Nevertheless, he had learned a
little wisdom, and, what was of much greater importance, had learned
how to use it when he needed it. It had been forced upon him; it was
an adjustment to circumstances, the wisest wisdom. It was not
something without any particular connection with him; it was rather
the external protection built up from within to shield him where he
was vulnerable; it was the answer to questions which had been put to
HIM, and not to those which had been put to other people. So it came
to pass that, when he said bitterly to himself that, if he were at
that moment lying dead at the bottom of the river, Benjamin would
have found consolation very near at hand, he was able to reflect upon
the folly of self-laceration, and to rebuke himself for a complaint
against what was simply the order of Nature, and not a personal
failure.
His self-conquest, however, was not very permanent. When he left
York the next morning, he fancied his son was not particularly
grieved, and he was passive under the thought that an epoch in his
life had come, that the milestones now began to show the distance to
the place to which he travelled, and, still worse, that the boy who
had been so close to him, and upon whom he had so much depended, had
gone from him.
There is no remedy for our troubles which is uniformly and
progressively efficacious. All that we have a right to expect from
our religion is that gradually, very gradually, it will assist us to
a real victory.
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