That is the
price we pay for having immortal souls. It is a heavy price truly:
but it is well worth the paying, if it be only paid aright. If that
tormenting feeling of being continually wrong in this life, ends by
making us continually right for ever in the world to come; if Christ
be formed in us at last; if out of our sinful and mortal manhood a
sinless and immortal manhood is born;--then shall we, like the
mother over her new-born babe, forget our anguish, for joy that a
man is born into the world.
But, again, besides pardon, we want peace. Who does not know that
state of mind in which, perhaps, without any great reason in
reality, one has no peace? When everything seems to go wrong with a
man. When he suspects everybody to be against him. When little
troubles, which he could bear easily enough at other times, seem
quite intolerable to him. When he is troubled with vain regrets
about the past--'Ah, if I had done this and that!' and vain fears
for the future, conjuring up in his mind all sorts of bad luck which
may, but most probably never will, happen; and yet from off which he
cannot turn his mind. Who does not know this frame of mind?
True, a great deal of this may depend on ill-health; and will pass
away as the man's bodily condition gets better.
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