assuredly more virtue and reflection than I; but I show him my defect to hinder him from falling into it: we sometimes correct ourselves better by the sight of evil than by the example of good; and it is well to accustom ourselves to profit by evil, since this is so common while goodness is so rare.
viii
I pity the person whom you know in the disquietude in which I know she is, and in which I am not surprised to see her. It is a little day of judgment which cannot come without a universal emotion of the person, as the general judgment will cause a general emotion in the world, those excepted who shall have already judged themselves, as she pretends to have done. This temporal suffering would guarantee her from the eternal, through the infinite merits of Jesus Christ, who has endured it and rendered it his own; this it is that should console her. Our yoke is also his own; without this it would be insupportable.
Take my yoke upon you, says he. It is not our yoke; it is his, and he also bears it. Know, says he, that my yoke is easy and light. It is light only to him and to his divine power. I would say to her that she should remember that these disquietudes come not from the good that is springing up in her, but from the evil which is still remaining and must be continually diminished; that she must do like a child that is being torn by robbers from the arms of its mother who will not let it go; for it should not charge the mother that fondly holds it back with the violence that it suffers, but its unjust ravishers. The whole office of Advent is well fitted to give courage to the weak; these words of Scripture: Take courage, ye fearful and unbelieving, behold, your Redeemer cometh, are often repeated there, and in the vesper service of to-day it is said: "Take courage and fear not; for your God shall come to save and deliver you."
