ficulty is that we have little guidance; Christ's sayings on the
point being hard to reconcile with each other, and (the most of them)
hard to accept. But the truth of His teaching would seem to be this: in
our own person and fortune, we should be ready to accept and to pardon
all; it is _our_ cheek we are to turn, _our_ coat that we are to give
away to the man who has taken _our_ cloak. But when another's face is
buffeted, perhaps a little of the lion will become us best. That we are
to suffer others to be injured, and stand by, is not conceivable, and
surely not desirable. Revenge, says Bacon, is a kind of wild justice;
its judgments at least are delivered by an insane judge; and in our own
quarrel we can see nothing truly and do nothing wisely. But in the
quarrel of our neighbour, let us be more bold. One person's happiness is
as sacred as another's; when we cannot defend both, let us defend one
with a stout heart. It is only in so far as we are doing this, that we
have any right to interfere: the defence of B is our only ground of
action against A. A has as good a right to go to the devil as we to go
to glory; and neither knows what he does.

The truth is that all these interventions and denunciations and militant
mongerings of moral half-truths, though they be sometimes needful,
though they are often enjoyable, do yet belong to an inferior grade of
duties. Ill-temper and envy and revenge find here an arsenal of pious
disguises; this is the playground of inverted lusts. With a little more
patience and a little less temper, a gentler and wiser method might be
found in almost every case; and the knot that we cut by some fine heady
quarrel-scene in private life, or, in public affairs, by some
denunciatory act against what we are pleased to call our neighbour's
vices, might yet have been unwoven by the hand of sympathy.

IV

To look back upon the past year, and see how little we have striven, and
to what small purpose; and how often we have been cowardly and hung
back, or temerarious and rushed unwisely in; and how every day and all
day long we have transgressed the law of kindness;--it may seem a
paradox, but in the bitterness of these discoveries a certain
consolation resides. Life is not designed to minister to a man's vanity.
He goes upon his long business most of the time with a hanging head, and
all the time like a blind child. Full of rewards and pleasures as it
is--so that to see the day break or the moon