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 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.
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