Guilt

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

Page 10 of 99 · 20 per page

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  I took Mama at her word and hung around with my cousins Garvey and Grey, planning not to get caught and not to tell Mama. But one afternoon after I produced Tootsie Rolls for Reese and me, Mama took my hands in hers like she was going to cry. “Where’d you get them?” “Uncle Earle,” I suggested. “No.” Mama dropped down a little so her face was close to mine. “Aunt Alma.” Carefully, I made my face a mask. “Don’t lie too.” The lines in her face looked as deep as the rivers that flowed south toward Charleston. “Tell me the truth.” I started to cry. “Downtown with Grey and Garvey this morning, at the Woolworth’s counter.” Mama used her forefinger to wipe the tears off my cheeks. She wiped her own. “Is this all of it? How many did you take?” “Two others, Mama. I ate one, gave Reese one.” Mama leaned back in her chair, dropping my hands. She shook a cigarette out of the pack and lit it carefully. I sat still, watching her, waiting. Tears kept collecting in the corners of my eyes, and I had to turn to wipe them away on my shoulder, but I kept watching Mama’s face as she sat and smoked without looking at me. The fingers of her right hand rubbed together steadily like the legs of grasshoppers I had seen climbing up the long grass at Aunt Raylene’s place. Her lips moved steadily too, as if she were sucking on her teeth or about to speak, but she was quiet a long time, just sitting there looking off through the open window smoking her cigarette. “You know your cousin Tommy Lee? Aunt Ruth’s oldest boy?” I frowned, trying to remember their names. There was Dwight, I knew, Lucius, D.W., Graham, yeah, Tommy Lee, and Butch. Aunt Ruth had only two daughters and six boys, most of them married with boys of their own. All of them were so alike that I never could keep track of anyone but Butch, and I rarely saw him anymore since he had gone to live with Ruth’s oldest girl, Mollie, in Oklahoma. The younger boys turned up occasionally to wrestle Reese and me, give us candy, or tell us stories. The older ones had the sunken eyes and planed faces of men, and they never gave us anything except nasty looks. I couldn’t have said which of the older ones was Tommy Lee, though I’d heard people talk about him enough—about what a hardass he was, about his girlfriends and his dirty mouth, his stints in the county jail and the fights he got into.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  The first had occurred that afternoon when I had been talking to the young teacher caught up in the censorship ruling made by the local school board. Hers had also been a stern, stubborn face, but young, so terribly young and passionate and determined. She was the one who had chosen Bastard Out of Carolina for her high school class, and when a parent complained she had set about trying to explain the choice, to say why she thought it important for the students to read. She had spoken about how young people develop a moral sense, and how hidden violence affected small communities, and how bringing that violence into the open made it possible to strengthen and enlarge concepts of social justice. “I didn’t think they would do all this,” she said. “I didn’t think they would ban the book. I didn’t think they would be so angry.” I looked into her face and understood what I had not before I had come three thousand miles to try to be of use in the case. I understood how deeply hurt she was, and how little help I could be. It was not that she was going to lose her job as a teacher, though that seemed to have already become inevitable. I saw how much more she was losing—perhaps the way she had seen what the young people in her class were losing. She was being forced to let go of her sense of justice, of how it worked, and of her conviction that justice as she understood it would always triumph. She wasn’t sure she could teach anymore. No, she was sure. She couldn’t. Maybe she would go back to school. Maybe she would study law. I did this, I thought. I messed up her life. Irrational, maybe. But there it was. My novel had disturbed the peace and everyone’s sense of a just and reasonable world. That’s how it was, and I felt guilty, ashamed, and a little desperate. I had known what I was doing when I wrote the novel, what I hoped the book might achieve, but I had not imagined this young woman’s ravaged face or those of the youngsters she had tried to teach. I had imagined my novel would be a catalyst for clarity and compassion—not an impetus to anger and repression.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Mama was ashen and silent and wouldn’t look at me. It was my fault, all my fault. I had ruined everything. Daddy Glen showed up at the diner to try to talk to Mama, but she balled up her apron and hid in the washroom until the manager made him leave. She came home to sit on the couch, smoke a pack of cigarettes, and stare into space. When Reese tried to talk to her, she made us both go to bed early. The next morning, when Mama went over and applied for a job at JC Stevens, all I could think about were the times she had told us how much she hated the mills. When Reese and I got out of school, we found a note from Mama on the dish drain that said she’d be working until seven-thirty and to open a can of pork and beans for dinner. Reese ate hers spread between two layers of bread and refused to speak to me. I went down behind the Fish Market where big salt-stained flats were stacked in piles and empty washtubs lay tilted so they could drain and air out. I sat on an overturned washtub between the leaning piles of flats and cried into my elbow so that no one could hear me. “It’ll be all right,” Mama kept telling Reese and me, but she didn’t explain how. When Reese cried and said she wanted to go home, Mama held her and promised to let her stay with Patsy Ruth this summer. I sat at the table and watched them across the room, remembering the last time Mama had run away from Daddy Glen. It had only been a few days. This was now over a week. How much longer would she last? Another week? A month? I dug my nails into the soft skin inside my elbows and rocked a little on the chair. I wouldn’t cry, not where Mama could see me. I wouldn’t cry. For Reese the whole thing had been an adventure until Mama refused to let her go over to sign her name on Uncle Wade’s cast. Three days after the funeral Uncle Wade had shot himself in his right foot, and was stuck home limping around with his leg in a big cast the boys had plastered all over with oil and gas decals from the service station. We’d heard all about it from Little Earle at school, but Mama ignored Reese’s begging and brought home a couple of paint-by-number sets for us instead. “I don’t want you going nowhere that I can’t come keep an eye on you,” she told Reese. When Aunt Raylene came over, Mama didn’t even invite her inside, just spoke through the door. “Let us be, Raylene. Just let me be for a while. I need some time to think.” “Anney, you can’t hide away like you some criminal.” Aunt Raylene sounded impatient. “You an’t the one done nothing wrong.