You feel, by your
weak heart and weary frame, that, if you had been sent to the Crimea in
that dreadful first winter, you would certainly have died. And you feel,
too, by your lack of moral stamina, by your feebleness of resolution,
that it has been your preservation from you know not what depths of
shame and misery, that you never were pressed very hard by temptation.
Do not range yourself with those who found fault with a certain great
and good Teacher of former days, because he went to be guest with a man
that was a sinner. As if He could have gone to be guest with any man who
was not!
* * * * *
There is no reckoning up the manifold _impedimenta_ by which human
beings are weighted for the race of life; but all may be classified
under the two heads of unfavorable influences arising out of the mental
or physical nature of the human beings themselves, and unfavorable
influences arising out of the circumstances in which the human beings
are placed. You have known men who, setting out from a very humble
position, have attained to a respectable standing, but who would have
reached a very much higher place but for their being weighted with a
vulgar, violent, wrong-headed, and rude-spoken wife.
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