Seek not altogether to dry up the stream of Sorrow, but to bound it,
and keep it within its banks. Religion doth not destroy the life of
nature, but adds to it a life more excellent; yea, it doth not only
permit, but requires some feeling of afflictions. Instead of patience,
there is in some men an affected pride of spirit suitable only to the
doctrine of the Stoics as it is usually taken. They strive not to feel
at all the afflictions that are on them; but where there is no feeling
at all, there can be no patience.
Of the sects of ancient philosophy the Stoic is, perhaps, the nearest
to Christianity. Yet even to this sect Christianity is fundamentally
opposite. For the Stoic attaches the highest honour (or rather,
attaches honour _solely_) to the person that acts virtuously in spite
of his feelings, or who has raised himself above the conflict by their
extinction; while Christianity instructs us to place small reliance on
a virtue that does not _begin_ by bringing the Feelings to a
conformity with the commands of the Conscience. Its especial aim, its
characteristic operation, is to moralize the affections. The Feelings,
that oppose a right act, must be wrong feelings. The _act_, indeed,
whatever the agent's _feelings_ might be, Christianity would command;
and under certain circumstances would both command and commend
it--commend it, as a healthful symptom in a sick patient; and command
it, as one of the ways and means of changing the feelings, or
displacing them by calling up the opposite.