Our work--my work--consists in taming, subduing,
evangelizing and _angelizing_ the evil self; and in restoring harmony
with the good self. Salvation lies in abandoning the evil self in
principle and in taking refuge with the other, the divine self, in
accepting with courage and prayer the task of living with one's own
demon, and making it into a less and less rebellious instrument of good.
The Abel in us must labor for the salvation of the Cain. To undertake it
is to be converted, and this conversion must be repeated day by day.
Abel only redeems and touches Cain by exercising him constantly in good
works. To do right is in one sense an act of violence; it is suffering,
expiation, a cross, for it means the conquest and enslavement of self.
In another sense it is the apprenticeship to heavenly things, sweet and
secret joy, contentment and peace. Sanctification implies perpetual
martyrdom, but it is a martyrdom which glorifies. A crown of thorns is
the sad eternal symbol of the life of the saints. The best measure of
the profundity of any religious doctrine is given by its conception of
sin and the cure of sin.
A duty is no sooner divined than from that very moment it becomes
binding upon us.
* * * * *
Latent genius is but a presumption.
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