S/. Reward sympathizes ivtt/j the "Pope in his many cares
i . Well, then, where shall I begin ? I prefer to begin with your occupations, because it is in these that I most chiefly share your sorrow. Share, 1 say, for I take it for granted that you have sorrow; otherwise I ought rather to have said ' I sorrow ', since where there is no sorrow one cannot share it. Accordingly, if you grieve, I grieve with you;
14 On Consideration
if you do not, still I grieve, and deeply, because I know that the member which is past feeling is all the farther from health, and that the sick man who is unconscious of his sickness is in the more dangerous condition. But God forbid that I should have any such suspicion about you. I know how keenly, not long ago, you used to enjoy the luxury of a quiet life. You cannot so soon have changed your habits ; you cannot all at once extinguish your regret for the pleasures so recently taken from you. The fresh wound must be painful. The wound has not already hardened, or in so short a time become past feeling. However this may be, unless you dissemble, your daily losses are sufficient reason for continual grief. If I am not mistaken, you are reluctantly torn from the embraces of your Rachel,1 and as often as that befalls you your sorrow must be renewed. But when does that not happen ? How often do you wish, and in vain ? How often do you move, but not move forward ? How often do you attempt, and without result ? strive, and do not obtain ? How often are you in labour, and do not bring forth ? venture out to sea, but drift away ? where you begin, there make an end ? Just as you are beginning to grow, do they not cut you down ? 2 ' The children have come to the birth/ saith the prophet, ' and there is not strength to bring forth.' 3 Do you know this ? No one better. You are a man of shameless face, and like the heifer, Ephraim, have learnt to love treading out the corn,4 if, with your consent, things go thus with you.
1 In the mystical writers Rachel and Leah respectively denote the con templative and the active life.
* Or 'beginning to weave, cut your thread'.
3 2 Kings xix. 3.
4 Hos. x. II. 'The treading out the corn was an easy and luxurious service, since God had forbidden to muzzle the ox, while doing it. It pictures then the sweet gentle ways by which God wins us to His service.
Boot /, Chapter i 17
God forbid ! This is the portion of him who is given over to a reprobate sense. I certainly long for you to have peace away from these, not in their company. There is nothing I dread more for you than that peace. Do you wonder if such peace could ever be yours ? Yes, I tell you, if, as mostly happens, habit passes into heedlessness.
2. Do not trust your present feelings too much. There is nothing so rooted in the heart but it may by neglect in process of time lose its force and vigour. If you neglect the old wound it grows callous, and in proportion as it loses feeling it becomes incurable. In fact, severe unceasing pain cannot last long ; if it is not got rid of some other way, it must of neces sity be conquered by itself. Beyond a doubt it will either be relieved by some remedy, or it will end in stupefaction. Custom turns everything upside down. Give it time, and what can resist its hardening effect ? What does not yield to use ? How many find that the bitterness they had formerly dreaded has unfortunately through use alone turned to sweet ness ? Hear how the just man laments over this : ' What things my soul refused to touch are now through want become my food.' * At first something will seem to you
Israel would serve thus far ; for she liked the service ; she was accustomed to it, and loved it.' Pusey, Minor Prophet*.
1 Job. vi. 7. 'The proper idea not having been seized, the passage has been given very differently by prior expositors; almost all of whom are, at the same time, at variance with each other. In our established text it
1 6 On Consideration
unbearable ; as time goes on, and you get used to it, you will judge it of no such great importance ; a little later you will think it even unimportant ; a little later you will not think it even that ; a little later it will delight you. Thus little by little our hearts are hardened, and then we loathe goodness. Just so, severe unceasing pain must, as I have said, have a speedy ending ; it will either be cured, or insensibility will ensue.
3. This is precisely why I have always feared, and still fear, that if you delay to apply the remedy, you will not endure the pain, and that you may thus incur the risk of being irrevocably and hopelessly overwhelmed. I am afraid, I say, lest, sur rounded by occupations so numerous that you distrust your power of getting through them, you may harden your forehead, and thus gradually in a measure strip yourself of the feeling of a just and profitable sorrow. It would be far more prudent for you to even leave them for a time, than suffer yourself to be carried away by them, and certainly by degrees led whither you would not. Do you ask whither ? I reply, to a hard heart. Do not further ask what that means ; if you have not greatly feared it, it is yours already. That heart alone is hard which does not shudder at itself for not feeling its hardness. Why ask me ? Ask Pharaoh. No one ever got his hard heart cured unless God haply took pity on him, and, accord ing to the prophet, removed his heart of stone and gave him
occurs thus: "Can that which is unsavoury be eaten without salt? or is there any taste in the white of an egg ? The things that my soul refused to touch are as my sorrowful meat " : a mixt rendering from the different Latin copies ; and at the same time offering no meaning whatever.' Good's Translation of the Book of Job, Notes, p. 70. Good renders — ' A thing loathful to the taste of my soul, this alas ! is my sorrowful meat.' The R. V., Margin, has, ' What things my soul refused to touch these are as my loathsome meat,'
Book /, Chapter it 17
a heart of llesh.1 What then is a hard heart ? It is a heart which is not torn by remorse, nor softened by affection, nor moved by entreaties ; which does not yield to threats, but is hardened by scourges. It is ungrateful for kindnesses, faith less in counsel, cruel in judgement, shameless in disgrace, without sense of fear in the midst of danger, inhuman in things human, heedless in things divine ; it forgets the past, neglects the present, does not look on to the future. It is a heart emptied of all the past except the wrongs it has suffered, which lets slip all the present, which has no forecast of the future, no preparation to meet it, unless perchance it be with a view to gratifying its malice. And, that I may briefly sum up the mischief of this dreadful plague, it is a heart which neither fears God nor respects man. See whither these accursed occupations can drag you at their heels, if, as you have begun, you continue to give yourself wholly to them, and leave nothing of yourself for yourself. You are wasting time ; and, if I may present myself to you in the character of another Jethro, you,2 like Moses, are spending yourself in this foolish labour over these things which are nothing else but torture of spirit, the enfeebling of the mind, the voiding of grace. For the fruit of these things, what is it but spiders' webs ?