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  It was my fault, everything, Mama’s silence and Reese’s rage. I lay in the bed with my hands clutched under my chin and my knees drawn up to my breasts. I kept remembering those last few days like a hurried, confusing dream, not Daddy Glen beating me but the morning Mama told me about Aunt Ruth, not the Woolworth’s robbery but talking to Butch, and not the noise and uproar when Benny, Aunt Fay, and Aunt Carr drove off to the hospital with Daddy Glen but those brief horrible moments when Aunt Raylene showed my thighs to Uncle Earle. I kept trying to figure out how I could have prevented it all from happening, not drunk that beer, not let anyone see, gone to Mama and made sure she knew that I had deserved that beating—kept everything smooth and quiet. That night at Ruth’s, Aunt Raylene had told me not to brood, that it would take time for Mama to forgive herself. For what? I wondered. Mama hadn’t done anything wrong. I was the one who had made Daddy Glen mad. I was the one who made everybody crazy. No, Raylene told me. I wasn’t to think that way. She had whispered in a rough, strained voice that Mama loved me, that she loved me, that Earle and my uncles loved me. She was insistent, holding me tight to her, but I didn’t listen. I clamped my teeth together and sucked my tongue up so tight to the roof of my mouth that my throat ached. Mama was ashen and silent and wouldn’t look at me. It was my fault, all my fault. I had ruined everything. Daddy Glen showed up at the diner to try to talk to Mama, but she balled up her apron and hid in the washroom until the manager made him leave. She came home to sit on the couch, smoke a pack of cigarettes, and stare into space. When Reese tried to talk to her, she made us both go to bed early. The next morning, when Mama went over and applied for a job at JC Stevens, all I could think about were the times she had told us how much she hated the mills. When Reese and I got out of school, we found a note from Mama on the dish drain that said she’d be working until seven-thirty and to open a can of pork and beans for dinner. Reese ate hers spread between two layers of bread and refused to speak to me. I went down behind the Fish Market where big salt-stained flats were stacked in piles and empty washtubs lay tilted so they could drain and air out. I sat on an overturned washtub between the leaning piles of flats and cried into my elbow so that no one could hear me.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  Mama got up from her mattress so fast I felt myself push back against the wall nervously. Her hands came down on my shoulders, squeezed gently. “What are you saying to me?” she asked. I could see her face. The moon must have risen. In the dim reflected light from outside, her cheekbones and shadowy eyes were ghostly. She was afraid. “I love you,” I said, “but I can’t think of anything else to do.” She gripped me hard. I could feel her fingernails biting in, the intensity of her fear. She shook her head and pulled me to her neck. “Oh God, what have I done?” she cried. “Mama, don’t,” I said gently. “Please.” She let go of me but still knelt there close. I wondered if she could see me as clearly as I could see her. If so, what was she seeing in my face? A rain began to fall outside. With no wind, it came down in a sweet, sprinkling whisper, little drops flicking through the tender new growth on the trees and bushes. Mama put her palms flat against her eyes. “All right,” she said. “All right.” I swallowed. I wanted to reach for her, to say I was sorry, to say that I hadn’t meant it, that I would go back with her, but I didn’t move. After a minute she got up and went back to her pallet. She didn’t smoke anymore. She pulled her blanket up and lay still, so quiet she might have been asleep as soon as she lay down. Much later, in the early dawn with the blanket pulled over my head, I heard Mama start crying, trying hard not to make a sound and almost succeeding. Only her breath catching every little while gave her away. My own eyes were dry. I didn’t feel like I was going to cry. I didn’t feel like I was ever going to cry again. Bastard Out of Carolina 20 I t was peaceful out at Aunt Alma’s. The spring ripened until the yard and surrounding woods were lush green and full of singing birds. The three surviving puppies ran in stumbling leaps and falls, rolling over each other and digging between their mama’s titties. The clothes scattered across the yard had to have the dirt shaken out before they could be washed. The washer itself worked pretty good, though Earle could not figure out how to fix the wringer. I hung the soggy clothes out on a line that Grey put up between the porch and the black walnut tree, though none of them came truly clean and some of them Mama set aside as garbage. I made a big pile off the porch of the things that were broken beyond repair, and Uncle Earle hauled it away.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  She looked tired and hurt and ashamed. Her face made me feel sick and angry, and guilty about her all over again. I kicked at the short wooden fence for a moment and then swung one leg up to climb over. All right, she was a little monster, but she was my friend, and the kind of monster I could understand. Twenty feet away from me, Shannon sniffed and reached for the can of lighter fluid by the grill. She hadn’t even seen me. Afterward, people kept asking me what happened. “Where were you,” Sheriff Cole said for the third or fourth time. “And what exactly did you see?” He never gave me a chance to tell him. Maybe because it was hard to hear over Mrs. Pearl’s screaming. “Uh huh, and where were you?” He kept looking over his shoulder toward the grill and the sputtering fat fire. I knew he hadn’t heard a word I said. But Mrs. Pearl had. She had heard me clear, and she flailed at the people holding her, trying to get her hands on me. She kept screaming “You!” over and over like I had done something, but all I had done was watch. I was sure of that. I had never gotten two steps past the fence. Shannon had put her glasses back on. She had the lighter-fluid can in one hand and she took up that long-handled fork in the other. She poked the coals with the fork and sprayed them with the fluid. The can made a popping noise as she squeezed it. She was trying to get more of the coals burning, it seemed. Or maybe she just liked the way the flames leaped up. She sprayed and sprayed, pulled back and sprayed again. Shannon shook her hand. I heard the lighter-fluid can sputter and suck air. I saw the flame run right up to it and go out. Then it came back with a boom. The can exploded, and fire ballooned out in a great rolling ball. Shannon didn’t even scream. Her mouth was wide open, and she just breathed the flames in. Her glasses went opaque, her eyes vanished, and all around her skull her fine hair stood up in a crown of burning glory. Her dress whooshed and billowed into orange-yellow smoky flames. I saw the fork fall, the wooden handle on fire. I saw Mrs. Pearl come to her feet and start to run toward her daughter. I saw all the men drop their icetea glasses. I saw Shannon stagger and stumble from side to side, then fall in a heap. Her dress was gone. I saw the smoke turn black and oily. I saw Shannon Pearl disappear from this world. They held the funeral at Bushy Creek Baptist. Mrs.

