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But, doomed and fated being that I am, such is my destiny; and so must I be, here or elsewhere, in whichever land I may visit, in whatever part of the earth I may abide. Oh! merciful Heaven, can no prayer, no self-mortification, remove the ban the curse from my devoted head?

Gotama seeks to obtain enlightenment by self-mortification: finds that this is the wrong way: tries a more natural method and succeeds: debates whether he shall become a teacher and at first hesitates. These are not features which the average Indian hagiographer, anxious to prove his hero omnipotent and omniscient, would invent or emphasize.

The worthy ecclesiastic had renounced the world and all its vanities, and had put on the badges of poverty and self-mortification for $50,000 a year, and he wore the disguises that ought to have shielded him from the suspicion of being rich!

I wished also to avoid the self-mortification which must ensue from altercation. I dreaded, as I have always dreaded beyond what I can tell, the chaos and wreck which, with me, follows subjugation by anger, and I held to my resolve under all provocation. It was very difficult, but how many times I have blessed myself for adhesion to it.

Unhappily, the baronet, who by some fatality never could see when he was winning the battle, thought proper in his wisdom to water the dryness of his sermon with a little jocoseness, on the subject of young men fancying themselves in love, and, when they were raw and green, absolutely wanting to be that most awful thing, which the wisest and strongest of men undertake in hesitation and after self-mortification and penance married!

And yet, to-day, in the broad light of Bible lands, and in the midst of the wholesome and suggestive duties of family life, do not many, under false teachings like that of Hemstead's sermon, find spiritual paths as dark and painful as those of ascetics who made self-mortification the business of life? Christ spake truly when He said, "Men love darkness rather than light."

Dashwood to stay longer; but, as if he were bent only on self-mortification, he seemed resolved to be gone when his enjoyment among his friends was at the height.

Then his disciples abandoned him, for at that time self-mortification was regarded as the only path to salvation. Siddharta was then alone, and under the sacred fig-tree still shown in India he gained wisdom and enlightenment, and became Buddha. Then he came to Benares, and won back his first disciples; and his society, the brotherhood of the yellow mendicant monks, spread ever more and more.

Arrived at length but too clearly at the conviction that she had given up her mind to chimeras and illusions, and seeking self-mortification through the same sentiment which had brought about her ruin, the once-haughty Duchess became the humblest of women. Renouncing all worldly grandeur, she quitted her splendid mansion in the Faubourg St.

Ambitious to exalt the perfection of the gospel above the wisdom of philosophy, the zealous fathers have carried the duties of self-mortification, of purity, and of patience, to a height which it is scarcely possible to attain, and much less to preserve, in our present state of weakness and corruption.