“Your letter, my friend, struck me with a mighty
horror. It rushed upon me and stupified my feelings. You bid me write you a
religious letter; I am not a man who would attempt to insult the greatness of
your anguish by any other consolation. Heaven knows that in the easiest
fortunes there is much dissatisfaction and weariness of spirit; much that calls
for the exercise of patience and resignation; but in storms, like these, that
shake the dwelling and make the heart tremble, there is no middle way between
despair and the yielding up of the whole spirit unto the guidance of faith.
| 1796 | COLERIDGE’S CONSOLATION | 43 |
“As to what regards yourself, I approve altogether of your abandoning what you justly call vanities. I look upon you as a man, called by sorrow and anguish and a strange desolation of hopes into quietness, and a soul set apart and made peculiar to God; we cannot arrive at any portion of heavenly bliss without in some measure imitating Christ. And they arrive at the largest inheritance who imitate the most difficult parts of his character, and bowed down and crushed under foot, cry in fulness of faith, ‘Father, thy will be done.’
“I wish above measure to have you for a little while here—no visitants shall blow on the nakedness of your feelings—you shall be quiet, and your spirit may be healed. I see no possible objection, unless your father’s helplessness prevent you, and unless you are necessary to him. If this be not the case, I charge you write me that you will come.
“I charge you, my dearest friend, not to dare to encourage gloom or despair—you are a temporary sharer in human miseries, that you may be an eternal partaker of the Divine nature. I charge you, if by any means it be possible, come to me.
