suspension of pains and penalties, and the hardest lesson in the world to learn is that guilt may be forgiven, but that the consequences of guilt may yet have to be endured.  When we have really learnt that, we are indeed perfected.  St. Peter in one of his epistles says that it is less creditable to be patient when one is buffeted for one’s faults than when one suffers for one’s virtues.  I fear that I cannot agree with this.  One may be convinced of the justice of a sentence, but the more one is convinced of it, the more does one regret the course of conduct that made the sentence necessary.  The sinner who suffers for his sin bears not only the pain of the punishment but also the sense of shame and self-condemnation.  The good man who suffers for his goodness does indeed have to bear the burden of an awful mystery, a doubt whether God is indeed on the side of the righteous; but he is not crushed beneath the additional burden of self-contempt, he has not the humiliating sense of folly and weakness which the transgressor has to bear; and thus it so often happens that the well-meaning transgressor is slow to learn the lesson of patience, because he takes refuge in a vague sort of metaphysics, and attributes to heredity and environment what is really the outcome of his own wilfulness and perversity.

But the true patience, whatever the cause of its sufferings, brings with it a blessed sense of the faithful sternness, the fruitful lovingness of God, who will not let even the feeblest of sinners be satisfied with less than he can attain, in whose hands the punishment, like fire, runs swiftly and agonisingly to and fro, consuming the baser elements of passion and desire.

XI

I am quite sure that I like solitude.  There is no pleasure in the world like waking up in the morning and feeling that absolutely the whole day is at one’s disposal; that one can work when one likes, go out when it is fine, have one’s meals when one prefers, even when one is hungry.  There is no one near enough to drop in, in this blissful corner of the world, and a caller is a rare bird.  I have too much to do ever to be bored, and indeed the day is seldom long enough for all I have designed.  Best of all, my work, though abundant, is seldom pressing.  I have hardly ever anything to do that must be done that moment.  With some people that would end in putting off everything till the last moment, but that is not the case with me.  The greatest luxury I know is to have accumulated stores of work on which one can draw; and my tendency is, if ever a piece of work is entrusted to me, to do it at once.  I have few gregarious instincts, I suppose.  I like eating alone, reading alone, and walking alone.  There is also a good deal to be said for learning to enjoy solitude, for it is the one luxury that a man without any close home ties can command.  An independent bachelor is sure, whether he likes it or not, to have, as life goes on, more and more enforced solitude—­that is, if he detests living in a town.  I have not even nephews and nieces whom it would be natural to see something of; and thus it is a wise economy to practise for solitude.