“I say God-speed, with all my heart, Carl! Your aims are noble. I like to see you in earnest.”
“I am in earnest, dear,” he said. “I feel as a new planet might, that has been turning on its own centre without progress, and is all at once set spinning off on its orbit.”
In the momentary silence that followed, Edith went to a book-shelf filled with pamphlets, and looked them over. “O Carl!” she said brightly, “do you read these?”
They were the numbers of _Brownson’s Review_.
“I have read them more attentively than anything else,” he answered, “and learned more from them. An American best understands the American mind. Pure reason is, of course, cosmopolitan; but reason is seldom so pure but a colored ray of individual or national character intrudes; and I like to choose my color. I think,” he said, smiling, “that I have been quoting that _Review_ to you. I leave them for my father to read.”
Edith’s eyes sparkled. “I thank God that you are on this track, Carl!” she said. “The first I ever read in this _Review_ was an article on De Maistre, and it solved for me a great difficulty. The fragments of truth that I had seen in the mythologies of different nations, and the beautiful Christian sentiments I had found among the pagans, had been a stumbling-block to me; but, when I read that, all became plain. You make me very happy, dear Carl!”
“I do not think that I am pious,” he said, after a moment. “My mind is clear on the subject, but my heart is unmoved. I do not wonder at that, and I am not sure but I prefer it so; to have light pour over my mind till my heart melts underneath, rather than have a mind imperfectly illuminated, and a heart starting up at intervals in little evanescent flames, which die out again, and leave ashes. The former is light from heaven, the latter suggests the lucifer-match to me. As soon as the time shall come, which I calmly await, when I have a clearer realization of the necessity of baptism, I shall ask to be baptized. Till then, I wish my intellectual convictions to be getting acclimated. My sacrifice must be ready before I invoke upon it fire from heaven.”
“Oh! you remind me of St. John of the Cross,” Edith said. “He says, ‘Reason is but the candlestick to hold the light of faith.’”