• From Bastard Out of Carolina (1992)

  But there it was. My novel had disturbed the peace and everyone’s sense of a just and reasonable world. That’s how it was, and I felt guilty, ashamed, and a little desperate. I had known what I was doing when I wrote the novel, what I hoped the book might achieve, but I had not imagined this young woman’s ravaged face or those of the youngsters she had tried to teach. I had imagined my novel would be a catalyst for clarity and compassion—not an impetus to anger and repression. The teacher arranged for me to meet with some of the young women from her school. I went to see them, trying to sort out for myself what was right and wrong in all the issues raised at that town meeting. The problem was that I had a young child, and I understood completely the impulse of a parent to protect the child. There were books I would not want my son to read, and if it came down to it, I could imagine going to his teachers and objecting—particularly to hateful, violent books—to books that might damage his sense of justice, books that might invalidate his belief in what made sense in the world, and what did not. What right did I have to say that the book I had written was not that terrible for some people? How could I justify the grief and hopelessness I saw in that young teacher’s face as she talked of how much she loved teaching, the young people with whom she worked, and how awful the year had been as all the work she did was questioned and her students pulled away from her and showed their own fear and disappointment? “I thought we could work all this out,” she said. “I did not think it would become so complicated and awful. I did not think the board would act the way it did.” Bringing those young people and me together was her way of trying to win back some sense of making a difference. She wanted them to be able to talk to me, to ask questions, and to have an opportunity to say what they thought. I understood the impulse both as a teacher myself and as a survivor of childhood violence. Most of the girls I met had experienced some sort of violence; a few could have matched Bone in horror and grief. They were shy and tended to drop their voices when they spoke. They let their hair fall across their faces. They bit their fingernails and twisted in their seats. They were excited and ashamed and they mostly knew each other from school or church.

• From Augustine: Philosopher and Saint (2005)

  36 noitanitsederP dna ,niS lanigirO ,lliW eerF ,livE :8 erutceL inferior, even punishment, all contribute to the overall good of the universe and therefore are not ultimately evil. (cid:405) Evil originates from our free will. • Free will: (cid:405) Will is the power of choice. (cid:405) For Augustine, every act of the will is an act of love. (cid:405) Love seeks to be united to some good. (cid:405) Sin is perversity of the will, i.e., its turning away from God, the supreme good. (cid:405) Free will (for Augustine) means freedom from external coercion—not autonomy or freedom from God, who is our ultimate and innermost good. (cid:405) For Augustine, as for Plato and Paul, true freedom means the freedom to love that which will make us ultimately happy. (cid:405) Hence for Augustine all sin is a form of bondage, not freedom. Sin stems from a defect in our free will, as blindness stems from a defect in our eyes. Original Sin • Because of Adam’s sin, we are born with a corrupted nature (as if human nature itself, and not just individual human beings, suffered from a disease). • Because of this corrupted nature, we (cid:191) nd it impossible not to sin. We still have free will, but our free will is too weak (corrupted, diseased) to be free from sin. • Original Sin means more than this corrupted nature. It means that we share in the guilt of Adam’s sin. Original sin is not just Adam’s sin but ours! • In addition to Original Sin, we are of course guilty of committing our own sins (“actual sin”). • Because every human being after Adam is born in (Original) Sin, even infants are not innocent and suffer damnation if not baptized.

