We feel such deep pity for the fallen that there must needs be a justice
in it, for these diviner feelings are wiser in themselves and do not
vaguely arise. They are lights from the Father. A justice lies in
uttermost pity and forgiveness, even when we seem to ourselves to be
most deeply wronged, or why is it that the awakening of resentment or
hate brings such swift contrition? We are ever self-condemned, and the
dark thought which went forth in us brooding revenge, when suddenly
smitten by the light, withdraws and hides within itself in awful
penitence. In asking myself why is it that the meanest are safe from our
condemnation when we sit on the true seat of judgment in the heart,
it seemed to me that their shield was the sense we have of a nobility
hidden in them under the cover of ignoble things; that their present
darkness was the result of some too weighty heroic labor undertaken long
ago by the human spirit, that it was the consecration of past purpose
which played with such a tender light about their ruined lives, and it
was more pathetic because this nobleness was all unknown to the
fallen, and the heroic cause of so much pain was forgotten in life's
prison-house.
While feeling the service to us of the great ethical ideal which have
been formulated by men I think that the idea of justice intellectually
conceived tends to beget a certain hardness of heart. It is true that
men have done wrong--hence their pain; but back of all this there is
something infinitely soothing, a light that does not wound, which says
no harsh thing, even although the darkest of the spirits turns to it in
its agony, for the darkest of human spirits has still around him this
first glory which shines from a deeper being within, whose history may
be told as the legend of the Hero in Man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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