but the Roman is inclined to wash his hands of the offender.
'Study to be patient in suffering and bearing other men's defaults
and all manner infirmities,' says the Christian; but the Roman would
never have thought to add, 'If all men were perfect, what had we
then to suffer of other men for God?' The virtue of suffering
in itself is an idea which does not meet us in the Meditations.
Both alike realise that man is one of a great community.
'No man is sufficient to himself,' says the Christian;
'we must bear together, help together, comfort together.'
But while he sees a chief importance in zeal, in exalted
emotion that is, and avoidance of lukewarmness, the Roman
thought mainly of the duty to be done as well as might be,
and less of the feeling which should go with the doing of it.
To the saint as to the emperor, the world is a poor thing at best.
'Verily it is a misery to live upon the earth,' says the Christian;
few and evil are the days of man's life, which passeth away
suddenly as a shadow.

But there is one great difference between the two books we
are considering. The Imitation is addressed to others,
the Meditations by the writer to himself. We learn nothing
from the Imitation of the author's own life, except in so far
as he may be assumed to have practised his own preachings;
the Meditations reflect mood by mood the mind of him who wrote them.
In their intimacy and frankness lies their great charm.
These notes are not sermons; they are not even confessions.
There is always an air of self-consciousness in confessions;
in such revelations there is always a danger of
unctuousness or of vulgarity for the best of men.
St. Augus-tine is not always clear of offence, and John Bunyan