Putting them aside, as any one may who has the
courage to face them--for they are terrible cowards--and taking the
best of us, and the best intentioned among us, we find that all are apt
to make some one trait in the characters, some one trick in the
manners, some one incident in the lives of people we meet the text of
an objection to the whole person. And a state of objection is a
miserable state, and a dangerous one, because it stops our growth by
robbing us of half our power to love, in which lies all our strength,
and which, with the delight of being loved, is the one thing worth
living for. When we know in ourselves that love is heaven, and hate is
hell, and all the intervals of like and dislike are antechambers to
either, we possess the key to joy and sorrow, by which alone we can
attain to the mystery that may not be mentioned here, but beyond which
ecstasy awaits us.
This is why such details are necessary.
Doctors-spiritual must face the horrors of the dissecting-room, and
learn before they can cure or teach; and even we, poor feeble
creatures, who have no strength, however great our desire, to do
either, can help at least a little by not hindering, if we attend to
our own mental health, which we shall do all the better for knowing
something of our moral anatomy, and the diseases to which it is liable.
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