ent in the spirit of the proverb that "sufficient for
the day is the evil thereof."

But there is a nobler and a purer quality of patience which is perhaps
one of the highest and most hopeful attributes of humanity, because it
is nurtured in so strong a soil, and watered with the dew of tears;
this is a certain tranquil, courageous, and unembittered sweetness in
the presence of an irreparable calamity, which is in its very essence
divine, and preaches more forcibly the far-reaching permanence of the
spiritual clement in mankind than a thousand rhapsodies and panegyrics
extolling human ingenuity and human greatness. Mankind has a deeply
rooted and childlike instinct that apology and repentance ought to be
met with the suspension of pains and penalties, and the hardest lesson
in the world to learn is that guilt may be forgiven, but that the
consequences of guilt may yet have to be endured. When we have really
learnt that, we are indeed perfected. St. Peter in one of his epistles
says that it is less creditable to be patient when one is buffeted for
one's faults than when one suffers for one's virtues. I fear that I
cannot agree with this. One may be convinced of the justice of a
sentence, but the more one is convinced of it, the more does one regret
the course of conduct that made the sentence necessary. The sinner who
suffers for his sin bears not only the pain of the punishment but also
the sense of shame and self-condemnation. The good man who suffers for
his goodness does indeed have to bear the burden of an awful mystery, a
doubt whether God is indeed on the side of the righteous; but he is not
crushed beneath the additional burden of self-contempt, he has not the
humiliating sense of folly and weakness which the transgressor has to
bear; and thus it so often happens that the well-meaning transgressor
is slow to learn the lesson of patience, because he takes refuge in a
vague sort of metaphysics, and attributes to heredity and environment
what is really the outcome of his own wilfulness and perversity.

But the true patience, whatever the cause of its sufferings, brings
with it a blessed sense of the faithful sternness, the fruitful
lovingness of God, who will not let even the feeblest of sinners be
satisfied with less than he can attain, in whose hands the punishment,
like fire, runs swiftly and agonisingly to and fro, consuming the baser
elements of passion and desire.

XI

I am quite sure that I like s