ould the laws discover the criminal? How could
they drag us from the impenetrable gloom of this sylvan sanctuary? And
if here we chose to perish by suicide or natural death--and famine is a
natural death--what eye would ever look on our bones? Raving all; but so
it often is with us in severest solitude--our dreams will be hideous
with sin and death.

Hideous, said we, with sin and death? Thoughts that came flying against
us like vultures, like vultures have disappeared, disappointed of their
prey, and afraid to fix their talons in a thing alive. Hither--by some
secret and sacred impulse within the soul, that often knoweth not the
sovereign virtue of its own great desires--have we been led as into a
penitentiary, where, before the altar of nature, we may lay down the
burden of guilt or remorse, and walk out of the Forest a heaven-pardoned
man. What guilt?--O my soul! canst thou think of Him who inhabiteth
eternity, and ask what guilt? What remorse?--For the dereliction of duty
every day since thou received'st from Heaven the understanding of good
and of evil. All our past existence gathers up into one dread
conviction, that every man that is born of woman is a sinner, and worthy
of everlasting death. Yet with the same dread conviction is interfused a
knowledge, clear as the consciousness of present being, that the soul
will live for ever. What was the meaning, O my soul! of all those
transitory joys and griefs--of all those fears, hopes, loves, that so
shook, each in its own fleeting season, the very foundations on which
thy being in this life is laid? Anger, wrath, hatred, pride, and
ambition--what are they all but so many shapes of sin coeval with thy
birth? That sudden entrance of heaven's light into the Forest, was like
the opening of the eye of God! And our spirit stands ashamed of its
nakedness, because of the foulness and pollution of sin. But the awful
thoughts that have travelled through its chambers have ventilated,
swept, and cleansed them--and let us break away from beneath the weight
of confession.

Conscience! Speak not of weak and fantastic fears--of abject
superstitions--and of all that wild brood of dreams that have for ages
been laws to whole nations; though we might speak of them--and, without
violation of the spirit of true philosophy, call upon them to bear
testimony to the truth. But think of the calm, purified, enlightened,
and elevated conscience of the highest natures--from which objectless
fea