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 
Reasoner” 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 
