Page:The way of Martha and the way of Mary (1915).djvu/171

Rh on the dusty road, wearing out his boots, thinking, trudging, praying, recognising—finding what his soul desires. That is not morbidity, but a noble form of life.

And many promise themselves wholly to God and enter monasteries or convents, and there find happiness, the bright ray of destiny they sought with their eyes in a dark world.

Every morning, noon, and night

Praise God! says Theocrite

—that is not a morbid life, though a life of denial. It does not mean that every one who would live well should enter a monastery or a convent, it only means that some one whose soul craved such a life has found his way. How we have suffered in England from the difficulty of giving one's soul to God in that way. Those who would have been monks and sisters have had to give themselves in other ways. There are thousands of other ways. Every one who is living well has found a way. The way meant renunciation, hardship, sorrow—but not morbid sorrow, the sorrow which leaves you as you were, as the cloud of gnats wailing by the tree and the stream leave the tree, leave the stream, just as they were, just what they were.

The differentiation between morbid sorrow and real sorrow, between self-laceration and the tribulation that comes of destiny, is important if we would understand aright what the Russian means by the "Religion of Suffering."