o direct, to modify, to heal, to moderate--but never to
alter or annihilate. Love of our offspring, is not more according to our
nature, than grief for the loss of them. Grief, therefore, is
innocent--even as praiseworthy, as love. What trace of human
wisdom--much less of divine--would there be in the arrangement, that
should first bind us by chains of affection as strong as adamant to a
child, or a parent, or a friend, and then treat the sorrow as criminal
that wept, with whatever violence, as it saw the links broken and
scattered, never again to be joined together?'

'That certainly is a proof that some just ideas are to be found in your
opinions,' replied my friend. 'By nothing was I ever more irreconcilably
offended in the stoical philosophy, than by its harsh violence towards
nature under suffering. To be treated by your philosophy with rudeness
and contempt, because you yield to emotions which are as natural, and,
therefore, in my judgment, as innocent as any, is, as if one were struck
with violence by a friend or a parent, to whom you fled for protection
or comfort. The doctrines of all the others failed in the same way. Even
the Epicureans hold it a weakness, and even a wrong, to grieve, seeing
the injury that is thereby done to happiness. Grief must be suppressed,
and banished, because it is accompanied by pain. That too, seemed to me
a false sentiment; because, although grief is indeed in some sort
painful, yet it is not wholly so, but is attended by a kind of pleasure.
How plain it is, that I should suffer greatly more, were I forcibly
restrained by a foreign power, or my own, from shedding these tears, and
uttering these sighs for Gallus, than I do now while I am free to
indulge my natural feelings. In truth, it is the only pleasure that
grief brings with it--the freedom of indulging it.'

'He,' I said, as Marcus paused, giving way afresh to his sorrow, 'who
embraces the Christian doctrine, is never blamed, condemned, or
ridiculed by it for the indulgence of the emotions, to which, the loss
of those whom we love, gives birth. But then, at the same time, he will
probably grieve and suffer much less under such circumstances than
you--not, however, because he is forcibly restrained, but because of the
influence upon his mind and his heart, of truths and opinions, which, as
a Christian, he entertains, and which, without any will or act of his
own, work within him and strengthen and console him. The Christian
be