There ought surely at least to be of
success some probability as well founded as rare, to justify the
sacrifices involved. Is it well that a life of supreme suffering should
be gone through for nothing but an increase of guilt? It will be said
that patience reaps its reward; but I fear too many patiences fail, and
the number of resultant saints is small. The thing once done, the step
no longer retrievable, fresh duty is born, and divine good will result
from what suffering may arise in the fulfillment of the same. The
conceit or ambition itself which led to the fault, may have to be cured
by its consequences. But it may well be that a woman does more to redeem
a man by declining than by encouraging his attentions. I dare not say
how much a woman is not to do for the redemption of a man; but I think
one who obeys God will scarcely imagine herself free to lay her person
in the arms, and her happiness in the bosom of a man whose being is a
denial of him. Good Christians not Christians enough to understand this,
may have to be taught by the change of what they took for love into what
they know to be disgust. It is very hard for the woman to know whether
her influence has any real _power_ over the man.
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