The Believer and Emotion 427
elated, but when it mollifies him he feels depressed. Driven by high
emotion, the Christian commits many errors. Upon awakening to this
fact, however, he tends to suppress his feelings altogether. And so
now he conceives himself as spiritual. Yet what he does not realize is
that this is but a reactionary impulse of that self-same emotion of his
which has calmed him down; that following a time of excitement,
there is bound to emerge an emotional re-action. Such coldness and
dullness precipitates the believer to lose interest in God’s work: it
deprives him as well his brotherly affection towards God’s children.
Because of the reluctance of the outer man to work, the believer’s
inner man is imprisoned and the life of the spirit is powerless to flow
out. Now during this episode the saint may deem himself to be
walking after the spirit, for, he reasons within himself, am I not today
an extremely cold person and no longer burning wildly as before?
Little does this Christian comprehend that he continues to walk after
emotion anyway, only this time after the other extreme of emotion!
Few are the cases, however, of Christians turning cold. Most of
them continue to be propelled forward by their high emotion. In the
moment of excitement they do many things beyond proper bounds,
actions which during subsequent periods of calmness they
themselves would deride and consider nonsense. Deeds done under
excitement often induce pangs of regret and remorse in retrospect.
How distressing that Christians lack the spiritual strength to consign
their inordinate feeling to death and to deny its control.
Two reasons can be offered why many walk according to their
emotion. First, since they do not understand what walking according
to the spirit is nor have ever sought to so walk, they will naturally
walk according to the movement of emotion. Because they have
never learned how to deny the agitation of their emotion, they are
simply swept along by it and do those deeds which they ought not
do. Their spiritual sense verily raises its objection, but these
individuals so lack spiritual power that they completely disregard its
objection and heed their feeling instead. The latter beats stronger and