Shall I make a
curious confession? From quite early days, the time of first waking
in the morning has been apt to be for me a time of mental
agitation; any unpleasant and humiliating incident, any
disagreeable prospect, have always tended to dart into my brain,
which, unstrung and weakened by sleep, has often been disposed to
view things with a certain poignancy of distress at that hour--a
distress which I always knew would vanish the moment I felt my feet
on the carpet. I used to take advantage of this to use my Manual at
that hour, because by that I secured a deeper intensity of
repentance, and I have often succeeded in inducing a kind of
tearful condition by those means, which I knew perfectly well to be
artificial, but which yet seemed to comply with the rules of the
process.
The kind of repentance indicated in the book as appropriate was a
deep abasement, a horror and hatred of one's sinful propensities;
and the language used seems to me now not only hollow and
meaningless, but to insult the dignity of the soul, and to be
indeed a profound confession of a want of confidence in the methods
and purposes of God. Surely the right attitude is rather a manly,
frank, and hopeful co-operation with God, than a degraded kind of
humiliation.
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