But
in this war of hers she is wholly implacable. She has little notion of
converting criminals. There is no faculty of mercy in her when she has
been resisted. Her word is only, "I will mock when your fear cometh."
Note the words that follow: "when your fear cometh as desolation, and
your destruction as a whirlwind;" for her wrath is of irresistible
tempest: once roused, it is blind and deaf,--rabies--madness of anger--
darkness of the Dies Irae.
And that is, indeed, the sorrowfullest fact we have to know about our own
several lives. Wisdom never forgives. Whatever resistance we have
offered to her loaw, she avenges forever; the lost hour can never be
redeemed, and the accomplished wrong never atoned for. The best that can
be done afterwards, but for that, had been better; the falsest of all the
cries of peace, where there is no peace, is that of the pardon of sin, as
the mob expect it. Wisdom can "put away" sin, but she cannot pardon it;
and she is apt, in her haste, to put away the sinner as well, when the
black aegis is on her breast.
118. And this is also a fact we have to know about our national life,
that it is ended as soon as it has lost the power of noble Anger.
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