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  The conversion, indeed, was not a moral compulsion, but included the responsibility of assent or dissent. God converts nobody by force or by magic. He made man free, and acts upon him as a moral being. Paul might have "disobeyed the heavenly vision."369 He might have "kicked against the goads," though it was "hard" (not impossible) to do so.370 These words imply some psychological preparation, some doubt and misgiving as to his course, some moral conflict between the flesh and the spirit, which he himself described twenty years afterwards from personal experience, and which issues in the cry of despair: "O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"371 On his journey from Jerusalem to Damascus, which takes a full week on foot or horseback—the distance being about 140 miles—as he was passing, in the solitude of his own thoughts, through Samaria, Galilee, and across Mount Hermon, he had ample time for reflection, and we may well imagine how the shining face of the martyr Stephen, as he stood like a holy angel before the Sanhedrin, and as in the last moment he prayed for his murderers, was haunting him like a ghost and warning him to stop his mad career. Yet we must not overrate this preparation or anticipate his riper experience in the three days that intervened between his conversion and his baptism, and during the three years of quiet meditation in Arabia. He was no doubt longing for truth and for righteousness, but there was a thick veil over his mental eye which could only be taken away by a hand from without; access to his heart was barred by an iron door of prejudice which had to be broken in by Jesus himself. On his way to Damascus he was "yet breathing threatening and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord," and thinking he was doing "God service;" he was, to use his own language, "beyond measure" persecuting the church of God and endeavoring to destroy it, "being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of his fathers" than many of his age, when "it pleased God to reveal his Son in him." Moreover it is only in the light of faith that we see the midnight darkness of our sin, and it is only beneath the cross of Christ that we feel the whole crushing weight of guilt and the unfathomable depth of God’s redeeming love. No amount of subjective thought and reflection could have brought about that radical change in so short a time. It was the objective appearance of Jesus that effected it.

• From Cults Inside Out: How People Get In and Can Get Out (2014)

  Members frequently cling to such rationalizations rather than accept the more alarming alternative, which is that all their efforts and sacrifices may have been for nothing. Others in similar circumstances within the group will join them in their willingness to accept convenient apologies for failure and offer whatever social support is necessary to protect and secure the sense of equity and mutual sacrifice they share in common. This can also be seen as a refusal to bear the “exit cost” of leaving the group. Sociologist Benjamin Zablocki generally defines such “exit costs” cult members consider as “all disincentives for leaving.” Zablocki includes “costs ranging from financial penalties, to relational commitments to various sorts of cognitive and emotional dependencies.”621 In what is one of the most poignant examples of cognitive dissonance, Waco Davidian survivors Clive Doyle and Sheila Martin continue to cling to their beliefs about David Koresh despite the fact that the cult leader’s prophecies led to death and destruction, not heavenly fulfillment. Eighteen years after the fire that claimed the lives of seventy-six Davidians, including Doyle’s daughter who was one of Koresh’s “wives” as well as Martin’s husband and four of her seven children, their loyalty remains unshaken. The two aging cult members support each other in their continuing commitment. Sheila Martin says God wanted the fire and destruction. “I don’t expect you to understand,” she told a reporter. But she admits, “We didn’t have a plan for death. I wondered: Did someone change the plan without telling me?” Nevertheless Martin still insists, “David is the messiah, and he’s coming back…Now we just wait for the kingdom.” Clive Doyle explains, “When people ask why we still believe in David and what he preached, after everything, I think they are asking because they really do want to understand.” Martin concurs. “I think they’ll realize someday everything is under his order, and they’ll understand that it’s not really a choice.”622 Despite the historical facts the two cultists cannot face the disconfirmation of Koresh’s demise and have decided instead to interpret the end in a way that allows them to continue as true believers. This response is most probably linked to the devastating losses they both suffered and the corresponding emotional equity they share. Admitting that David Koresh was a delusional cult leader and fraud would mean that all their sacrifices were for nothing. Rather than bear those exit costs, they have instead embraced what can be seen as cognitive dissonance.

