ss and faithfulness? Are they not misunderstood, and criticised, and
censured? Are they not frequently accused of all manner of wrong, their
work disparaged, and their motives impugned? Are not persecution, and even
martyrdom, often their portion? Now all this is the result of sin. Those
who call into question the deeds and motives of God's saints; those who
upbraid, and criticise, and impute evil to the sincere, faithful servants
of God, inflicting upon them dire evils, are but showing the effects of
sin in themselves, are but giving exercise to the evil that rules within
them. Their particular acts and words may be without present malice, they
may be inwardly persuaded that in reviling and condemning their neighbor
and doing him harm, they are rendering a service to God Himself; but in so
doing they but manifest the effects of earlier sin, personal, perhaps, and
original, which has darkened their understanding and made perverse their
moral vision, so that, having eyes, they see not, having ears, they hear
not, neither do they understand.(35) Following the corruption of their own
nature, bleeding from the wounds of original sin, they are prone to
blaspheme whatsoever they fail to comprehend;(36) and thus it is that they
often make life and the world for the servant of God a truly perilous
sojourn, a veritable valley of death.

This failure to be understood, this misjudgment of actions, motives,
deeds, are doubtless common evils from which, in a measure, we all must
suffer. But it is also true that the more elevated the life, the higher
its aims, the loftier the spiritual level on which it proceeds, the
greater the difficulty of its being understood and appreciated by the
majority, who always tread the common paths of mediocrity. A saint is
nearly always a disturbance to his immediate surroundings, he is
frequently an annoyance and an irritation to the little circle in which
his external life is cast, simply because he really lives and moves in a
sphere which the ordinary life cannot grasp. Like a brilliant, dazzling
light that obscures the lesser luminaries, and is therefore odious to
them, the man of God is frequently a disturber to the worldly peace of
common men, his life and works are a living reproach to their life and
works; and hence, without willing it, he becomes a menace to their society
and is not welcome in their company. Worldly, plotting minds cannot
understand the spiritual and the holy; sinful souls are o