The giving up of my appointment was the finish of my mad career.
I awoke now to a consciousness of all my foolishness and wickedness; the revelation of the misery, present and future alike, which my conduct had prepared for me, coming to mind, with a sudden, sharp stroke of painful distinctness that prostrated me into an abyss of self-torture and repentance.
Ah! There is no use in repining, unless one mends matters by deeds, not words. Repentance is worth little if it be not followed up by reformation. But, how many of us rush madly, headlong to destruction, without a thought of what they are doing; never mindful of their course, till that dreadful refrain, “Too late!” rings in their ears.
As the poetical author of the ode to the “Plump Head Waiter at The Cock,” has philosophically sung,—and, as many a weather-beaten sufferer has cruelly proven,—
“So fares it since the years began,
Till they be gather’d up;
The truth, that flies the flowing can,
Will haunt the empty cup:
And others’ follies teach us not,
Nor much their wisdom teaches;
And most, of sterling worth, is what
Our own experience preaches!”
I remembered now having come across a passage in Massillon’s Petit Carême, some two or three years before, during a varied course of French reading at the library of the British Museum,—an old haunt of mine long previously to my ever knowing Min; and this passage occurred to me in my present condition, expressing a want I had long felt, and which I was now all the more bitterly conscious of. It is in one of the sermons which the seventeenth century divine probably preached in the presence of the Grand Monarque. It is entitled “Sur la Destinée de l’Homme;” and might, for its practical point and thorough insightedness into human nature, be expounded to-morrow by any of our large-hearted, Broad Church ministers. In its truth, I’m sure, it is catholic enough to suit any creed:—
“Si tout doit finir avec nous, si l’homme ne doit rien attendre après cette vie, et que ce soit ici notre patrie, notre origine, et la seul félicité que nous pouvons nous promettre, pourquoi n’y sommes-nous pas heureux? Si nous ne naissons que pour les plaisirs des sens, pourquoi ne peuvent-ils nous satisfaire, et laissent-ils toujours un fond d’ennui et de tristesse dans notre coeur? Si l’homme n’a rien au-dessus de la bête, que ne coule-t-il ses jours comme elle, sans souci, sans inquiétude, sans dégout, sans tristesse, dans la félicité des sens et de la chair?”
Because he can not!
The pleasures of life, however varied, and grateful though they may be at the time, soon wither on the palate; and then, when we appreciate at last the knowledge of their dust and ashes, their Dead Sea-apple constituency, we must turn to something better, something higher—the joys of which are more lasting and whose flavour proceeds from some less evanescent substance.
Such were my reflections now; and, in my abasement and craving for “the one good thing,” I thought of the kind vicar.