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  Boniface, the Roman general in charge of Africa, was pursuing his own ambitions when he invited the Vandal warlord active in Spain to support him in rivalry with the imperial government, which found its own mercenaries to send against him from Italy. Though the warriors who came to Africa on both sides of this conflict were all subjects of long service in the Roman empire, and all professed the Christian religion, contemporaries and moderns alike chose to make much of their barbarian affiliations, but especially in the case of those who fought against the reigning emperor and his forces. Barbarians who fought for the emperor were somehow Romanized by that act, at least for the moment, but could be demonized again almost instantly when it suited. When Roman control of the military situation began to fail in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, contemporaries were quick to speak of “barbarian invasions,” and our textbooks to this day are illustrated with maps showing brightly colored arrows swooping across sharply drawn borders, then dashing back and forth across Roman territory. The same maps do not usually show the sites of the four serious Roman army rebellions in Africa in Augustine’s lifetime, or of the two civil wars that irrupted into Italy, killing one emperor and almost overthrowing another, in the last years of the fourth century. Barbarians make better copy. Augustine himself had written in his City of God an antidote for that way of avoiding thought and responsibility. In its pages, every place was equidistant from eternity, and Rome’s privilege turned out to have been a way station on the way to Christianity, not an “empire without end”—the prophetic words from Vergil that Augustine ironically and boldly put on the first page of City of God. Possidius’s story of Augustine’s deathbed under a dark cloud of threatening barbarians reveals how poorly that lesson had penetrated Augustine’s own inmost circle. Throughout his life, Augustine represented himself as the object of forces beyond himself. He succeeded at every level—autobiographically, historically, theologically—in presenting himself in that light. Augustine the agent, Augustine the actor, Augustine the misreader of his times, Augustine the mismaker of African society: he has escaped, until now. Knowing Augustine’s failures and keeping them in mind can make it easier to understand who he was, how he lived, what he did, and what was dying when he died. First, we should not forget the evident disarray all around him, little of it having anything to do with barbarians. In the last twenty years of his life, he had been increasingly preoccupied with a set of ideas and controversies that have marked his reputation ever since, as Vietnam has marked that of Lyndon Johnson. His battle against “Pelagianism” was murky and unnecessary for all that Augustine portrays himself as an unwilling warrior in a fateful struggle. Well-wishers lament that if only that one false step had not been taken, an underlying benign liberalism would be evident. The escape is not that easy.

• From Augustine: A New Biography (2005)

  But Augustine is also associated with the seriousness with which we take religion. Many people, of course, take their religion lightly, but know that somehow they shouldn’t. Religious festivals may even be uproarious from time to time, but they are always in some way serious because in the Christian, which is to say late-antique, disposition they always have something to do not only with the here and now but with the high and sublime. There are no trickster gods in Christianity, no Saturnalian festivals of reversal (even if Mardi Gras rather snuck in the back door in some neighborhoods). Religion is solemn and serious business, arising out of the deep inner experience of some, a deep inner experience that is eerily aligned with the most stringent rules and regulations of mass religion. The raptures and virtues of the few justify the rigors and discipline and guilty consciences of the many. That’s Augustine all over. And his religion goes well beyond negotiating with gods. We are a culture blithe in our praise for freedom and our missionary zeal to share freedom with others, but at the same time obsessed with a series of discourses—political, ethical, medical—about the conflicts and limits of freedom, the illusory sense of control and responsibility that seems indispensable (otherwise how is society to control the impulses of the restless) but at the same time philosophically not quite defensible. We act as though we are free, but we beg off the consequences of our actions by pleading incapacity. The conflict between the ethical (you can be good, therefore you should) and the therapeutic (you can’t really be good, therefore you are not responsible and it is the responsibility of others to heal you) runs deep in contemporary society. It is, I suspect, the Freudian turn from the Augustinian pastoral to the psychological-therapeutic vocabulary that shields our Augustinian and religious past from attack when that conflict heats up. Within Christianity the divide separates right (ethical) from left (pastoral) in ways that often elude debate precisely because they run such deep roots.

• From The City of God

  Then as to the daily prayer which the Lord Himself taught, and which is therefore called the Lord's prayer, it obliterates indeed the sins of the day, when day by day we say, "Forgive us our debts," and when we not only say but act out that which follows, "as we forgive our debtors;" [1592] but we utter this petition because sins have been committed, and not that they may be. For by it our Saviour designed to teach us that, however righteously we live in this life of infirmity and darkness, we still commit sins for the remission of which we ought to pray, while we must pardon those who sin against us that we ourselves also may be pardoned. The Lord then did not utter the words, "If ye forgive men their trespasses, your Father will also forgive you your trespasses," [1593] in order that we might contract from this petition such confidence as should enable us to sin securely from day to day, either putting ourselves above the fear of human laws, or craftily deceiving men concerning our conduct, but in order that we might thus learn not to suppose that we are without sins, even though we should be free from crimes; as also God admonished the priests of the old law to this same effect regarding their sacrifices, which He commanded them to offer first for their own sins, and then for the sins of the people. For even the very words of so great a Master and Lord are to be intently considered. For He does not say, If ye forgive men their sins, your Father will also forgive you your sins, no matter of what sort they be, but He says, your sins; for it was a daily prayer He was teaching, and it was certainly to disciples already justified He was speaking. What, then, does He mean by "your sins," but those sins from which not even you who are justified and sanctified can be free? While, then, those who seek occasion from this petition to indulge in habitual sin maintain that the Lord meant to include great sins, because He did not say, He will forgive you your small sins, but "your sins," we, on the other hand, taking into account the character of the persons He was addressing, cannot see our way to interpret the expression "your sins" of anything but small sins, because such persons are no longer guilty of great sins. Nevertheless not even great sins themselves--sins from which we must flee with a total reformation of life--are forgiven to those who pray, unless they observe the appended precept, "as ye also forgive your debtors. "For if the very small sins which attach even to the life of the righteous be not remitted without that condition, how much further from obtaining indulgence shall those be who are involved in many great crimes, if, while they cease from perpetrating such enormities, they still inexorably refuse to remit any debt incurred to themselves, since the Lord says, "But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses? " [1594]For this is the purport of the saying of the Apostle James also, "He shall have judgment without mercy that hath showed no mercy. " [1595]For we should remember that servant whose debt of ten thousand talents his lord cancelled, but afterwards ordered him to pay up, because the servant himself had no pity for his fellow-servant, who owed him an hundred pence. [1596]The words which the Apostle James subjoins,"And mercy rejoiceth against judgment," [1597] find their application among those who are the children of the promise and vessels of mercy. For even those righteous men, who have lived with such holiness that they receive into the eternal habitations others also who have won their friendship with the mammon of unrighteousness, [1598] became such only through the merciful deliverance of Him who justifies the ungodly, imputing to him a reward according to grace, not according to debt. For among this number is the apostle, who says, "I obtained mercy to be faithful. " [1599]

