I. God Neither Sends Nor Permits Any Real Evil, &c.
"Every thing in this world," said the good abbot, "is either good, or bad, or indifferent. There is nothing really good but virtue, which conducts us to God. There is nothing really bad but sin, which separates us from God. In different things are such as hold a middle place between good and evil, and may pass into one or the other, according to the disposition of him that uses them. Such are riches, honor, health, beauty, life, death, sickness, poverty, injuries, insults, &c."
"This distinction laid, let us see whether God has ever sent any real evil to his saints, or permitted any one to do them a real injury. That is something that we shall never be able to make out. For no one is able to make a man fall into sin, who is unwilling and resists, but only those who consent to it, and give admittance to it, by the effeminacy of their hearts, and the depravity of their will. The demon employed every possible artifice against holy Job to make him murmur against God; but in spite of all the afflictions which he heaped upon him, body and soul, he could not provoke him so far as to sin even with his lips, and thus fall into the only real evil he had to fear. We must not think, therefore, that the ill turns which our enemies or other persons sometimes do us are really evils, but they belong rather to the class of indifferent things. To be sure, they may think to have done us harm, and rejoice at it; but the harm does not depend upon what they may think, so long as we do not count it for such. For example: a good man is put to death, without any just cause or provocation. Now, we must not suppose that any thing really evil in itself has happened to him, but simply something which is either good or evil, according to circumstances. For, in truth, death, which is commonly counted to be an evil, comes with a blessing to the just man, for it delivers him from all the afflictions of this life. Thus death is no harm to him; and although the malice of his enemies anticipates the order of nature by leading him to a sudden death, the good man thereby only pays a little sooner a debt which he had to pay in any case, and he goes to receive an eternal crown, as the reward of his sufferings and death."
Upon this, one of the party named Germanns, raised a difficulty. "In that case," said he, "we should have no reason to blame the murderer, since he does no harm to the one he kills, but only speeds him the sooner on to his salvation."
"We are speaking of things as they are in themselves," said Abbot Theodore, "and not of the intention of those who do them. The patience and virtue of the just man in his sufferings and death, is a crown to himself, but no justification of his persecutor. The latter will be punished for his cruelty, and for the evil which he intended to do, while the good man has in reality suffered no harm, but by his patience has changed into a blessing the evil which was devised against him. For example: the wonderful patience of Job was of no service to Satan, but it was of inestimable value to Job himself, who endured his trials with so much courage and resignation. So Judas is none the less subjected to eternal torments, because his treason contributed to the salvation of men; for in the eye of divine justice, an action is not so much to be judged by its results, as by the intention of the person who did it."
These high, and holy maxims of Christian philosophy being thus firmly established, our good hermit, growing warm with his subject, begins to rise to still loftier and more beautiful conceptions, like a bee coming out from its search in the flower, and shaking the golden pollen from its wings.
II. All Things Contribute To The Welfare Of The Just.
"We say of some men that they are born to good luck, and that every thing they put their hands to turns out well. We deceive ourselves when we say this; it is only true of the Saints, and in a spiritual sense. 'We know,' says St. Paul, 'that all things work together for good to them that love God.' [Footnote 68]
[Footnote 68: Rom. viii., 28.]