Did they but know what is
passing in my heart! I am fearful at times lest my conduct may be
hypocritical, but I have satisfied my conscience in this respect. God
forbid that I should be a cause of scandal to these simple souls!
When I see in what an inextricable net God has involved me while I
was asleep, I am unable to resist fatalistic thoughts, and I may often
have sinned in that respect; yet I never have doubted my Father which
is in Heaven or His goodness. Upon the contrary, I have always given
Him thanks, and have never felt myself nearer to Him than at moments
like those. The heart learns only by suffering, and I believe with
Kant that God is only to be known through the heart. Then too I was
a Christian, and resolved ever to remain one. But can orthodoxy be
critical? Had I but been born a German Protestant, for then I should
have been in my proper place! Herder ended his days a bishop, and he
was only just a Christian; but in the Catholic religion you must be
orthodox. Catholicism is a bar of iron, and will not admit anything
like reasoning.
Forgive me, my dear friend, the wish which I have just expressed and
which does not even come from that part in me which still believes
without knowing. You must, in order to be orthodox, believe that I am
reduced to my present condition by my own fault; and that is very hard.
Nevertheless, I am quite disposed to think that it is to a great extent
my own fault. He who knows his own heart will always answer, "Yes," when
he is told, "It is your own fault.
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