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  She felt all the force of that comparison; but not as her sister had hoped, to urge her to exertion now; she felt it with all the pain of continual self-reproach, regretted most bitterly that she had never exerted herself before; but it brought only the torture of penitence, without the hope of amendment. Her mind was so much weakened that she still fancied present exertion impossible, and therefore it only dispirited her more. Nothing new was heard by them, for a day or two afterwards, of affairs in Harley Street, or Bartlett’s Buildings. But though so much of the matter was known to them already, that Mrs. Jennings might have had enough to do in spreading that knowledge farther, without seeking after more, she had resolved from the first to pay a visit of comfort and inquiry to her cousins as soon as she could; and nothing but the hindrance of more visitors than usual, had prevented her going to them within that time. The third day succeeding their knowledge of the particulars, was so fine, so beautiful a Sunday as to draw many to Kensington Gardens, though it was only the second week in March. Mrs. Jennings and Elinor were of the number; but Marianne, who knew that the Willoughbys were again in town, and had a constant dread of meeting them, chose rather to stay at home, than venture into so public a place. An intimate acquaintance of Mrs. Jennings joined them soon after they entered the Gardens, and Elinor was not sorry that by her continuing with them, and engaging all Mrs. Jennings’s conversation, she was herself left to quiet reflection. She saw nothing of the Willoughbys, nothing of Edward, and for some time nothing of anybody who could by any chance whether grave or gay, be interesting to her. But at last she found herself with some surprise, accosted by Miss Steele, who, though looking rather shy, expressed great satisfaction in meeting them, and on receiving encouragement from the particular kindness of Mrs. Jennings, left her own party for a short time, to join their’s. Mrs. Jennings immediately whispered to Elinor, “Get it all out of her, my dear. She will tell you any thing if you ask. You see I cannot leave Mrs. Clarke.” It was lucky, however, for Mrs. Jennings’s curiosity and Elinor’s too, that she would tell any thing _without_ being asked; for nothing would otherwise have been learnt. “I am so glad to meet you;” said Miss Steele, taking her familiarly by the arm—“for I wanted to see you of all things in the world.” And then lowering her voice, “I suppose Mrs. Jennings has heard all about it. Is she angry?” “Not at all, I believe, with you.” “That is a good thing. And Lady Middleton, is _she_ angry?” “I cannot suppose it possible that she should be.”

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “Aye, I believe that will be best for her. Let her name her own supper, and go to bed. Lord! no wonder she has been looking so bad and so cast down this last week or two, for this matter I suppose has been hanging over her head as long as that. And so the letter that came today finished it! Poor soul! I am sure if I had had a notion of it, I would not have joked her about it for all my money. But then you know, how should I guess such a thing? I made sure of its being nothing but a common love letter, and you know young people like to be laughed at about them. Lord! how concerned Sir John and my daughters will be when they hear it! If I had my senses about me I might have called in Conduit Street in my way home, and told them of it. But I shall see them tomorrow.” “It would be unnecessary I am sure, for you to caution Mrs. Palmer and Sir John against ever naming Mr. Willoughby, or making the slightest allusion to what has passed, before my sister. Their own good-nature must point out to them the real cruelty of appearing to know any thing about it when she is present; and the less that may ever be said to myself on the subject, the more my feelings will be spared, as you my dear madam will easily believe.” “Oh! Lord! yes, that I do indeed. It must be terrible for you to hear it talked of; and as for your sister, I am sure I would not mention a word about it to her for the world. You saw I did not all dinner time. No more would Sir John, nor my daughters, for they are all very thoughtful and considerate; especially if I give them a hint, as I certainly will. For my part, I think the less that is said about such things, the better, the sooner ’tis blown over and forgot. And what good does talking ever do you know?” “In this affair it can only do harm; more so perhaps than in many cases of a similar kind, for it has been attended by circumstances which, for the sake of every one concerned in it, make it unfit to become the public conversation. I must do _this_ justice to Mr. Willoughby—he has broken no positive engagement with my sister.” “Law, my dear! Don’t pretend to defend him. No positive engagement indeed! after taking her all over Allenham House, and fixing on the very rooms they were to live in hereafter!”

