When Omnipotence deigned to be incarnate,
the ineffable Word did not select a Roman frame. The prophets were
not Romans; the Apostles were not Romans; she, who was blessed
above all women--I never heard that she was a Roman maiden. No;
I should look to a land more distant than Italy, to a city more
sacred even than Rome."[*]
[Footnote *: _Sybil_, Book II., chapter xii.]
III
_INDURATION_
Though my heading is as old as Chaucer, it has, I must admit, a
Johnsonian sound. Its sense is conveyed in the title of an excellent
book on suffering called _Lest We Grow Hard_, and this is a very
real peril against which it behoves everyone
"Who makes his moral being his prime care"
to be sedulously on his guard. During the last four years we have
been, in a very special way and degree, exposed to it; and we ought
to be thankful that, as a nation, we seem to have escaped. The
constant contemplation, even with the mental eye, of bloodshed and
torture, has a strong tendency to harden the heart; and a peculiar
grace was needed to keep alive in us that sympathy with suffering, that
passion of mercy, which is the characteristic virtue of regenerate
humanity. I speak not only of human suffering.
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