apply the gag to eloquence upon our own woes. Nobody who really cares
for us will mind waiting on us even to the long-delayed last hour if we
endure in fortitude.

There is no harm in confronting our disorders or misfortunes. On the
contrary, the attempt is wholesome. Much of what we dread is really due
to indistinctness of outline. If we have the courage to say to
ourselves, What IS this thing, then? let the worst come to the worst,
and what then? we shall frequently find that after all it is not so
terrible. What we have to do is to subdue tremulous, nervous, insane
fright. Fright is often prior to an object; that is to say, the fright
comes first and something is invented or discovered to account for it.
There are certain states of body and mind which are productive of
objectless fright, and the most ridiculous thing in the world is able to
provoke it to activity. It is perhaps not too much to say that any
calamity the moment it is apprehended by the reason alone loses nearly
all its power to disturb and unfix us. The conclusions which are so
alarming are not those of the reason, but, to use Spinoza's words, of
the "affects."



FAITH



Faith is nobly seen when a man, standing like Columbus upon the shore
with a dark, stormy Atlantic before him, resolves to sail, and although
week after week no land be visible, still believes and still sails on;
but it is nobler when there is no America as the goal of our venture,