How furiously do those men rage against themselves, to whom their true evil has been revealed! How they count as nothing whatever sufferings life may bring, if only they might not feel the hell within! Even so would every one do, who felt or truly believed in the evil within him. Gladly would he call down all external evils on his head, and count them mere child's play; nay, he would never be more sorrowful than when he had no evils to bear, after the manner of certain of the saints, such as David in Psalm vi. [Ps. 6] Therefore, this is our first image of consolation, that a man should say to himself: "Not yet, O man, dost thou feel thine evil. Rejoice and give thanks that thou dost not need to feel it!" And so the lesser evil grows light by comparison with the greatest evil. That is what others mean when they say, "I have deserved far worse things, yea, hell itself"—a thing easy to say, but horrible to contemplate. And this evil, though never so deeply hidden, yet puts forth fruits that are plainly enough perceived. These are the dread and uncertainty of a trembling conscience, when faith is assailed, and a man is not sure, or doubts, whether he have a gracious God. And this fruit is bitter in proportion to the weakness of one's faith. Nay, when rightly considered, this weakness alone, being spiritual, far outweighs every weakness of the body, and renders it, in comparison, light as a feather. Moreover, to the evils within us belong all those tragic experiences described by the Preacher, when he refers again and again to "vanity and vexation of spirit." [Eccl. 1:2, 14] How many of our plans come to naught! How oft our hopes are deceived! How many things that are not to our liking must we see and bear! And the very things that fall out according to our wish fall out also against our wish! So that there is nothing perfect and complete. Finally, all these things are so much greater, the higher one rises in rank and station;[11] for such a one will of necessity be driven about by far more and greater billows, floods, and tempests, than others who labor in a like case. As it is truly said in Psalm ciii,[12] "In the sea of this world there are things creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts," [Ps. 104:25] that is, an infinite number of trials. And Job, for this reason, calls the life of man a "trial." [13] These evils do not, indeed, cease to be evils because they are less sharply felt by us; but we have grown accustomed to them from having them constantly with us, and through the goodness of God our thoughts and feelings concerning them have become blunted. That is why they move us the more deeply when we do feel them now and then, since we have not learned through familiarity to despise them. So true is it, therefore, that we feel scarce a thousandth part of our evils, and also that we estimate them and feel them or do not feel them, not as they are in themselves, but only as they exist in our thoughts and feelings.[14]