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  She then left the room; and Elinor dared not follow her to say more, for bound as she was by her promise of secrecy to Lucy, she could give no information that would convince Marianne; and painful as the consequences of her still continuing in an error might be, she was obliged to submit to it. All that she could hope, was that Edward would not often expose her or himself to the distress of hearing Marianne’s mistaken warmth, nor to the repetition of any other part of the pain that had attended their recent meeting—and this she had every reason to expect. CHAPTER XXXVI. Within a few days after this meeting, the newspapers announced to the world, that the lady of Thomas Palmer, Esq. was safely delivered of a son and heir; a very interesting and satisfactory paragraph, at least to all those intimate connections who knew it before. This event, highly important to Mrs. Jennings’s happiness, produced a temporary alteration in the disposal of her time, and influenced, in a like degree, the engagements of her young friends; for as she wished to be as much as possible with Charlotte, she went thither every morning as soon as she was dressed, and did not return till late in the evening; and the Miss Dashwoods, at the particular request of the Middletons, spent the whole of every day in Conduit Street. For their own comfort they would much rather have remained, at least all the morning, in Mrs. Jennings’s house; but it was not a thing to be urged against the wishes of everybody. Their hours were therefore made over to Lady Middleton and the two Miss Steeles, by whom their company, in fact was as little valued, as it was professedly sought. They had too much sense to be desirable companions to the former; and by the latter they were considered with a jealous eye, as intruding on _their_ ground, and sharing the kindness which they wanted to monopolize. Though nothing could be more polite than Lady Middleton’s behaviour to Elinor and Marianne, she did not really like them at all. Because they neither flattered herself nor her children, she could not believe them good-natured; and because they were fond of reading, she fancied them satirical: perhaps without exactly knowing what it was to be satirical; but _that_ did not signify. It was censure in common use, and easily given.

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “Even so. You would be surprised to hear how often I watched you, how often I was on the point of falling in with you. I have entered many a shop to avoid your sight, as the carriage drove by. Lodging as I did in Bond Street, there was hardly a day in which I did not catch a glimpse of one or other of you; and nothing but the most constant watchfulness on my side, a most invariably prevailing desire to keep out of your sight, could have separated us so long. I avoided the Middletons as much as possible, as well as everybody else who was likely to prove an acquaintance in common. Not aware of their being in town, however, I blundered on Sir John, I believe, the first day of his coming, and the day after I had called at Mrs. Jennings’s. He asked me to a party, a dance at his house in the evening. Had he _not_ told me as an inducement that you and your sister were to be there, I should have felt it too certain a thing, to trust myself near him. The next morning brought another short note from Marianne—still affectionate, open, artless, confiding—everything that could make _my_ conduct most hateful. I could not answer it. I tried—but could not frame a sentence. But I thought of her, I believe, every moment of the day. If you _can_ pity me, Miss Dashwood, pity my situation as it was _then_. With my head and heart full of your sister, I was forced to play the happy lover to another woman! Those three or four weeks were worse than all. Well, at last, as I need not tell you, you were forced on me; and what a sweet figure I cut! what an evening of agony it was! Marianne, beautiful as an angel on one side, calling me Willoughby in such a tone! Oh, God! holding out her hand to me, asking me for an explanation, with those bewitching eyes fixed in such speaking solicitude on my face! and Sophia, jealous as the devil on the other hand, looking all that was—Well, it does not signify; it is over now. Such an evening! I ran away from you all as soon as I could; but not before I had seen Marianne’s sweet face as white as death. _That_ was the last, last look I ever had of her; the last manner in which she appeared to me. It was a horrid sight! yet when I thought of her to-day as really dying, it was a kind of comfort to me to imagine that I knew exactly how she would appear to those, who saw her last in this world. She was before me, constantly before me, as I travelled, in the same look and hue.” A short pause of mutual thoughtfulness succeeded. Willoughby first rousing himself, broke it thus:

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  “It was necessary to my own pride. I could not bear to leave the country in a manner that might lead you, or the rest of the neighbourhood, to suspect any part of what had really passed between Mrs. Smith and myself—and I resolved therefore on calling at the cottage, in my way to Honiton. The sight of your dear sister, however, was really dreadful; and, to heighten the matter, I found her alone. You were all gone I do not know where. I had left her only the evening before, so fully, so firmly resolved within my self on doing right! A few hours were to have engaged her to me for ever; and I remember how happy, how gay were my spirits, as I walked from the cottage to Allenham, satisfied with myself, delighted with every body! But in this, our last interview of friendship, I approached her with a sense of guilt that almost took from me the power of dissembling. Her sorrow, her disappointment, her deep regret, when I told her that I was obliged to leave Devonshire so immediately—I never shall forget it—united too with such reliance, such confidence in me!—Oh, God!—what a hard-hearted rascal I was!” They were both silent for a few moments. Elinor first spoke. “Did you tell her that you should soon return?” “I do not know what I told her,” he replied, impatiently; “less than was due to the past, beyond a doubt, and in all likelihood much more than was justified by the future. I cannot think of it.—It won’t do.—Then came your dear mother to torture me farther, with all her kindness and confidence. Thank Heaven! it _did_ torture me. I was miserable. Miss Dashwood, you cannot have an idea of the comfort it gives me to look back on my own misery. I owe such a grudge to myself for the stupid, rascally folly of my own heart, that all my past sufferings under it are only triumph and exultation to me now. Well, I went, left all that I loved, and went to those to whom, at best, I was only indifferent. My journey to town—travelling with my own horses, and therefore so tediously—no creature to speak to—my own reflections so cheerful—when I looked forward every thing so inviting!—when I looked back at Barton, the picture so soothing!—oh, it was a blessed journey!” He stopped. “Well, sir,” said Elinor, who, though pitying him, grew impatient for his departure, “and this is all?” “All!—no:—have you forgot what passed in town? That infamous letter? Did she show it you?” “Yes, I saw every note that passed.”

