perplexities.

And yet, when all has been said, the man who should hold
back from marriage is in the same case with him who runs away
from battle. To avoid an occasion for our virtues is a worse
degree of failure than to push forward pluckily and make a
fall. It is lawful to pray God that we be not led into
temptation; but not lawful to skulk from those that come to
us. The noblest passage in one of the noblest books of this
century, is where the old pope glories in the trial, nay, in
the partial fall and but imperfect triumph, of the younger
hero. (1) Without some such manly note, it were perhaps
better to have no conscience at all. But there is a vast
difference between teaching flight, and showing points of
peril that a man may march the more warily. And the true
conclusion of this paper is to turn our back on apprehensions,
and embrace that shining and courageous virtue, Faith. Hope
is the boy, a blind, headlong, pleasant fellow, good to chase
swallows with the salt; Faith is the grave, experienced, yet
smiling man. Hope lives on ignorance; open-eyed Faith is
built upon a knowledge of our life, of the tyranny of
circumstance and the frailty of human resolution. Hope looks
for unqualified success; but Faith counts certainly on
failure, and takes honourable defeat to be a form of victory.
Hope is a kind old pagan; but Faith grew up in Christian days,
and early learnt humility. In the one temper, a man is
indignant that he cannot spring up in a clap to heights of
elegance and virtue; in the other, out of a sense of his
infirmities, he is filled with confidence because a year has
come and gone, and he has still preserved some rags of honour.