Humanity of God. He perceives that
he was most to be pitied and least to be judged, not while he stood, but
when he fell. There is no intention of including here hardened crimes of
dishonesty, and cruelty, and violence, only those pathetic descents
which the ingrain faults and original frailty of our nature make so
easy, and which life and the world are so arranged as to punish even
after a loving God forgives.

"Those faults," he may say, "they seem to live, though I shall die. They
are mine, though I lose all else beside. Where can I lay them down,
where lose them? Is there any healing to be found other than in His
sympathy, His forgiveness who made our nature one with His to raise it
to Himself?"

The world is not little. Life is not mean. It spreads itself in
aspiration, it has possession through its hope. It inhabits all
remoteness that the eye can reach; it inherits all sweetness that the
ear can prove; always bereaved of the whole, it yet looks for a whole;
always clasping its little part, it believes in the remainder.
Sometimes, too often, like a bird it gets tangled in a net which
notwithstanding it knew of. It must fly with broken wings ever alter.
Or, worse, it is tempted to descend, as the geni into the vase, for a
little while, when sealed down at once unaware, it must lie in the dark
so long, that it perhaps denies the light in heaven for lack of seeing
it.

If those who have the most satisfying lot that life can give are to
breathe freely, they must get through, and on, and out of it.

Not because it is too small for us, but too great, it bears so many
down. On the whole that vast mass of us which inherits its narrowest
portion, tethered, and that on the world's barest slope, does best.

The rich and the free have a choice, they often choose amiss. Yet no
choice can (excepting for this world) be irretrievable; and that same
being for whom the great life of the world proved too much, learns often
in the loss of everything, what his utmost gain was not ordained to
teach.

He wanted all, and at last he can take that all, without which nothing
can make him content. He perceives, and his heart makes answer to, the
yearning Fatherhood above; he recognises the wonderful upward drawing
with love and fear.

"This is God!
He moves me so, to take of Him what lacks;
My want is God's desire to give; He yearns
To add Himself to life, and so for aye
Make it enough."

CHAPTER XXX