st himself in a sea of thought which seemed almost as new to him
and as fathomless as that was.

Not often does a man pass his whole life before him and deliberately
criticize himself, his actions and his way.

If he does, it is seldom when he would appear to an outsider to have
most reasonable occasion; rather during some pause when body and mind
both are still.

The soul does not always recognise itself as a guest seated within this
frame; sometimes it appears to escape and look at the human life it has
led, as if from without. It seems to become absorbed into the august
stream of being; to see that fragment _itself_, without self-love, and
as the great all of mankind would regard it if laid open to them.

It perceives the inevitable verdict. Thus and thus have I done. They
will judge me rightly, that thus and thus I am.

If a man is reasonable and sees things as they were, he does not often
fix on some particular act for which to blame himself when he deplores
the past, for at times of clear vision, the soul escapes from the
bondage of incident. It gets away from the region of particulars, and
knows itself by nature even better than by deed. There is a common
thought that beggars sympathy in almost every shallow mind. It seldom
finds deliberate expression. Perhaps it may be stated thus:--

The greatness of the good derived from it, makes the greatness of the
fault.

A man tells a great lie, and saves his character by it. No wonder it
weighs on his conscience ever after. And yet perhaps he has told
countless lies, both before and since, told them out of mere
carelessness, or from petty spite or for small advantages, and utterly
forgotten them. Now which of these, looked at by the judge, is the great
offender? Is the one lie he repents of the most wicked, or are those
that with small temptation he flung about daily, and so made that one
notable lie easy?

Was it strange that Valentine, looking back, should not with any special
keenness of pain have rued his mistake in taking Melcombe?

No. That was a part of himself. It arose naturally out of his character,
which, but for that one action, he felt he never might have fully known.

So weak, so longing for pleasure and ease, so faintly conscious of any
noble desire for good, so wrapped up in a sense as of the remoteness of
God, how could it be otherwise?

If a man is a Christian, he derives often in such thoughts a healing
consciousness of the Fatherhood and