THE TEXAN HUNTRESS. 277 



the Bayard of these weapons, and his compeers learned to 

 use them. Gibbon possessed a subtle insight, and wielded 

 the borrowed thrust effectually. 



I hated and scorned the Truths of Christianity not as "a 

 Keasoner" but as an Idealist. I did not, in my morbid mad- 

 ness, regard, though familiar with them, the historic evidences 

 of Christ's Godship and Mission. Had the same evidence 

 proved that he came in a chariot, with blazing worlds for 

 wheels, and myriad legions of the seraphim, with fiery swords 

 about Him, that reaped a nation from the lap of earth, I 

 should have been no more impressed by it than by the simple 

 story of Calvary. Mere " Reason," I saw plainly enough, to 

 be utterly incompetent to deal with the sublimity of that 

 sacrifice, as I had seen it, and known it to be, with the 

 simpler yet lofty devotion of common humanity. 



No ; regarding our world as a mere infinitesimal mite of 

 the Infinite Universe, I impiously questioned, why and how 

 the creative and governing source of these myriad worlds 

 could recognize the atomies upon this speck of his dominions, 

 as alone worth the sacrifice of His Son, and whether such a 

 sacrifice had been made for the rebels of other worlds ; and 

 recognizing, too, in my philosophy, the separate entity of the 

 soul, and the mere animal life — I insanely demanded those 

 spiritual evidences and revelations His followers professed to 

 receive, and which proved to them that the God of all was 

 present here, regardful of every hair of our heads, and even 

 of every sparrow that should fall upon this molecule of space ! 

 Unfortunately, these evidences could never come to such de- 

 mands; with all the travail of an eager and presumptuous 

 spirit, they had not yet appeared. My faith, or imagination, 

 had been appealed to, yet, through nothing palpable it could 

 lay hold of; and the earnest logician, who starts with doubt, 

 will certainly never reason himself out of the labyrinth. The 

 more he reasons the more he doubts. 



The beginning and the end with him is doubt. He doubts 



