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| Chapter XVII. That no one is dashed to the ground by a sudden fall.
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Chapter XVII.
That no one is dashed to the ground by a sudden
fall.
But we must not imagine
that anyone slips and comes to grief by a sudden fall, but that he
falls by a hopeless collapse either from being deceived by beginning
his training badly, or from the good qualities of his soul failing
through a long course of carelessness of mind, and so his faults
gaining ground upon him little by little. For “loss goeth before
destruction, and an evil thought before a fall,”1433
just as no house ever falls to the
ground by a sudden collapse, but only when there is some flaw of long
standing in the foundation, or when by long continued neglect of its
inmates, what was at first only a little drip finds its way through,
and so the protecting walls are by degrees ruined, and in consequence
of long standing neglect the gap becomes larger, and break away, and in
time the drenching storm and rain pours in like a river: for “by
slothfulness a building is cast down, and through the weakness of hands
the house shall drop through.”1434
And that
the same thing happens spiritually to the soul the same Solomon thus
tells us in other words, when he says: “water dripping drives a
man out of the house on a stormy day.”1435
Elegantly then does he compare carelessness of mind to a roof, and to
tiles that have not been looked after, through which in the first
instance only very slight drippings (so to speak) of the passions make
their way to the soul: but if these are not heeded, as being but small
and trifling, then the beams of virtues will decay and be carried away
by a great tempest of sins, through which “on a stormy
day,” i.e., in the time of temptation, the devil’s attack
will assail us, and the soul will be driven forth from the abode of
virtue, in which, as long as it preserved all watchful diligence, it
had remained as in a house that belonged to it.
And so when we had heard this, we were so immensely
delighted with our spiritual repast, that the mental pleasure with
which we were filled by this conference outweighed the sorrow which we
had experienced before from the death of the saints. For not only were
we instructed in things about which we had been puzzled, but we also
learnt from the raising of that question some things, which our
understanding had been too small for us to ask about. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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