made to attain an end to my sufferings; complete rather thy vengeance upon me here below; reserve nothing for that dreadful eternity, where thy chastisement shall be without end and without measure. I ask thee only to sustain my weakness; and, in shedding sorrows through my life, shed likewise upon it thy grace, which consoles and recompenses with such usury an afflicted heart.
To all these truths, so consoling for an afflicted soul, I might still add, that our sufferings appear excessive only through the excess of the corruption of our heart; that the keenness of our afflictions springs solely from that of our passions! that it is the impropriety of our attachments to the objects lost, which renders their loss so grievous; that we are keenly afflicted only when we had been keenly attached; and that the excess of our afflictions is always the punishment of the excess of our iniquitous loves. I might add, that we always magnify whatever regards ourselves; that the very idea of singularity in our misfortunes flatters our vanity, at the same time that it authorizes our murmurs; that we never wish to resemble others; that we feel a secret pleasure in persuading ourselves that we are single of our kind; we wish all the world to be occupied with our misfortunes alone, as if we were the only unfortunate of the earth. Yes, my brethren, the evils of others are nothing in our eyes: we see not that all around us are, perhaps, more unhappy than we; that we have a thousand resources in our afflictions, which are denied to others; that we derive a thousand consolations in our infirmities, from wealth, and the number of persons watchful over our smallest wants; that, in the loss of a person dear to us, a thousand means of softening its bitterness still remain from the situation in which Providence hath placed us: that, in domestic divisions, we find comforts in the tenderness and in the confidence of our friends, which we had been unable to procure among our relatives; lastly, that we find a thousand human indemnifications to our misfortunes, and that, were we to place in a balance, on the one side our consolations, and on the other our sufferings, we should find, that there are still remaining in our state more comforts capable of corrupting us, than crosses calculated to sanctify us.
Thus, it is almost solely the great and the prosperous of the world who complain of the excess of their misfortunes and sufferings. The unfortunate majority of the earth, who are born to, and live in, penury and distress, pass in silence, and almost in the neglect of their sufferings, their wretched days. The smallest gleam of comfort and ease restores serenity and cheerfulness to their heart: the slightest consolations obliterate their troubles: a moment of pleasure makes up for a whole year of sufferance; while those fortunate and sensual souls, amidst all their abundance, are seen to reckon, as an unheard of misfortune, the disappointment of a single desire. We view them turning into a martyrdom for themselves, the weariness and even the satiety of pleasures; drawing from imaginary evils the source of a thousand real vexations; feeling ten-fold more anguish for the failure of a single acquisition, than
