Letters

¹ If, my true brother, you gladly suffer yourself to be advised by me as to what course of action you should pursue, specially in the points in which you have referred to me for advice, you will owe me your salvation. Many men have had the courage to enter upon the solitary life; but to live it out to the end is a task which perhaps has been achieved by few. The end is not necessarily involved in the intention; yet in the end is the reward of the toil. No advantage, therefore, accrues to men who fail to press on to the end of what they have in view and only adopt the solitary's life in its inception.

Nay, they make their profession ridiculous, and are charged by outsiders with unmanliness and instability of purpose. Of these, moreover, the Lord says, who wishing to build a house “sits not down first and counts the cost whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply after he has laid the foundation and is not able to finish it,” the passers-by “begin to mock him saying,” this man laid a foundation “and was not able to finish.” Let the start, then, mean that you heartily advance in virtue.

The right noble athlete Paul, wishing us not to rest in easy security on so much of our life as may have been lived well in the past, but, every day to attain further progress, says “Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling.” So truly stands the whole of human life, not contented with what has gone before and fed not so much on the past as on the future. For how is a man the better for having his belly filled yesterday, if his natural hunger fails to find its proper satisfaction in food today? In the same way the soul gains nothing by yesterday's virtue unless it be followed by the right conduct of today. For it is said “I shall judge you as I shall find you.”