The Children's Hospital

42

How small a matter had it been to come forth securely, and as it were in sport to undergo death. Herein was true proof of boundless mercy, that he shunned not the death he so greatly dreaded. And there can be no doubt that, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Apostle means to teach the same thing when he says that he “was heard in that he feared.” Some, instead of “feared,” use a term meaning reverence of piety, but how inappropriately, is apparent both from the nature of the thing and the form of the expression. Christ then praying in a loud voice, and with tears, is heard in that he feared, not so as to be exempted from death, but so as not to be swallowed up by it like a sinner, though standing as our representative. And certainly no abyss can be imagined more dreadful than to feel that you are abandoned and forsaken of God, and not heard when you invoke Him, just as if he Had conspired your destruction. Worse, though, to live everyday knowing that you never did the thing that you were supposed to, indicted by every ruined person and thing as the first, worst, and only coward. And almost as bad, to spend a whole life trying to figure it out (and isn’t it a gift and a punishment never to be allowed to think of anything else) and still never figure out how to do it.

The world is as it is, and I am as I am, and how will I ever change either one?