It perceives the inevitable verdict. Thus and thus have I done. They will judge me rightly, that thus and thus I am.
If a man is reasonable and sees things as they were, he does not often fix on some particular act for which to blame himself when he deplores the past, for at times of clear vision, the soul escapes from the bondage of incident. It gets away from the region of particulars, and knows itself by nature even better than by deed. There is a common thought that beggars sympathy in almost every shallow mind. It seldom finds deliberate expression. Perhaps it may be stated thus:—
The greatness of the good derived from it, makes the greatness of the fault.
A man tells a great lie, and saves his character by it. No wonder it weighs on his conscience ever after. And yet perhaps he has told countless lies, both before and since, told them out of mere carelessness, or from petty spite or for small advantages, and utterly forgotten them. Now which of these, looked at by the judge, is the great offender? Is the one lie he repents of the most wicked, or are those that with small temptation he flung about daily, and so made that one notable lie easy?
Was it strange that Valentine, looking back, should not with any special keenness of pain have rued his mistake in taking Melcombe?
No. That was a part of himself. It arose naturally out of his character, which, but for that one action, he felt he never might have fully known.
So weak, so longing for pleasure and ease, so faintly conscious of any noble desire for good, so wrapped up in a sense as of the remoteness of God, how could it be otherwise?
If a man is a Christian, he derives often in such thoughts a healing consciousness of the Fatherhood and Humanity of God. He perceives that he was most to be pitied and least to be judged, not while he stood, but when he fell. There is no intention of including here hardened crimes of dishonesty, and cruelty, and violence, only those pathetic descents which the ingrain faults and original frailty of our nature make so easy, and which life and the world are so arranged as to punish even after a loving God forgives.
"Those faults," he may say, "they seem to live, though I shall die. They are mine, though I lose all else beside. Where can I lay them down, where lose them? Is there any healing to be found other than in His sympathy, His forgiveness who made our nature one with His to raise it to Himself?"
The world is not little. Life is not mean. It spreads itself in aspiration, it has possession through its hope. It inhabits all remoteness that the eye can reach; it inherits all sweetness that the ear can prove; always bereaved of the whole, it yet looks for a whole; always clasping its little part, it believes in the remainder. Sometimes, too often, like a bird it gets tangled in a net which notwithstanding it knew of. It must fly with broken wings ever alter. Or, worse, it is tempted to descend, as the geni into the vase, for a little while, when sealed down at once unaware, it must lie in the dark so long, that it perhaps denies the light in heaven for lack of seeing it.