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When I think over all that Ernest told me about his prison meditations and the
conclusions he was drawn to, it occurs to me that in reality he was wanting to
do the very last thing which it would have entered into his head to think of
wanting. I mean that he was trying to give up father and mother for Christ's
sake. He would have said he was giving them up because he thought they hindered
him in the pursuit of his truest and most lasting happiness. Granted, but what
is this if it is not Christ? What is Christ if he is not this? He who takes the
highest and most self-respecting view of his own welfare which it is in his
power to conceive, and adheres to it in spite of conventionality, is a Christian
whether he knows it and calls himself one, or whether he does not. A rose is not
the less a rose because it does not know its own name.
    What if circumstances had made his duty more easy for him than it would be
to most men? That was his luck, as much as it is other people's luck to have
other duties made easy for them by accident of birth; surely if people are born
rich or handsome they have a right to their good fortune. Some, I know, will say
that one man has no right to be born with a better constitution than another;
others again will say that luck is the only righteous object of human
veneration. Both I daresay can make out a very good case, but whichever may be
right surely Ernest had as much right to the good luck of finding a duty made
easier, as he had had to the bad fortune of falling into the scrape which had
got him into prison. A man is not to be sneered at for having a trump card in
his hand; he is only to be sneered at if he plays his trump card badly.
    Indeed I question whether it is ever much harder for anyone to give up
father and mother for Christ's sake than it was for Ernest. The relations
between the parties will have almost always been severely strained before it
comes to this. I doubt whether anyone was ever yet required to give up those to
whom he was tenderly attached for a mere matter of conscience: he will have
ceased to be tenderly attached to them long before he is called upon to break
with them; for differences of opinion concerning any matter of vital importance
spring from differences of constitution, and these will already have led to so
much other disagreement that the giving up when it comes is like giving
