“What are faults, what are the outward details of a life; if the inner secret of it, the remorse, temptations, true, often-baffled, never-ended struggle of it, be forgotten. ‘It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps.’ Of all acts, is not, for a man, repentance the most divine? The deadliest sin, I say, were that same supercilious consciousness of no sin; that is death: the heart so conscious is divorced from sincerity, humility, and fact; is dead: it is ‘pure’ as dead dry sand is pure. David’s life and history, as written for us in those Psalms of his, I consider to be the truest emblem ever given of a man’s moral progress and warfare here below. All earnest souls will ever discern in it the faithful struggle of an earnest human soul towards what is good and best. Struggle often baffled, sore baffled, down as into entire wreck; yet a struggle never ended; ever, with tears, repentance, true unconquerable purpose, begun anew. Poor human nature! is not a man’s walking, in truth, always that: a ‘succession of falls!’ Man can do no other. In this wild element of a Life, he has to struggle onwards; now fallen, deep abased; and ever, with tears, repentance, with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again still onwards. That his struggle be a faithful unconquerable one: this is the question of questions.”
THE SORROWS OF THE AFFECTIONS.
The loss by death of those we love has the first place in these sorrows. Yet the feeling in this case, even when carried to the highest, is not exactly despair, having too much warmth in it for that. Not much can be said in the way of comfort on this head. Queen Elizabeth, in her hard, wise way, writing to a mother who had lost her son, tells her that she will be comforted in time; and why should she not do for herself what the mere lapse of time will do for her? Brave words! and the stern woman, more earnest than the sage in “Rasselas,” would have tried their virtue on herself. But I fear they fell somewhat coldly on the mother’s ear. Happily, in these bereavements, kind Nature with her opiates, day by day administered, does more than all the skill of the physician moralists. Sir Thomas Browne says,
“Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with memory a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce callosities, miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which, notwithstanding, is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision in Nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days, and our delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions.”
The good knight thus makes much comfort out of our physical weakness. But something may be done in a very different direction, namely, by spiritual strength. By elevating and purifying the sorrow, we may take it more out of matter, as it were, and so feel less the loss of what is material about it.
The other sorrows of the affections which may produce despair, are those in which the affections are wounded, as jealousy, love unrequited, friendship betrayed and the like. As, in despair from remorse, the whole life seems to be involved in one action: so in the despair we are now considering, the whole life appears to be shut up in the one unpropitious affection. Yet human nature, if fairly treated, is too large a thing to be suppressed into despair by one affection, however potent. We might imagine that if there were anything that would rob life of its strength and favour, it is domestic unhappiness. And yet how numerous is the bond of those whom we know to have been eminently unhappy in some domestic relation, but whose lives have been full of vigorous and kindly action. Indeed the culture of the world has been largely carried on by such men. As long as there is life in the plant, though it be sadly pent in, it will grow towards any opening of light that is left for it.
WORLDLY TROUBLE.
This appears too mean a subject for despair, or, at least, unworthy of having any remedy, or soothing thought out of it. Whether a man lives in a large room or a small one, rides or is obliged to walk, gets a plenteous dinner every day, or a sparing one, do not seem matters for despair. But the truth is, that worldly trouble, such for instance, as loss of fortune, is seldom the simple thing that poets would persuade us.
“The little or the much she gave is quietly resigned;
Content with poverty, my soul I arm,
And virtue, though in rags will keep me warm.”
So sings Dryden, paraphrasing Horace, but each of them with their knowledge of the world, cross-questioned in prose, could have told us how the stings of fortune really are felt. The truth is, that fortune is not exactly a distinct isolated thing which can be taken away—“and there an end.” But much has to be severed, with undoubted pain in the operation. A man mostly feels that his reputation for sagacity, often his honour, the comfort, too, or supposed comfort, of others are embarked in his fortunes. Mere stoicism, and resolves about fitting fortune to oneself, not oneself to fortune, though good things enough in their way, will not always meet the whole of the case. And a man who could bear personal distress of any kind with Spartan indifference, may suffer himself to be overwhelmed by despair growing out of worldly trouble. A frequent origin of such despair, as indeed of all despair (not by any means excluding despair from remorse), is pride. Let a man say to himself, “I am not the perfect character I meant to be; this is not the conduct I had imagined for myself; these are not the fortunate circumstances I had always intended to be surrounded by.” Let him at once admit that he is on a lower level than his ideal one; and then see what is to be done there. This seems the best way of treating all that part of worldly trouble which consists of self-reproval. We scarcely know of any outward life continuously prosperous (and a very dull one it would be): why should we expect the inner life to be one course of unbroken self-improvement, either in prudence, or in virtue?