The Christian also spurns the pinched and mumping sick-room
attitude, and the lives of saints are full of a kind of
callousness to diseased conditions of body which probably no
other human records show. But whereas the merely moralistic
spurning takes an effort of volition, the Christian spurning is
the result of the excitement of a higher kind of emotion, in the
presence of which no exertion of volition is required. The
moralist must hold his breath and keep his muscles tense; and so
long as this athletic attitude is possible all goes
well--morality suffices. But the athletic attitude tends ever to
break down, and it inevitably does break down even in the most
stalwart when the organism begins to decay, or when morbid fears
invade the mind. To suggest personal will and effort to one all
sicklied o'er with the sense of irremediable impotence is to
suggest the most impossible of things. What he craves is to be
consoled in his very powerlessness, to feel that the spirit of
the universe <47> recognizes and secures him, all decaying and
failing as he is. Well, we are all such helpless failures in the
last resort.
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