vering; even though I turn coward and shrink, I shall have to
follow all the same."[187] The fortitude of that is for the strong, for
the few; even for them the spiritual atmosphere with which it surrounds
them is bleak and gray. But, "Let thy loving spirit lead me forth into
the land of righteousness";[188]--"The Lord shall be unto thee an
everlasting light, and thy God thy glory";[189]--"Unto you that fear my
name shall the sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings,"
[190] says the Old Testament; "Born, not of blood, nor of the will of
the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God";[191]--"Except a man be
born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God";[192]--"Whatsoever is
born of God, overcometh the world,"[193] says the New. The ray of
sunshine is there, the glow of a divine warmth;--the austerity of the
sage melts away under it, the paralysis of the weak is healed; he who is
vivified by it renews his strength; "all things are possible to him
";[194] "he is a new creature."[195]

Epictetus says: "Every matter has two handles, one of which will bear
taking hold of, the other not. If thy brother sin against thee, lay not
hold of the matter by this, that he sins against thee; for by this
handle the matter will not bear taking hold of. But rather lay hold of
it by this, that he is thy brother, thy born mate; and thou wilt take
hold of it by what will bear handling."[196] Jesus, being asked whether
a man is bound to forgive his brother as often as seven times, answers:
"I say not unto thee, until seven times, but until seventy times seven."
[197] Epictetus here suggests to the reason grounds for forgiveness of
injuries which Jesus does not; but it is vain to say that Epictetus is
on that account a better moralist than Jesus, if the warmth, the
emotion, of Jesus's answer fires his hearer to the practice of
forgiveness of injuries, while the thought in Epictetus's leaves him
cold. So with Christian morality in general: its distinction is not that
it propounds the maxim, "Thou shalt love God and thy neighbor,"[198]
with more development, closer reasoning, truer sincerity, than other
moral systems; it is that it propounds this maxim with an inspiration
which wonderfully catches the hearer and makes him act upon it. It is
because Mr. Mill has attained to the perception of truths of this
nature, that he is,--instead of being, like the school from which he
proceeds, doomed to sterility,--a writer of distinguished mark