But again I say, let it be Christ that excuseth thee; he
will do it to more purpose than thou, and will not wrong thy soul by
excusing thee a hair too much, or thy heart by excusing thee a hair
too little.
"I dreamed once that I had committed a terrible crime. Carried
beyond myself by passion, I knew not at the moment HOW evil was the
thing I did. But I knew it was evil. And suddenly I became aware,
when it was too late, of the nature of that which I had done. The
horror that came with the knowledge was of the things that belong
only to the secret soul. I was the same man as before I did it, yet
was I now a man of whom my former self could not have conceived the
possibility as dwelling within it. The former self seemed now by
contrast lovely in purity, yet out of that seeming purity this
fearful, foul _I_ of the present had just been born! The face of my
fellow-man was an avenging law, the face of a just enemy. Where,
how, should the frightful face be hidden? The conscious earth must
take it into its wounded bosom, and that before the all-seeing
daylight should come. But it would come, and I should stand therein
pointed at by every ray that shot through the sunny atmosphere! "The
agony was of its own kind, and I have no word to tell what it was
like.
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