I am beginning to have hope, Mother! If I only suffer enough—and I don’t believe mine will ever be a smooth or easy life—I may yet be fit to be the head for which I am looking so earnestly....[earnestly....]
But all seems centred in the one thought, ‘Lead Thou me on!’—or rather, not ‘me’ but ‘us,’—all the wanderers.
Yours very lovingly,
Soph.”
Not that S. J.-B. was ever conventional even in her religion. Here is a characteristic extract from the diary of the same period:
“You never have the common honesty, Jack, in this most private journal (they say hardly anyone has) to put down the thought if it crosses your mind ‘Well, I think I am rather a fine fellow’ or its equivalent. Because it never comes? Oh, dear your precious ‘humility’! I wish Miss W. could look into you:—do you? Not you, you humbug!
‘Well, but,’ (retorts S. J.-B. accused) ‘I do work with a single purpose,—I have tried very hard, and, am sure, succeeded somewhat in this hard battle of these months,—what is the good of pretending to call myself names? Did not Job ‘maintain his integrity’?
You coward! You must skulk behind Job. Looks respectable, does it? Say honestly ‘I do try harder than some people do,’ for in truth I believe that is all your conceit does amount to.
I know from my heart I do recognize and reverence holiness and purity as far above mine as Snowden to a mole-hill. And is that conceit? I don’t believe it is. No,—‘Not guilty, S. J.-B.’ Plead boldly, and don’t give in for shamefacedness. And besides you have no right to deny His triumph ‘Who giveth us the victory,’—by fighting modest on the sham. You have won some victories. Thank God quietly, and pressing on to the things before. ‘I press towards the mark.’ God knows—and you know—there are enough to win. Oh, how far away lies doing even what is our ‘duty to do.’ But I don’t know that the realest soundest life limits itself to calling itself ‘miserable sinner.’ Zacchaeus told Christ what he tried to do. He did not rebuke him as man does and say, ‘No, believe yourself utterly vile (for the glory of your Maker?)’
There,—go to bed, S. J.-B.”