Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Chapter XVI
PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP 
Chapter XVI.
There is only one right path. It is narrow and contracted. It has no
turnings either on the one side or the other. No matter how we leave
it, there is the same danger of straying hopelessly away. This being
so, the habit which many have got into must be as far as possible
corrected; those, I mean, who while they fight strenuously against the
baser pleasures, yet still go on hunting for pleasure in the shape of
worldly honour and positions which will gratify their love of power.
They act like some domestic who longed for liberty, but instead of
exerting himself to get away from slavery proceeded only to change his
masters, and thought liberty consisted in that change. But all alike
are slaves, even though they should not all go on being ruled by the
same masters, as long as a dominion of any sort, with power to enforce
it, is set over them. There are others again who after a long battle
against all the pleasures1451
| 1451 τὰς ἡδονὰς
i.e.the whole
class. | , yield themselves
easily on another field, where feelings of an opposite kind come in;
and in the intense exactitude of their lives fall a ready prey to
melancholy and irritation, and to brooding over injuries, and to
everything that is the direct opposite of pleasurable feelings; from
which they are very reluctant to extricate themselves. This is always
happening, whenever any emotion, instead of virtuous reason, controls
the course of a life. For the commandment of the Lord is exceedingly
far-shining, so as to “enlighten the eyes” even of
“the simple1452
,” declaring
that good cleaveth only unto God. But God is not pain any more than He
is pleasure; He is not cowardice any more than boldness; He is not
fear, nor anger, nor any other emotion which sways the untutored soul,
but, as the Apostle says, He is Very Wisdom and Sanctification, Truth
and Joy and Peace, and everything like that. If He is such, how can any
one be said to cleave to Him, who is mastered by the very opposite? Is
it not want of reason in any one to suppose that when he has striven
successfully to escape the dominion of one particular passion, he will
find virtue in its opposite? For instance, to suppose that when he has
escaped pleasure, he will find virtue in letting pain have possession
of him; or when he has by an effort remained proof against anger, in
crouching with fear. It matters not whether we miss virtue, or rather
God Himself Who is the Sum of virtue, in this way, or in that. Take the
case of great bodily prostration; one would say that the sadness of
this failure was just the same, whether the cause has been excessive
under-feeding, or immoderate eating; both failures to stop in time end
in the same result. He therefore who watches over the life and the
sanity of the soul will confine himself to the moderation of the truth;
he will continue without touching either of those opposite states which
run along-side virtue. This teaching is not mine; it comes from the
Divine lips. It is clearly contained in that passage where our Lord
says to His disciples, that they are as sheep wandering amongst
wolves1453
, yet are not to be as doves only, but
are to have something of the serpent too in their disposition; and that
means that they should neither carry to excess the practice of that
which seems praiseworthy in simplicity1454
| 1454 According to the emendation of Livineius: μήτε τὸ
κατὰ τὴν
ἁπλότητα
δοκοῦν
ἐπαινετὸν | ,
as such a habit would come very near to downright madness, nor on the
other hand should deem the cleverness which most admire to be a virtue,
while unsoftened by any mixture with its opposite; they were in fact to
form another disposition, by a compound of these two seeming opposites,
cutting off its silliness from the one, its evil cunning from the
other; so that one single beautiful character should be created from
the two, a union of simplicity of purpose with shrewdness. “Be
ye,” He says, “wise as serpents, and harmless as
doves.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|
