Читать книгу The Kernel and the Husk: Letters on Spiritual Christianity онлайн

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They often do die in mending them; but while in the process of dying, or preparing for death—with all deference to the clergyman who lately maintained that “if there is no hereafter, and if the only reward of self-sacrifice and the only punishment of crime are those which happen in the present life, it would have been far better to have been Fouché than Paul”—they have at least a peace of mind which they could not have attained by conformity with the world. The grosser conscience that “worked” well enough in their companions would not have “worked” in them. Even, therefore, though they appear to be exceptions to the rule that tests truth by its “working,” they are not really exceptional. They have been in discord with the world but in concord with themselves. Often they prove to others the truth of their conceptions by raising up the world to their level, and by pointing to the moral order which has issued from the fulfilment of their ideas. But in any case, though they may fail for a time or (apparently) for all time, they have had in themselves a sufficient test of the truth of their ideas: they have followed their conscience and they have found that this course “worked”—that is to say, suited and developed their nature—as no other course could have worked for them. But in order thus to hear and obey the voice of conscience and to discern its highest truths, how much of faith, how much of imagination has been needed!