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Pages from a Journal with Other Papers by Mark Rutherford
page 40 of 187 (21%)
but something which is unsubstantial, as, for example, self-control and
self-purification. It is curious, by the way, that discipline of this
kind should almost have disappeared. Possibly it is because religion is
now a matter of belief in certain propositions; but, whatever the cause
may be, we do not train ourselves day by day to become better as we
train ourselves to learn languages or science. To return from this
parenthesis, we say that when no applause nor even recognition is
expected, to proceed steadily and alone for its own sake in the work of
saving the soul is truer heroism than that which leads a martyr
cheerfully to the stake.

Faith is at its best when we have to wrestle with despair, not only of
ourselves but of the Universe; when we strain our eyes and see nothing
but blackness. In the Gorgias Socrates maintains, not only that it is
always better to suffer injustice than to commit it, but that it is
better to be punished for injustice than to escape, and better to die
than to do wrong; and it is better not only because of the effect on
others but for our own sake. We are naturally led to ask what support a
righteous man unjustly condemned could find, supposing he were about to
be executed, if he had no faith in personal immortality and knew that
his martyrdom could not have the least effect for good. Imagine him,
for example, shut up in a dungeon and about to be strangled in it and
that not a single inquiry will be made about him--where will he look for
help? what hope will compose him? He may say that in a few hours he
will be asleep, and that nothing will then be of any consequence to him,
but that thought surely will hardly content him. He may reflect that he
at least prevents the evil which would be produced by his apostasy; and
very frequently in life, when we abstain from doing wrong, we have to be
satisfied with a negative result and with the simple absence (which
nobody notices) of some direct mischief, although the abstention may
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