Death, whether it be day or night, overtook Bertram in the mountain
fastness, and Atma knew once more that the human soul is lonely, which
he had been fain to doubt or deny in the pleasant delusion of
friendship. He lived alone, and, after a while, with returning mental
health, he sometimes gave way to bitter reflection on these, his wasted
days, though knowing himself unable still to take up the broken thread
of active existence. But, growing stronger, he was at last able to
perceive that this apparently barren season was the best harvest time of
his life, for, adrift from human ties and from religions, he was at last
alone with God. His battles were sore to fight, the solid earth seemed
gone from beneath his feet, and the heavens were become an illusion.
There was a time when he cried out that "all men are liars," as we have
all cried, but the instinct of the soul happily arrested him then.
Happily, for it is strangely true that he who loses faith in man will
soon lose faith in God. It is as if the great heart of the Race,
recoiling from suicidal impulse, warned the individual from treason
against his kind--a suggestion of the unity underlying all created
things. This the best religions have known, and have founded on it a law
that he who loves God must love his brother also. Apprehending this,
Atma grew again in heart to forgive his fellowmen who had so sorely
sinned against him, and, musing on their ways he pitied them, and knew
that the true attitude towards humanity is one of pity. He pitied men in
their crimes, in their unbeliefs, and in their faiths, and presently he
saw in these faiths which he had decried a spiritual beauty. His own
creed, grown hateful to him as the vainest of delusions, reasserted its
claims to reverence, and the voice that had cried to his childhood out
of the desert of silence and mystery that surrounds every human soul
spoke to him again as a voice of inspiration. Every man's faith is the
faith of his fathers, the faith learned on his mother's knee. He, who,
increasing knowledge, discerns the different degrees of darkness that
characterize our religious theories, and chooses for himself one from
among them, increases his soul's sorrow, for our light is darkness, and
God is not to be found for searching. "It is not by our feet or change
of place that men leave Thee nor return unto Thee." The quietness of
habit is more conducive to spirituality than the progress whose gain is
so infinitesimal, and whose heavy price is the destruction of the habit
of faith. It is better to believe a falsehood than to doubt a truth. The
habitual attitude of the soul, its upward gaze is more important than
the quality of the veil through which it discerns the Eternal. During
the days when Atma lived without the religion which was so mortal that
it died in his heart because he found that its friends were false, he
knew God, for this veil was removed, and when the weakness of human
nature again demanded the support of habit and formula, he turned to the
mystic rites and prayers endeared and hallowed by association, but he
knew now that God is a spirit, for spirit with spirit had met. A
silence, born of great reverence, rested upon him, and he no more
clamoured to save the world. The fall of the Khalsa no longer meant the
downfall of God, and in time even the heartache for the vanquishment of
his early dreams disappeared.