We may go down a ladder of
ten thousand feet in height if we do so step by step, while a sudden fall
of six or seven feet may kill us. The importance, therefore, does not
lie in the change, but in the abruptness of its introduction. Nothing is
absolutely important or absolutely unimportant; absolutely good, or
absolutely bad.
This is not what we like to contemplate. The instinct of those whose
religion and culture are on the surface only is to conceive that they
have found, or can find, an absolute and eternal standard, about which
they can be as earnest as they choose. They would have even the pains of
hell eternal if they could. If there had been any means discoverable by
which they could torment themselves beyond endurance, we may be sure they
would long since have found it out; but fortunately there is a stronger
power which bars them inexorably from their desire, and which has ensured
that intolerable pain shall last only for a very little while. For
either the circumstances or the sufferer will change after no long time.
If the circumstances are intolerable, the sufferer dies: if they are not
intolerable, he becomes accustomed to them, and will cease to feel them
grievously. No matter what the burden, there always has been, and always
must be, a way for us also to escape.
A PSALM OF MONTREAL.
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