultiness of
character or the greatness of the good it was doing them.
But conscience reacts on the body--for sickness until it is
obeyed, for health thereafter.
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