On the whole, kindness is safer than
reserve; it inflicts no wound, and kills nothing.
Charity is generous; it runs a risk willingly, and in spite of a hundred
successive experiences, it thinks no evil at the hundred-and-first. We
cannot be at the same time kind and wary, nor can we serve two
masters--love and selfishness. We must be knowingly rash, that we may
not be like the clever ones of the world, who never forget their own
interests. We must be able to submit to being deceived; it is the
sacrifice which interest and self-love owe to conscience. The claims of
the soul must be satisfied first if we are to be the children of God.
Was it not Bossuet who said, "It is only the great souls who know all
the grandeur there is in charity?"
January 21, 1879.--At first religion holds the place of science and
philosophy; afterward she has to learn to confine herself to her own
domain--which is in the inmost depths of conscience, in the secret
recesses of the soul, where life communes with the Divine will and the
universal order. Piety is the daily renewing of the ideal, the steadying
of our inner being, agitated, troubled, and embittered by the common
accidents of existence. Prayer is the spiritual balm, the precious
cordial which restores to us peace and courage.
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