Collected works > Edinburgh edition, 1894-98 - Works of Robert Louis Stevenson > Volume 21, 1896 - Miscellanies, Volume IV

LAY MORALS
climate; and then I think his perplexities were
thickest. When he thought of all the other young
men of singular promise, upright, good, the prop of
families, who must remain at home to die, and with
all their possibilities be lost to life and mankind ;
and how he, by one more unmerited favour, was
chosen out from all these others to survive ; he felt
as if there were no life, no labour, no devotion of
soul and body, that could repay and justify these
partialities. A religious lady, to whom he com-
municated these reflections, could see no force in
them whatever. ' It was God's will,' said she. But
he knew it was by God's will that Joan of Arc was
burnt at Rouen, which cleared neither Bedford nor
Bishop Cauchon ; and again, by God's will that
Christ was crucified outside Jerusalem, which ex-
cused neither the rancour of the priests nor the
timidity of Pilate. He knew, moreover, that al-
though the possibility of this favour he was now
enjoying issued from his circumstances, its accept-
ance was the act of his own will; and he had
accepted it greedily, longing for rest and sunshine.
And hence this allegation of God's providence did
little to relieve his scruples. I promise you he had a
very troubled mind. And I would not laugh if I were
you, though while he was thus making mountains
out of what you think molehills, he were still (as
perhaps he was) contentedly practising many other
things that to you seem black as hell. Every man
is his own judge and mountain-guide through life.
There is an old story of a mote and a beam,
330