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  Mrs. Dashwood could think of no other question, and Thomas and the tablecloth, now alike needless, were soon afterwards dismissed. Marianne had already sent to say, that she should eat nothing more. Mrs. Dashwood’s and Elinor’s appetites were equally lost, and Margaret might think herself very well off, that with so much uneasiness as both her sisters had lately experienced, so much reason as they had often had to be careless of their meals, she had never been obliged to go without her dinner before. When the dessert and the wine were arranged, and Mrs. Dashwood and Elinor were left by themselves, they remained long together in a similarity of thoughtfulness and silence. Mrs. Dashwood feared to hazard any remark, and ventured not to offer consolation. She now found that she had erred in relying on Elinor’s representation of herself; and justly concluded that every thing had been expressly softened at the time, to spare her from an increase of unhappiness, suffering as she then had suffered for Marianne. She found that she had been misled by the careful, the considerate attention of her daughter, to think the attachment, which once she had so well understood, much slighter in reality, than she had been wont to believe, or than it was now proved to be. She feared that under this persuasion she had been unjust, inattentive, nay, almost unkind, to her Elinor;—that Marianne’s affliction, because more acknowledged, more immediately before her, had too much engrossed her tenderness, and led her away to forget that in Elinor she might have a daughter suffering almost as much, certainly with less self-provocation, and greater fortitude. CHAPTER XLVIII. Elinor now found the difference between the expectation of an unpleasant event, however certain the mind may be told to consider it, and certainty itself. She now found, that in spite of herself, she had always admitted a hope, while Edward remained single, that something would occur to prevent his marrying Lucy; that some resolution of his own, some mediation of friends, or some more eligible opportunity of establishment for the lady, would arise to assist the happiness of all. But he was now married; and she condemned her heart for the lurking flattery, which so much heightened the pain of the intelligence. That he should be married soon, before (as she imagined) he could be in orders, and consequently before he could be in possession of the living, surprised her a little at first. But she soon saw how likely it was that Lucy, in her self-provident care, in her haste to secure him, should overlook every thing but the risk of delay. They were married, married in town, and now hastening down to her uncle’s. What had Edward felt on being within four miles from Barton, on seeing her mother’s servant, on hearing Lucy’s message!

• From Sense and Sensibility (1811)

  She felt all the force of that comparison; but not as her sister had hoped, to urge her to exertion now; she felt it with all the pain of continual self-reproach, regretted most bitterly that she had never exerted herself before; but it brought only the torture of penitence, without the hope of amendment. Her mind was so much weakened that she still fancied present exertion impossible, and therefore it only dispirited her more. Nothing new was heard by them, for a day or two afterwards, of affairs in Harley Street, or Bartlett’s Buildings. But though so much of the matter was known to them already, that Mrs. Jennings might have had enough to do in spreading that knowledge farther, without seeking after more, she had resolved from the first to pay a visit of comfort and inquiry to her cousins as soon as she could; and nothing but the hindrance of more visitors than usual, had prevented her going to them within that time. The third day succeeding their knowledge of the particulars, was so fine, so beautiful a Sunday as to draw many to Kensington Gardens, though it was only the second week in March. Mrs. Jennings and Elinor were of the number; but Marianne, who knew that the Willoughbys were again in town, and had a constant dread of meeting them, chose rather to stay at home, than venture into so public a place. An intimate acquaintance of Mrs. Jennings joined them soon after they entered the Gardens, and Elinor was not sorry that by her continuing with them, and engaging all Mrs. Jennings’s conversation, she was herself left to quiet reflection. She saw nothing of the Willoughbys, nothing of Edward, and for some time nothing of anybody who could by any chance whether grave or gay, be interesting to her. But at last she found herself with some surprise, accosted by Miss Steele, who, though looking rather shy, expressed great satisfaction in meeting them, and on receiving encouragement from the particular kindness of Mrs. Jennings, left her own party for a short time, to join their’s. Mrs. Jennings immediately whispered to Elinor, “Get it all out of her, my dear. She will tell you any thing if you ask. You see I cannot leave Mrs. Clarke.” It was lucky, however, for Mrs. Jennings’s curiosity and Elinor’s too, that she would tell any thing without being asked; for nothing would otherwise have been learnt. “I am so glad to meet you;” said Miss Steele, taking her familiarly by the arm—“for I wanted to see you of all things in the world.” And then lowering her voice, “I suppose Mrs. Jennings has heard all about it. Is she angry?” “Not at all, I believe, with you.” “That is a good thing. And Lady Middleton, is she angry?” “I cannot suppose it possible that she should be.”