Zachariah too was a
Christian, but the muscles of his Christianity were--now at any rate,
whatever they may once have been--not firm enough to strangle this
new terror. His supernatural heaven had receded into shadow; he was
giddy, and did not know where he was. He did not feel to their full
extent the tremendous consequences of this new doctrine, and the
shock which it has given to so much philosophy and so many theories,
but he felt quite enough, and wished he had never opened the volume.
There are many truths, no doubt, which we are not robust enough to
bear. In the main it is correct that the only way to conquer is
boldly to face every fact, however horrible it may seem to be, and
think, and think, till we pass it and come to a higher fact; but
often we are too weak, and perish in the attempt. As we lie
prostrate, we curse the day on which our eyes were opened, and we cry
in despair that it would have been better for us to have been born
oxen or swine than men. It is an experience, I suppose, not new that
in certain diseased conditions some single fear may fasten on the
wretched victim so that he is almost beside himself. He is unaware
that this fear in itself is of no importance, for it is nothing but
an index of ill-health, which might find expression in a hundred
other ways.
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